American Enterprise Institute

The American Revolution and America’s Role in the World

American Statecraft in the Founding Generation Notes

  1. Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-5212.
  2. Benjamin Franklin to Samuel Cooper, May 1, 1777, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-24-02-0004.
  3. David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Harvard University Press, 2007), 15. “When word of the Declaration had reached the British colony of Nova Scotia, in August 1776, the British governor allowed only the last paragraph of the document to be printed, lest the rest of it ‘gain over to them (the Rebels) many converts, and inflame the minds of his Majesty’s loyal and faithful subjects of the Province of Nova Scotia.’” (Emphasis in original.) Armitage, The Declaration of Independence, 74–75.
  4. While, up to this point, the British government had been seen as the most liberal and progressive of existing regimes, the American Revolution “dethroned England, and set up America, as the model for those seeking a better world.” R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800, vol. 1, The Challenge (Princeton University Press, 1959), 282.
  5. Emer de Vattel, “Of Nations or Sovereign States,” bk. 1, chap. 1 of The Law of Nations (London, 1758). As a matter of record, the Continental Congress passed a resolution of independence on July 2, 1776. Hence, the formal title of the July 4 declaration is not the Declaration of Independence but rather “The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America.” The July 4 declaration served to announce to the American public and the world the colonies’ break from British rule and the principled reasons justifying it.
  6. “Americans did believe they were different, but the purpose of the Declaration was the opposite of isolation. It was to create the legal basis necessary to form alliances with European powers.” Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 42.
  7. Although the Americans declared they were acting prudently in breaking with Great Britain, Europe’s monarchs would have rejected the idea that the Americans were living under some crushing despotism or that there was “a [British] design to reduce them under absolute Despotism.” However, appearing to follow John Locke’s advice from the Second Treatise of Government that a people must act “before it is too late, and the evil is past Cure,” the Americans could be expected to be ever more vigilant about possible threats from Europe’s monarchs. On these points, see C. Bradley Thompson, America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It (Encounter Books, 2019), 319; and Nathan Tarcov, “Principle and Prudence in Foreign Policy: The Founders’ Perspective,” The Public Interest, Summer 1984, 53, https://nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/principle-and-prudence-in-foreign-policy-the-founders-perspective. Thompson also notes the frequency of the colonists invoking “the famous Latin dictum obsta principiis (to nip in the bud, or to resist the beginnings), which they attributed to Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy.” Thompson, America’s Revolutionary Mind, 324.
  8. Formally the Plan of Treaties, the template was directly connected to the motion in the Continental Congress to prepare a declaration of independence, with a resolution the following day (June 11) to create a committee “to prepare a plan of treaties to be proposed to foreign powers.” Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, vol. 5, 1776: June 5–October 8 (Government Printing Office, 1906), 431. On June 12, Adams, John Dickinson, Franklin, Benjamin Harrison, and Robert Morris were appointed to that committee, with Adams taking the lead in the plan’s actual drafting. The plan was reported to Congress on July 18 and finally voted on, with no major changes, two months later.
  9.  “By challenging Britain’s mercantilist regime, the Americans appeared not only to serve their own interests, but also those of prospective trading partners and of the trading world generally.” Peter Onuf and Nicholas Onuf, Federal Union, Modern World: The Law of Nations in an Age of Revolutions, 1776–1814 (Madison House, 1993), 19. The possibility of free trade providing America a uniquely safe strategic harbor is raised by Thomas Paine in his Common Sense: America’s “plan is commerce, and that, well attended to, will secure us the peace and friendship of all Europe; because it is the interest of all Europe to have America a free port.” The Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Moncure Daniel Conway, vol. 1, 1774–1779 (New York, 1894), 88.
  10. John Adams to the President of Congress, April 19, 1780, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-09-02-0115-0002. In this lengthy note to Congress, Adams set about copying and summarizing a pamphlet (A Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe, on the Present State of Affairs, Between the Old and New World) written by Thomas Pownall, a former governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Adams, who was favorably disposed to Pownall for his moderate behavior while governor, wrote one correspondent that the argument set forth in the pamphlet accorded with the principles that informed his drafting of the Model Treaty. John Adams to Edmund Jenings, July 18, 1780, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-10-02-0005.
  11. “The natural effect of commerce is to bring peace. Two nations that negotiate together render themselves mutually dependent.” Montesquieu’s “The Spirit of the Laws”: A Critical Edition, trans. W. B. Allen (Anthem Press, 2024), bk. 10, chap. 2. Thomas Paine advocated free trade because of its reforming social prospects as well. See Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left (Basic Books, 2014), 118. In Federalist 6, Hamilton appears to take a contrary view, listing historical examples of commercially inclined polities engaging in conflicts with neighboring states: “Has commerce hitherto done anything more than change the objects of war?” However, Hamilton concludes his analysis by implying that the Union, empowered to regulate trade and commerce—creating in effect a free trade zone among the states—will eliminate the incentive for conflict among states. Federalist, no. 6 (Alexander Hamilton).
