The avoidance of entangling alliances, the characteristic feature of the foreign policy of Washington, sprang from this condition of things.  But the entangling alliances which then existed were engagements made with France as a part of the general contract under which aid was furnished to us for the achievement of our independence.  France was willing to waive the letter of the obligation as to her West India possessions, but demanded in its stead privileges in our ports which the Administration was unwilling to concede.  To make its refusal acceptable to a public which sympathized with France, the Cabinet of General Washington exaggerated the principle into a theory tending to national isolation.

The public measures designed to maintain unimpaired the domestic sovereignty and the international neutrality of the United States were independent of this policy, though apparently incidental to it.  The municipal laws enacted by Congress then and since have been but declarations of the law of nations.  They are essential to the preservation of our national dignity and honor; they have for their object to repress and punish all enterprises of private war, one of the last relics of mediaeval barbarism; and they have descended to us from the fathers of the Republic, supported and enforced by every succeeding President of the United States.

The foreign policy of these early days was not a narrow one.  During this period we secured the evacuation by Great Britain of the country wrongfully occupied by her on the Lakes; we acquired Louisiana; we measured forces on the sea with France, and on the land and sea with England; we set the example of resisting and chastising the piracies of the Barbary States; we initiated in negotiations with Prussia the long line of treaties for the liberalization of war and the promotion of international intercourse; and we steadily demanded, and at length obtained, indemnification from various governments for the losses we had suffered by foreign spoliations in the wars of Europe.

To this point in our foreign policy we had arrived when the revolutionary movements in Spanish and Portuguese America compelled a modification of our relations with Europe, in consequence of the rise of new and independent states in America.

The revolution which commenced in 1810, and extended through all the Spanish American continental colonies, after vain efforts of repression on the part of Spain, protracted through twenty years, terminated in the establishment of the independent States of Mexico, Guatemala, San Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, the Argentine Republic, Uruguay, and Paraguay, to which the Empire of Brazil came in time to be added.  These events necessarily enlarged the sphere of action of the United States, and essentially modified our relations with Europe and our attitude to the rest of this continent.

The new States were, like ourselves, revolted colonies.  They continued the precedent we had set, of separating from Europe.  Their assumption of independence was stimulated by our example.  They professedly imitated us, and copied our National Constitution, sometimes even to their inconvenience.