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.