The one idea, however, that the American people did not have on this subject was, that they should hold themselves entirely aloof from the politics of the Old World, and have with other nations outside the Americas no relations except those born of commerce.  It had not occurred to them that they should march steadily forward on a course which would drive out European governments, and sever the connections of those governments with the North American continent.  After a century’s familiarity, this policy looks so simple and obvious that it is difficult to believe that our forefathers could even have considered any other seriously; but in 1789 it was so strange that no one dreamed of it, except perhaps a few thinkers speculating on the future of the infant nation.  It was something so novel that when it was propounded it struck the people like a sudden shock of electricity.  It was so broad, so national, so thoroughly American, that men still struggling in the fetters of colonial thought could not comprehend it.  But there was one man to whom it was neither strange nor speculative.  To Washington it was not a vague idea, but a well-defined system, which he had been long maturing in his mind.

Before he had been chosen President, he wrote to Sir Edward Newenham:  “I hope the United States of America will be able to keep disengaged from the labyrinth of European politics and wars; and that before long they will, by the adoption of a good national government, have become respectable in the eyes of the world, so that none of the maritime powers, especially none of those who hold possessions in the New World or the West Indies, shall presume to treat them with insult or contempt.  It should be the policy of the United States to administer to their wants without being engaged in their quarrels.  And it is not in the power of the proudest and most polite people on earth to prevent us from becoming a great, a respectable, and a commercial nation if we shall continue united and faithful to ourselves.”  This plain statement shows his fixed belief that in an absolute breaking with the political affairs of other peoples lay the most important part of the work which was to make us a nation in spirit and in truth.  He carried this belief with him when he took up the Presidency, and it was the chief burden of the last words of counsel which he gave to his countrymen when he retired to private life.  To have begun and carried on to a firm establishment this policy of a separation from Europe would have required time, skill, and patience even under the calmest and most favorable conditions.  But it was the fate of the new government to be born just on the eve of the French Revolution.  The United States were at once caught up and tossed by the waves of that terrific storm, and it was in the midst of that awful hurly-burly, when the misdeeds of centuries of wrong-doing were brought to an account, that Washington opened and developed his foreign policy.  It was a great task, and the manner of its performance deserves much and serious consideration.