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The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted. . . .

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof, and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

In support of the resistance to British oppression in 1775 and of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Revolutionary War was fought. In keeping with the powers of a free nation an alliance was made with France, February 6, 1778, to secure mutual support and advantages in the fight against England.

The first American treaty

of alliance

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Nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded, and that in place of them just and amicable feelings toward all should be cultivated. . . . The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course [than to implicate ourselves in the politics of Europe]. . . . It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world. . . . Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies. . .

JEFFERSON'S

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ADDRESS,

INAUGURAL WASHINGTON, MARCH 4, 1801: Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.

The early policy of isolation was predicated on the continental interests and security of the United States and its ambition to remain aloof from the political quarrels of the Old World. Even so, it did not extend to all incidents in which the national security of the United States became involved. In these instances, both in the Western hemisphere and elsewhere, it developed into a policy of neutrality rather than one of strict isolation.(4)

After the beginning of the war between France and England in February 1793 it became the un

Early neutrality policies

pleasant task of President Washington to determine and fulfill the obligations of the United States under the treaties with France and at the same time to maintain the position of a neutral toward England. At that time the principles of neutrality were developed which governed the foreign relations of the United States for a century and a half. Each departure from neutrality by the United States during these 150 years can best be understood if it is considered as an exception to a continuing policy.(5)

PROCLAMATION OF NEUTRALITY, PHILADELPHIA, APRIL 22, 1793: Whereas it appears that a state of war exists between Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, Great Britain, and the United Netherlands, of the one part, and France on the other; and the duty and interest of the United States require,

that they should with sincerity and good faith adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impartial toward the belligerent Powers:

I have therefore thought fit by these presents to declare the disposition of the United States to observe the conduct aforesaid towards those Powers respectively; and to exhort and warn the citizens of the United States carefully to avoid all acts and proceedings whatsoever, which may in any manner tend to contravene such disposition.

And I do hereby also make known, that whosoever of the citizens of the United States shall render himself liable to punishment or forfeiture under the law of nations, by committing, aiding, or abetting hostilities against any of the said powers, or by carrying to any of them those articles which are deemed contraband by the modern usage of nations, will not receive the protection of the United States, against such punishment or forfeiture; and further, that I have given instructions to those officers, to whom it belongs, to cause prosecutions to be instituted against all persons, who shall, within the cognizance of the courts of the United States, violate the law of nations, with respect to the Powers at war, or any of them.

By the close of the Federalist era in 1801 the new nation had established several of the elements of foreign policy that were to carry through more than 100 years with only temporary changes-the right of revolution; the executive control of the conduct of foreign relations, the protection of the status of the individual, political isolation from Europe; and neutrality in foreign wars not involving our national security.

3. Neutral Rights and Impressment: 1806-1812

Causes of the War of 1812

During the period of the Napoleonic wars controversies between the United States and Great Britain over maritime rights included the forcible removal by British warships from American vessels of seamen claimed by the English to be British subjects. This impressment of seamen, the definition of contraband, American trade with British colonial areas, the search of vessels on the high seas, and the enforcement of blockades brought the two nations into frequent disagreement. Although the American government was not consistent in its opposition to impressment, its stand on the issue was basically correct. This impressment by the British was generally regarded as the most popular and most important cause of the War of 1812.

James Madison, Secretary of State, set forth the American policy on the maritime rights of the United States in his instructions to James Monroe, then Minister to London.

SECRETARY MADISON'S INSTRUCTIONS TO JAMES MONROE, WASHINGTON, JANUARY 5, 1804: . . . Although there are many important objects which may be thought to invite conventional regulations between the United States and Great Britain, it is evidently proper to leave, for subsequent consideration, such as are less urgent in their nature, or more difficult in their adjustment, and thereby to render the way plainer and shorter to an agreement with respect to objects which cannot be much longer delayed without danger to the good understanding between the two nations. With this in view, the plan of a convention contemplated by the President is limited to the cases of impressments of our seamen, of blockades, of visiting and searching our vessels, of contraband of war, and of the trade with hostile colonies, with a few other cases affecting our maritime rights; embracing, however, as inducements to Great Britain to do us justice therein, a provision for the surrender of deserting seamen and soldiers, and for the prevention of contraband supplies to her enemies. . .

