roclaimed, it did
unquestionably express a valid national interest of the American
democracy. It was the American retort to the policy of the Holy Alliance
which sought to erect the counter-revolutionary principles into an
international system, and which suppressed, so far as possible, all
nationalist or democratic agitation. The Spanish-American colonies had
been winning their independence from Spain; and there was a fear, not
entirely ill-founded, that the Alliance would apply its anti-democratic
international policy to the case of Spain's revolted colonies. Obviously
the United States, both as a democracy and as a democracy which had won
its independence by means of a revolutionary war, could not admit the
right of any combination of European states to suppress national and
democratic uprisings on the American continents. Our government would
have been wholly justified in resisting such interference with all its
available military force. But in what sense and upon what grounds was
the United States justified in going farther than this, and in asserting
that under no circumstances should there be any increase of European
political influence upon the American continents? What is the propriety
and justice of such a declaration of continental isolation? What are its
implications? And what, if any, are its dangers?

In seeking an answer to these questions we must return to the source of
American foreign policy in the Farewell Address. That address contains
the germ of a prudent and wise American national policy; but Hamilton,
in preparing its phrasing, was guided chiefly by a consideration of the
immediate needs and dangers of his country. The Jeffersonian Republicans
in their enthusiasm for the French Revolution proposed for a while to
bring about a permanent alliance between France and the United States,
the object whereof should be the propagation of the democratic political
faith. Both Washington and Hamilton saw clearly that such behavior would
entangle the United States in all the vicissitudes and turmoil which
might attend the development of European democracy; and their favorite
policy of neutrality and isolation implied both that the national
interest of the United States was not concerned in merely European
complications, and that the American people, unlike those of France, did
not propose to make their political principles an excuse for
international aggression. The Monroe Doctrine, as proclaimed in 1825,
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