  12. See Adams to the President of Congress.
  13. John Adams, “A Memorial to Their High Mightinesses, the States General of the United Provinces of the Low Countries,” April 19, 1781, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-11-02-0204.
  14. As John Quincy Adams would later note while serving as secretary of state, although such liberal commerce was “altogether congenial to the spirit of our institutions, . . . the main obstacle to its adoption consists in this: that the fairness of its operation depends upon its being admitted universally.” John Quincy Adams to Richard C. Anderson, May 27, 1823, in Writings of John Quincy Adams, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford, vol. 7, 1820–1823 (Greenwood Press, 1968), 461.
  15. William S. Smith to John Jay, December 6, 1785, in The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States of America from the Treaty of Peace to the Adoption of the Present Constitution (Washington, DC, 1837), 5:389.
  16. Gerald Stourzh, Benjamin Franklin and American Foreign Policy (University of Chicago Press, 1954), 126.
  17. As Robert Kagan notes, the Americans, such as John Jay and Franklin, were not naive about Europe: “Americans understood the intricacies of the European balance of power, and how to exploit it to their advantage. As colonists they had played on British fears and jealousies of France to further their own expansionist ambitions. As rebels they played on the French desires for revenge. Manipulating European rivalries was the subject of open discussion in the Continental Congress.” Kagan, Dangerous Nation, 59.
  18. John Locke, “Of Property,” chap. 2 in Second Treatise (London, 1689), § 32, https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s3.html.
  19. George Washington to Benjamin Harrison, October 10, 1784, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-02-02-0082.
  20. The key domestic issue as set out in Madison’s Federalist 10 is how the public good and minority rights were to be secured in a system of majority rule. From that starting point, Madison spells out the advantages associated with an extended republic, as well as the separation of powers, checks and balances, and the division between federal and state authorities. Given the role those arrangements continue to play in American governance, it is little surprise that it remains the analytic focus of so much commentary on the logic behind the Constitution’s creation. As a result, more often ignored is the new constitution’s expected contribution to the country’s security. For example, when describing the “principal purposes” behind the effort to strengthen the Union under the new constitution, Hamilton lists more items associated with foreign and defense policies than domestic ones: promoting a “common defense,” repelling “external attacks,” establishing “commerce with other nations,” and superintending relations “with foreign countries.” In contrast, strengthening the Union is said to be relevant domestically for countering “internal convulsions” and regulating commerce “between the States.” Federalist, no. 23 (Alexander Hamilton).
  21. Federalist, no. 15 (Alexander Hamilton).
  22. Max M. Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (Oxford University Press, 2003), 73.
  23. Federalist, no. 75 (Alexander Hamilton).
  24. As Madison argued at the Virginia Ratification Convention, “The imbecility of our Government enables” other nations “to derive many advantages from our trade, without granting us any return.” John P. Kaminski et al., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, vol. 9, Ratification of the Constitution by the States: Virginia (State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1990), 1034.
  25. See, for example, Virginia Independent Chronicle, “State Soldier,” February 6, 1788, quoted in Herbert J. Storing, “The ‘Other’ Federalist Papers: A Preliminary Sketch,” The Political Science Reviewer 6 (Fall 1976): 226.
  26. Federalist, no. 1 (Alexander Hamilton); and Federalist, no. 4 (John Jay).
  27. Federalist, no. 24 (Alexander Hamilton).
  28. Federalist, no. 23 (Hamilton).
  29. See note 7. As Hamilton said at the Constitutional Convention, “No Governmt. could give us tranquility & happiness at home, which did not possess sufficient stability and strength to make us respectable abroad.” Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (Yale University Press, 1911), 1:467.
  30. Federalist, no. 11 (Alexander Hamilton).
  31. Andrew R. L. Cayton, “Radicals in the ‘Western World’: The Federalist Conquest of Trans-Appalachian North America,” in Federalists Reconsidered, ed. Doran Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg (University Press of Virginia, 1998), 95–96.
  32. Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government, 131.
  33. George Washington, “Farewell Address,” September 19, 1796, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-20-02-0440-0002.
  34. Washington, “Farewell Address.”
  35. “Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a respectably defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.” Washington, “Farewell Address.”
  36. Washington, “Farewell Address.”
  37. Alexander Hamilton, “Pacificus No. IV,” July 10, 1793, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-15-02-0066#ARHN-01-15-02-0066-fn-0001.