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However, Congressmen from the western districts, such as Henry Clay, probably correctly expressed the primary interests of their constituents in 1811 when they openly stated that the objectives of a war with Britain must include the conquest and annexation of Canada by the United States.(6)

SUMMARY IN ANNALS OF THE CONGRESS OF SPEECH OF HENRY CLAY IN CONGRESS, WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 31, 1811: . . . Mr. Clay proceeded more particularly to inquire into the object of the force. That object, he understood, to be war, and war with Great Britain . . . and the conquest of her Canadian provinces.

What are we to gain by war, has been emphatically asked? In reply, he would ask, what are we not to lose by peace?-commerce, character, a nation's best treasure, honor! If pecuniary considerations alone are to govern, there is sufficient motive for the war. Our revenue is reduced, by the operation of the belligerent edicts, to about six million of dollars, according to the Secretary of the Treasury's report. The year preceding the embargo, it was sixteen.

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He had no disposition to swell, or dwell upon the catalogue of injuries from England. He could not, however, overlook the impressment of our seamen; an aggression upon which he never reflected without feelings of indignation, which would not allow him appropriate language to describe its enormity. Not content with seizing upon all our property, which

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He contended that the real cause of British aggression, was not to distress an enemy but to destroy a rival. A comparative view of our commerce with England and to the continent, would satisfy any one of the truth of this remark. . . . It is apparent that this trade, the balance of which was in favor, not of France, but of the United States, was not of very vital consequence to the enemy of England. Would she, therefore, for the sole purpose of depriving her adversary of this commerce, relinquish her valuable trade with this country, exhibiting the essential balance in her favor-nay, more; hazard the peace of the country? No, sir, you must look for an explanation of her conduct in the jealousies of a rival. She sickens at your prosperity, and beholds in your growth -your sails spread on every ocean, and your numerous seamen the foundations of a Power which, at no very distant day, is to make her tremble for naval superiority. . .

The war which followed the Congressional declaration of June 18, 1812 was what Bailey calls "a rash departure from the true policy of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson-of playing for time and letting Europe's distresses fight America's battles." Britain, involved with Napoleon in Europe fought the Americans haphazardly. The Americans, divided by the unpopularity of the war, especially in New England, made a poor showing except on the sea. In the end, the Treaty of Ghent, signed December 24, 1814, did little more than restore peace.

Freedom of the seas

Impressment and other neutral rights were not mentioned in the treaty terms. But America's willingness to go to war to protect these rights had been partially responsible for Britain's abandonment of the practices. Thus, if it settled nothing else, the War of 1812 emphasized the insistence of the United States upon freedom of the seas and the rights of neutrals to trade as they chose with belligerents in time of war.(7)

4. The Diplomacy of Territorial Expansion to 1890

In the Treaty of Paris of September 3, 1783 England formally recognized the existence of the

1 Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People (New York, 1947), p. 141.

Reasons for early expansionist policies

United States as a nation. This treaty set the southern frontier of the new nation next to the Spanish territories of East and West Florida. The northern frontier, with some exceptions, followed the present-day separation between the United States and Canada to the headwaters of the Mississippi. For the first thirty-five years of its history, the chief reasons for territorial expansion on the part of the United States lay in the need to protect its frontiers from threatening neighbors, to expel potentially dangerous elements of British, French, Spanish, or Indians still within the American territories, and to find space for the natural expansion of an increasing population with its attendant westward movement. Each of these reasons found expression in several ways, but all involved the safeguarding of the national security.

The Louisiana Purchase

In 1795 the United States secured from Spain the right to navigate the Mississippi River and the right of deposit at the Spanish-held port of New Orleans. Napoleon regained for France, in 1802, the vast Louisiana territory which had belonged to Louis XIV and succeeding French sovereigns to 1762 when it was ceded to Spain. The presence of the powerful French in place of the weak Spaniards in the trans-Mississippi region worried the Americans. President Jefferson outlined his reasons for wishing to acquire New Orleans and West Florida in two letters to the American Minister in Paris, Robert R. Livingston.

