John Quincy Adams to Ulysses S. Grant HAVING pursued the "Monroe Doctrine's" paralleling tradition and inspiration down the years, from its inception in 1823 to its renaissance in 1919-from its birth in protest against one foreign League, to its reiteration in restraints against another-we return to "Nationalism's" main trail; and sequence requires that we go back and pick up the route with Monroe's successor, John Quincy Adams, the Doctrine's actual architect and so consistent an advocate of the separationist theory of international relations that as early as 1793 he had been writing, under the sobriquet of "Marcellus," in support of Washington's and Hamilton's sturdy refusal to prostitute American independence to alien partialities or partnerships. Among the great names that have been associated with the Presidency, perhaps none is less intimately known and less often mentioned than that of this second Adams. He is most frequently identified as the President who left the White House to resume a seat in the House of Representatives and who died in the old hall of the House upon a spot marked in the Capitol floor and invariably pointed out by Capitol guides. Yet John Quincy Adams served innumerable high responsibilities, always faithfully, expertly and well; he was a brilliant scholar, a skilled statesman, and a devotedly loyal "Nationalist." He deserves highly of fame, and belongs on a particularly lofty pedestal in the memories of those to whom the tradition of "Nationalism" is an adequately appreciated inheritance. But from this second Adams, down to very recent years, foreign relations-though always important, and though repeatedly chaptered with vital considerations were not a paramount concern with us and occupied but a comparatively small corner of the public eye. On the one hand, the European menace ceased to obtrude with imminent regularity; Europe, though still resentful of our contagious experiments in democracy, seemed reasonably resigned to our divorce without alimony. On the other hand, our internal problems—leaping toward the awful cataclysm of gigantic fratricide-began to engross our major attentions. We continued to gather in contiguous territory wherever it offered on bargain counters or battle fields until, in 1867, Seward's purchase of Alaska seemed to complete the acquisition of the last available bit of continental North America. But our interest in Europe constantly waned in proportion as the European shadow receded and our own magnified. This very lack either of interest or contact naturally confirmed the tradition of separate destiny during these years by sheer omission of challenge to the contrary. This does not mean that an infinity of delicate foreign interpretations and decisions was not recorded in this span-so complex a calendar, indeed, that it were folly, within the confines at our disposal, even to pretend an inventory. But it does mean that this essay is committed to one specific quest the trail of a general traditionand that this tradition of independence from and avoidance of European political entanglement, this tradition of utter "Nationalistic" self-determination in matters involving the character or destiny of American government, was so consistently supported, that it is only necessary to touch flying milestones as we count the intervening decades that have brought this unbroken trail down to the present hour. And lest irresistible diversions shall beckon us unduly to linger amid the romance and the color that jewel the history which flanks this trail, we shall choose largely to cling to Presidential utterances as the best authority for the interpretation of this long and honorable interval. It is as if our effort were the compilation of a road map-a "Blue Book," if you please to mark the shortest but the surest route between two points-yesterday and now. Naturally President Adams, the second, subscribed to all of these traditional policies. He had supported Washington and Hamilton; he had |