  38. Alexander Hamilton, “Pacificus No. III,” July 6, 1793, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-15-02-0055; and Alexander Hamilton, “Pacificus No. VI,” July 17, 1793, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-15-02-0081.
  39. Hamilton, “Pacificus No. IV.”
  40. Hamilton, “Pacificus No. VI.”
  41. Alexander Hamilton, “Pacificus No. II,” July 3, 1793, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-15-02-0050.
  42. Hamilton, “Pacificus No. II.”
  43. John Quincy Adams, An Address Delivered at the Request of a Committee of the Citizens of Washington; on the Occasion of Reading the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July, 1821 (Washington, DC, 1821), 29, https://archive.org/details/addressdelivered1821adam/mode/2up.
  44. Adams, Address, 14–15.
  45. John Quincy Adams to Edward Everett, January 31, 1822, in Ford, Writings of John Quincy Adams, 7:197–201.
  46. Adams, Address, 28.
  47. Adams, Address, 21.
  48. Writing his father in 1816 from London, Adams claims the royalist animosity toward the United States was due to the fact that they thought the United States and not revolutionary France was the “primary” cause for the “propagation of those political principles” that had been the “earthquake” shaking the foundations of European monarchies. See Charles N. Edel, Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic (Harvard University Press, 2014), 125.
  49. Adams, Address, 12, 31. Adams noted in a letter shortly thereafter that he had cast prudence aside; on “asking” prudence “to step into the next door, while I should be holding a talk with my countrymen,” see John Quincy Adams to Charles Jared Ingersoll, July 23, 1821, in Ford, Writings of John Quincy Adams, 7:120.
  50. New, more liberal constitutional orders had been established in Naples, Portugal, and Spain in 1820 and in Sardinia in 1821. At the Congress of Troppau, in late fall of 1820, Austria, Prussia, and Russia issued a protocol declaring that such revolutions were threats to other powers and that they could either by peaceful means or by force of arms reverse those changes and bring those states back “into the bosom of the Great Alliance.” See Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), 355–59.
  51. Although the United States government maintained a formal policy of neutrality, the Madison administration allowed rebel ships in American ports. Privateers, outfitted and operating out of American ports, were free to prey on Spanish vessels. In addition, “a thriving underground trade network, centered in Philadelphia and Baltimore, supplied the rebel movements with arms, supplies, and, in some cases, mercenary forces.” William Earl Weeks, John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire (University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 86.
  52. Adams to Everett.
  53. John Quincy Adams to Richard C. Anderson, May 27, 1823, in Ford, Writings of John Quincy Adams, 7:452.
  54. John Quincy Adams to Caesar A. Rodney, May 17, 1823, in Ford, Writings of John Quincy Adams, 7:426–27.
  55. Adams to Anderson, 7:486.
  56. Adams to Anderson, 7:486.
  57. Adams to Anderson, 7:471.
  58. Quoted in Charles Wilson Hackett, “The Development of John Quincy Adams’s Policy with Respect to an American Confederation and the Panama Congress, 1822–1825,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 8, no. 4 (1928): 508–10, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2506393. As is often noted, the Monroe Doctrine’s issuance was made possible because it was assumed British naval power would prevent European interference in Latin America. That’s undoubtedly true. But Adams’s note to the Colombian diplomat indicates that the United States was prepared to assist in case it wasn’t.
  59. Earlier, in 1823, British Foreign Minister George Canning had suggested a joint Anglo-American declaration forbidding any European attempts at colonization in Latin America. While Adams was concerned that this might eventuate in the United States getting drawn into British affairs in Europe, James Monroe and former Presidents Jefferson and Madison were inclined to pursue the offer of de facto alliance with London with respect to Latin America. Writing to Jefferson, Madison argued, “With the British power & navy combined with our own we have to fear from the rest of the world: and in the great struggle of the Epoch between liberty and despotism, we owe it to ourselves to sustain the former in this hemisphere at least.” James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, November 1, 1823, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/04-03-02-0162.
  60. John Quincy Adams, “First Annual Message,” December 6, 1825, University of California, Santa Barbara, American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/first-annual-message-2.
  61. John Quincy Adams, Message from the President of the United States [. . .] (Washington, DC, 1826), 8.
  62. Adams, Message from the President of the United States, 5.
  63. See Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, “Report on Nominations of Richard C. Anderson and John Sergeant to Be Envoys Extraordinary and Ministers Plenipotentiary to the Assembly of the American Nations at Panama,” January 16, 1826, in Compilation of Reports of Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 1789–1901 (US Government Printing Office, 1901), 4:14.
  64. Adams, Message from the President of the United States, 10–11.
  65. Adams, Message from the President of the United States, 3, 11.
  66. Adams, Message from the President of the United States, 11. See Edel, Nation Builder, 213–18.