as little
political connection as possible;" that it was "unwise in us to
implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of
[Old World] policies, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her
friendships or enmities. Our detached and distant situation invites and
enables us to pursue a different course.... Taking care always to keep
ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture,
we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary
emergencies."

Accepting this as firm ground from which to act, we afterwards put forth
what is known as the Monroe Doctrine. Having announced that our purpose
was, in homely language, to mind our own business, we warned the outer
world that we did not propose to permit by that outer world any
interference in what did not concern it. America was our field,--a field
amply large for our development. It was therefore declared that, while
we had never taken any part, nor did it comport with our policy to do
so, in the wars of European politics, with the movements in this
hemisphere we are, of necessity, more intimately connected. "We owe it,
therefore, to candor to declare that we should consider any attempt [on
the part of European powers] to extend their system to any portion of
this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety."

On these principles of government and of foreign policy we have as a people
now acted for more than seventy years. They have been exemplified and
developed in various directions, and resulted in details--commercial,
economic, and ethnic--which have given rise to political issues, long and
hotly contested, but which, in their result from the purely historical
point of view, do not admit of dispute. Commercially, we have adopted what
is known as a system protective both of our industries and our labor.
Economically, we have carefully eschewed large and costly armaments, and
expensive governmental methods. Ethnically, we have avowed our desire to
have as little contact as possible with less developed races, lamenting the
presence of the African, and severely excluding the Asiatic. These facts,
whether we as individuals and citizens wholly approve--or do not approve at
all--of the course pursued and the results reached, admit of no dispute.
Neither can it be denied that our attitude, whether it in all respects
commanded the respect of foreign nations, or failed to command it, was
accepted, and has prevailed.