Early dependence upon the British Navy

LETTER-JEFFERSON ΤΟ LIVINGSTON, WASHINGTON, APRIL 18, 1802: The cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by Spain to France, works most sorely on the United States. . . . There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of threeeights of our territory must pass to market, and from its fertility it will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce, and contain more than half of our inhabitants. France, placing herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific dispositions, her feeble state, would induce her to increase our facilities there. . . . The day that France takes possession of New Orleans, fixes the sentence. . . . It seals the union of two

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On April 11, 1803 the French Finance Minister Talleyrand unexpectedly asked Livingston what America's offer would be for all of the Louisiana territory. Livingston wrote, two days later, to Secretary of State James Madison.

LETTER LIVINGSTON ΤΟ MADISON, PARIS, APRIL 13, 1803, Midnight: I have just come from the Minister of the Treasury. Our conversation was so important, that I think it necessary to write it, while the impressions are strong upon my mind; . . . By my letter of yesterday, you learned that the Minister has asked me whether I would agree to purchase Louisiana. . . . I told him that the United States were anxious to preserve peace with France; that, for that reason, they wished to remove them to the west side of the Mississippi; that we would be perfectly satisfied with New Orleans and the Floridas, and had no dispositions to extend across the river; that, of course, we would not give any great sum for the purchase; . . . that, however, we would be ready to purchase, provided the sum was reduced to reasonable limits. . . . Mr. Monroe [special envoy to France] will be presented to the Minister to-morrow, when we shall press for as early an audience as possible from the First Consul [Napoleon]. I think it will be necessary to put in some proposition to-morrow: The consul goes in a few days to Brussels, and every moment is precious. For approximately $15,000,000 in cash and claims, the whole of the Louisiana territory,

stretching from the Mississippi to Expansion by the Rockies, was transferred by Purchase France to the United States. This purchase established a precedent whereby the United States increased its territorial expanse by payment rather than by conquest, by forcible annexation, by treaty, or by consent of the inhabitants of the region-a precedent employed, with modifications, in the later cases of a portion of the southwest in 1853, Alaska, the Philippines, and the Virgin Islands.(8)

The boundaries of Louisiana were not clearly

Florida and the Louisiana Boundary

defined in the purchase agreement with France. In the midst of an exchange of diplomatic notes between Spain and the United States, General Andrew Jackson invaded Florida for reasons stated in the following quotation.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS [SECRETARY OF STATE] TO GEORGE W. ERVING [AMERICAN MINISTER IN MADRID], WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER 28, 1818: He [General Jackson]

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took possession, therefore, of Pensacola and the fort of Barrancas not in a spirit of hostility to Spain, but as a necessary measure of self defence; giving notice that they should be restored whenever Spain should place commanders and a force there able and willing to fulfil the engagements of Spain toward the United States. . . . the occupation of Pensacola and St. Mark's was occasioned neither by a spirit of hostility to Spain, nor with a view to extort prematurely the province from her possession; that it was rendered necessary by the neglect of Spain to perform her engagements . . . and by the culpable countenance, encouragement, and assistance given to those places; that the United States have a right to demand, as the President does demand, of Spain the punishment of those officers for their misconduct; and he further demands of Spain a just and reasonable indemnity to the United States for the heavy and necessary expenses which they have been compelled to incur by the failure of Spain to perform her engagements to restrain the Indians. . . . And if . . . the necessities of self defense should again compel the United States to take possession of the Spanish forts and places in Florida, [we] . . . declare, with the frankness and candor that become us, that another unconditional restoration of them must not be expected. . .

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With the trump cards in the possession of the United States, diplomacy was somewhat accelerated. A treaty was signed February 22, 1819 by

Expansion to secure the safety of frontiers

which the United States acquired all of Florida, and by which the western boundary between Louisiana and Spanish America was so drawn. as to acknowledge the Spanish claim to Texas. Thus, the United States gained Florida without going to war and obtained from Spain a renunciation of that country's claims to the Oregon territory. In return, the United States gave up its own dubious claims to Texas and assumed the claims of its own citizens against Spain in the sum of $5,000,000. This was another example of territorial expansion to insure the

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN GROWTH AND ACTION

safety of the frontiers of the United States. Here again, the American government succeeded in its continuing effort to remove European colonial authority from its borderlands.

