bors
of the United States continually and from day to day affected the
whole texture of American life and that actually they limited American
independence and therefore could not be left out of the policy of the
Government. The United States soon began to recognize that there was a
region in the affairs of which it must take a more active interest. As
early as 1780 Thomas Pownall, an English colonial official, predicted
that the United States must take an active part in Cuban affairs. In
1806 Madison, then Secretary of State, had instructed Monroe, Minister
to Great Britain, that the Government began to broach the idea that the
whole Gulf Stream was within its maritime jurisdiction. The message
of Monroe was an assertion that the fate of both the Americas was of
immediate concern to the safety of the United States, because the fate
of its sister republics intimately affected its own security. This
proved to be an enduring definition of policy, because for many
years there was a real institutional difference between the American
hemisphere and the rest of the world and because oceanic boundaries were
the most substantial that the world affords.

Adams, however, would have been the last to claim that his method
of securing the fundamental purposes of the United States was itself
fundamental. It is particularly important for Americans to make a
distinction between the things which they have always wished to obtain
and the methods which they have from time to time used. To build a
policy today on the alleged isolation of the American continents would
be almost as absurd as to try to build a government on the belief in
Divine Right. The American continents are no longer separated from the
rest of the world by their national institutions, because the spirit of
these institutions has permeated much of Europe, Asia, and even Africa.
No boundaries, not even oceans, can today prohibit international
interference. But while the particular method followed in 1823 is no
longer appropriate, the ends which the United States set out to attain
have remained the same. Independence, absolute and complete, including
the absence of all entanglements which might draw the country into other
peoples' quarrels; the recognition of a similar independence in all
other peoples, which involves both keeping its own hands off and also
strongly disapproving of interference by one nation with another--these
have been the guiding principles of the United