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Seeds of the Monroe Doctrine

Despite America's beginnings as an isolationist county, the seeds for the Monroe Doctrine were already being laid even during Washington's presidency. According to S.E. Morison, "as early as I783, then, the United States adopted the policy of isolation, and announced its intention to keep out of Europe. The supplementary principle of the Monroe Doctrine, that Europe must keep out of America, was still over the horizon". While not specifically the Monroe Doctrine, Alexander Hamilton desired to control the sphere of influence in the western hemisphere, particularly in North America but was extended to the Latin American colonies by the Monroe Doctrine. But Hamilton, writing in the Federalist Papers, was already wanting to establish America as a world power and hoped that America would suddenly become strong enough to keep the European powers outside of the Americas, despite the fact that the European countries controlled much more of the Americas than the United States of America itself. Hamilton expected that the United States would become the dominant power in the new world and would, in the future, act as an intermediary between the European powers and any new countries blossoming near the United States. In fact, in a note to the United States ambassador for Spain, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson’s Secretary of State and a future president, wrote the federal government expressed the opposition of the American government of further territorial acquistion by European Powers. Madison's sentiment might have been meaningless because, as was noted before, the European powers held much more territory in comparison to the territory held by the United States. Although Thomas Jefferson was pro-French, in an attempt to keep the French-British rivalry out the United States, the federal government under Jefferson made it clear to the United States ambassadors that the U.S. would not support any future colonization efforts on the North American continent.