The meaning of manifest destiny

Alongside the methods of acquiring territory by purchase and by peaceful cession there occurred about this time a demand for annexation by the process of manifest destiny. Many elements enter into the concept of manifest destiny, but perhaps it is best described as a belief that the development of natural resources largely untapped and the occupation of lands relatively unsettled were social obligations thrust upon the young American nation because of its vigor, its democracy, and its idealistic nationalism. Such resources and lands in the possession of European absentee-proprietors or of nomadic Indians justified, in the minds of many Americans, the urge of the Americans to include these territories within the controls of the United States. It became, therefore, a patriotic duty to recognize the inevitable and, if possible, to speed the harvest of the ripe fruit which appeared ready for plucking. Evidences of the manifest destiny principle exist in the period before 1819, but perhaps it is best expressed by John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, in a passage from his diary.

ENTRY IN DIARY OF J. Q. ADAMS, WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER 16, 1819: . . . The world shall be familiarized with the idea of considering our proper dominion to be the continent of North America. From the time when we became an independent people it was as much a law of nature that this should become our pretension as that the Mississippi should flow to the sea. Spain had possession upon our southern and Great Britain upon our northern border. It was impossible that centuries should elapse without finding them annexed to the United States... because it is a physical, moral, and political absurdity that such fragments of territory. . should exist permanently contiguous to a great, powerful, enterprising, and rapidly growing nation. Most of the Spanish territory which had been in our neighborhood had already become our own by the most unexceptional of all acquisitions fair purchase for a valuable consideration. This rendered it still more unavoidable that the remainder of the continent should ultimately be ours. But it is very lately that we have distinctly seen this ourselves; very lately that we have avowed the pretension of extending to the South Sea [i.e., the Pacific Ocean]; and until Europe shall find it a settled geographical element that the

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United States and North America are identical, any effort on our part to reason the world out of a belief that we are ambitious will have no other effect than to convince them that we add to our ambition hypocrisy....

Desire for more territory

John Quincy Adams was not one of the premier apostles of manifest destiny. That role was reserved for the leaders who clamored for the annexation of Canada in the 1830's and of Texas in the 1840's; for the "reoccupation" of Oregon in the 1830-1845 period; for the addition of Cuba from 1843 onward; for the acquisition of Alaska in the mid-years of the century and of the Dominican Republic, the Virgin Islands, and Hawaii in the Grant administration; as well as for the taking of several Central and South American areas at various times during the fifty years before 1890. President James K. Polk is generally regarded as one of the foremost proponents of manifest destiny and his election in 1844 on a platform of annexation represented the strength of this movement in the United States at that time. The Ostend Manifesto of 1854, although disavowed by President Pierce, indicated the temper of American ambitions toward Cuba for which the American government was willing to pay $120,000,000. The Manifesto was drawn up by three American ministers who conferred at Ostend, Belgium, October 9 to 11, 1854, and at Aix la Chapelle, Prussia, October 12 to 18, 1854.2 It was addressed to Secretary of State William L. Marcy.

THE OSTEND MANIFESTO, AIX LA CHAPELLE, OCTOBER 18, 1854: . . . We have arrived at the conclusion, and are thoroughly convinced, that an immediate and earnest effort ought to be made by the government of the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain. . . . But if Spain . . . should refuse to sell Cuba to the United States, then the question will arise, what ought to be the course of the American government under such circumstances? . . . After we shall have offered Spain a price for Cuba

and this shall have been refused, it will then be time to consider the question, does Cuba in the possession of Spain, seriously endanger our internal peace and the existence of our cherished Union? Should this question be answered in the affirmative, then, by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain if we possess the power....

2 The three ministers were James Buchanan (Great Britain), John Y. Mason (France), and Pierre Soulé (Spain).

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