The New Makers of Modern Strategy, page 51
To many of the Founders, not only had America set a modern precedent for colonial rebellion and opposition to authoritarian states, it also pointed the way for others to follow. Yet the question of whether America would lend a helping hand quickly came into focus. Even before the Constitution was written, Thomas Jefferson had written to John Jay, then secretary of foreign affairs, to advise him that the Brazilians had reached out to him in France to gauge American enthusiasm in supporting their plans for a revolution. They “consider,” Jefferson wrote, “the North American Revolutions as a precedent for theirs [and] look to the United States as the most likely to give them honest support.”46 But, “without the aid of some powerful nation,” the Brazilians had admitted, they were reluctant to launch a revolution, fearing a lack of popular enthusiasm. America denied that request, but the issue would return.
As the historian David Brion Davis has written, “news that republican principles were exportable ended Americans’ sense of isolation and helped legitimate the lawless, and indeed treasonable, cause that the Declaration of Independence had sought to defend.”47 But this news was more than just legitimating; it also presented challenges for policymakers grappling with trying to define just what a democratic strategy would entail. Supporting foreign revolutions that purported to be carrying liberty’s banner, and carrying on the work that America had started was certainly gratifying. It also played to American notions of exceptionalism. Yet experience would prove that, for a variety of reasons, not all revolutions were worthy of support; supporting revolutions abroad would dissipate American energies and divert its resources; and, if American support came in the form of armed intervention, it would change America’s mission and its character.
The first real test occurred with the outbreak of the French Revolution. Many Americans viewed the unfolding events as a natural outgrowth of the American Revolution. None were more enthusiastic than Thomas Jefferson, who declared that “all that old spirit of 1776 is rekindling.”48 As events unfolded in France, and as the revolution increased in violence, and then descended into a campaign of terror, others began expressing misgivings. John Quincy Adams, just launching his public career, was one of the first to do so.
Contrary to the enthusiasm the French Revolution was generating, Adams argued that overthrowing a government too easily was inherently dangerous, ridiculing the notion that “it [is] as easy for a nation to change its government, as for a man to change his coat.”49 Attacking the zeal with which both Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson cheered on the rapid spread of revolution throughout Europe, Adams urged caution, noting that different histories and cultures produced different societies. What had worked in America would not necessarily be replicable elsewhere, and while Adams thought that Europe’s nations might one day evolve into republics, he later reflected that such a transformation would only be possible when social conditions supported local movements pressing for “the unalienable right of resistance against tyranny.”50
Additionally, Adams charged that those who “advise us to engage voluntarily in the war,” were willing “to aim a dagger at the heart of the country,” as actions undertaken to support the French Republic would have the effect of “uniting all of Europe against us.”51 Adams was not yet in a position to affect American policy, but that would soon change as he headed to Europe and his subsequent counsel influenced thinking at both the State Department and the White House. His belief that America should morally support liberal movements, but ideally abstain from engaging in them, strengthened during his diplomatic postings abroad as he watched the French Republic morph into an empire that launched war after war in Europe, and later witnessed Europe’s monarchies search for pretexts to snuff out the republican governments they claimed as ideological rivals and existential threats.
During Adams’s tenure as secretary of state, America was offered opportunities to test its commitment to spreading liberty and republican governments abroad. The Greeks were rebelling from the oppressive rule of the Ottoman Turks, and various South American colonies were declaring independence from the Spanish Empire. Both groups of rebels claimed America as their model and demanded both recognition and assistance; and in both cases, support for the rebels was widespread and popular in the United States. Henry Clay, then serving as Speaker of the House, accused the administration of not doing enough for the revolutionaries, supported sending an American mission to Greece, and reminded his colleagues that those fighting for their freedom in South America had “adopted our principles, copied our institutions, and, in some instances, employed the very language and sentiments of our revolutionary papers.”52 Urging a more assertive and interventionist policy, Clay asked how could his fellow Americans “honorably turn away from their duty to share with the rest of mankind this most precious gift.”53
Adams cautioned restraint to those advocating American armed intervention in support of Greek and South American independence. In his July 4, 1821, address, Adams argued that Americans were the well-wishers of all, but defenders only of their own, famously stating, “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” According to Adams, the central message of the Declaration of Independence, and indeed of American history, was “the successful resistance of a people against oppression, the downfall of the tyrant and tyranny itself.” In a war between liberty and oppression, there would be no doubt which side America supported. But Adams recognized a choice between competing priorities. America could either continue to strengthen its own republican institutions, or it could aid those who claimed solidarity with America’s principles. To those who would advocate a more activist foreign policy, Adams asserted that America “has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of … the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right.”54 If it were to avoid dissipating its strength, entangling itself in foreign wars of choice, supporting causes that lacked popular support, and substituting force for influence, America could not afford to take on a more active foreign policy. America, Adams argued, would be on the side of emerging right, but not necessarily directly fighting for it.55
Adams’s forceful words of restraint in the July Fourth Address mask that he was never shy about promoting American values or using military power aboard. Nor should they obscure his lifelong antipathy to authoritarian regimes and his willingness to combat their spread into new territories. In a letter accompanying the Monroe Doctrine—which Adams considered “the most important paper that ever went from my hands”—he underlined the point that “we could not see with indifference any attempt … to introduce monarchical principle into” the Western Hemisphere.56 The Monroe Doctrine asserted that protection of American interests required the Western Hemisphere to remain America’s exclusive sphere of influence. In the accompanying letter, Adams took that principle one step further, arguing that America should seek to shrink the international space for non-republican regimes by opposing efforts to create any new monarchies within the Western Hemisphere. For Adams, extending American influence abroad might necessitate restraining impulses to interfere in other nation’s affairs. But in key locations, extending American influence would also be required to prevent authoritarian regimes from expanding onto democratic soil.
The question for America, Adams asked, was what should be done about the authoritarian challenge at home. Slavery was a glaring contradiction in America’s attempt to hold itself up as a model for the rest of world. This had hardly gone unnoticed at the nation’s founding. In fact, so glaring was the discrepancy between the promise of liberty and the reality of human bondage that mentions of slavery were excised from the Declaration of Independence and purposefully obscured in the Constitution. The omissions were notable. John Laurens, the son of one of America’s wealthiest slave traders, an ardent opponent of slavery, and an aide to George Washington during the War for Independence, wanted to know how Americans could reconcile their “spirited Assertions of Rights of Mankind [with] the galling abject Slavery of our [slaves].”57 When it came to fashioning a democratic strategy, this inconsistency was explained away, or ignored. As slavery became woven ever more deeply into the fabric of America’s institutions, friction between the country’s aspirations and its reality became both more pronounced and more intractable. Just after the Missouri Compromise had been passed in 1820, Adams wrote, the “bargain between freedom and slavery contained in the Constitution of the United States is morally and politically vicious, [and] inconsistent with the principles upon which alone our Revolution can be justified.”58 As long as slavery remained embedded in American institutions, it would be a permanent deficit in the country’s attempt to influence the world.
VI
The Founders attempted to secure, expand, and enrich the American republic while broadening its influence on the world stage. All these goals had to be pursued within the confines of a democratic system. This was an unprecedented act, and meant that the Founders had to diverge from the past practices of old world diplomacy by constraining the power of the state, and plot a course which allowed for divergent opinion.
Within this context, a series of questions presented themselves. How could they expand the country without losing its democratic nature? How could they build a sufficiently strong military without corrupting the nation’s mission? How would they guide the economic development of the state without being too intrusive? And how could they influence the world with an imperfect democracy at home?
Adams’s remarkable career as a politician, diplomat, and American statesman had a significant influence on the creation and direction of American grand strategy. At the beginning of his career, in the 1790s, he made the case for neutrality in foreign policy. With the turn of the century, he spent two decades pushing for continental and commercial expansion. While president, he led an energetic and activist government, with large-scale domestic investment into infrastructure and new trade policies. And in his final years in public life, Adams fought against slavery and its extension. His ideas weave through George Washington’s Farewell Address, the Monroe Doctrine, and even Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which drew from speeches Adams made on the Senate floor against slavery.
Adams stands as the bridge between the Founders and Abraham Lincoln. The country’s founding generation of statesmen envisioned a mighty republic, but their circumstances rendered that a hope for the distant future. And Lincoln—in the midst of a Civil War that gave the government unprecedented power—accomplished much of that vision—forcefully uniting the country, establishing it as a two-ocean power, and ensuring that the republican government would endure. But it was Adams who can, and should, be credited with putting the country on a path towards becoming the preponderant power in the Western Hemisphere, laying the long-term foundations of economic growth, and offering the nation a vision for aligning its laws to its founding ideals.
Adams’s influence extends well beyond the mid-nineteenth century. His forceful assertion of American values, his projection of American power and commerce further afield, his constant admonition that the source of American power is domestic, and his deep-seated antipathy towards authoritarian regimes, all continue to set the broad contours of America’s approach to a distinctly democratic statecraft.
Adams did not solve the intractable problem of how the United States could reconcile liberty with power—either at home or abroad. This was a source of unending frustration to him and, more often than not, led him to believe that his life and career were a failure. And yet, his contemporaries viewed him as the most consequential American of the era. So too with historians, who consistently characterize John Quincy Adams as one of the greatest figures in American history, one who provided answers to the primary challenges confronting early American statecraft.
1. John Quincy Adams to Charles Jared Ingersoll, June 19, 1823, in Writings of John Quincy Adams, Worthington C. Ford, ed., 7 vols. (New York, NY: The MacMillan Company, 1913–17), hereafter cited as John Quincy Adams, Writings.
2. John Quincy Adams, Writings, Volume 7, 12, 21.
3. Charles Edel, Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 303.
4. Congressional Globe, House of Reps, 30th Congress, 1st Session, February 24, 1848, 384 (Congressman Viton, OH).
5. The National Intelligencer, February 24, 1848.
6. For more on John Quincy Adams and early American strategy, see Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (New York, NY: Knopf, 1949); Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union (New York, NY: Knopf, 1956); Charles Edel, Nation Builder; Edel, “Extending the Sphere: A Federalist Grand Strategy,” in Rethinking American Grand Strategy, Elizabeth Borgwardt, Christopher McKnight Nicholas, and Andrew Preston, eds. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021); James Traub, John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2016); Fred Kaplan, John Quincy Adams: American Visionary (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2014). For a comprehensive bibliography see David Waldstreicher, ed., A Companion to John Adams and John Quincy Adams (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwill, 2013). For broader works on the rise of United States in the nineteenth century, see John Lewis Gaddis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Pres, 2004); Richard Immerman, Empire for Liberty (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Walter McDougall’s Promised Land, