From the beginning of our national existence, the United States had
been pushing back Europe from her borders, and asserting neutrality
and the right to remain outside of the political System of the Old
World. Washington's farewell address of 1796, with its appeal to his
fellow-citizens against "interweaving our destiny with that of any
part of Europe," sank deep into the popular consciousness. It did
not interfere with the process by which, piece by piece, the United
States added to its domains fragments from the disintegrating
Spanish empire; for so long as European states held the strategic
positions on our flanks, as they did in Washington's day, the policy
of separation from the nations of the Old World was one difficult to
maintain; and France and England watched the enlargement of the
United States with jealous eye. Each nation, in turn, considered the
plans of Miranda, a Venezuelan revolutionist, for the freeing of
Spanish America. In 1790 the Nootka Sound affair threatened to place
England in possession of the whole Mississippi valley and to give
her the leadership in Spanish America.
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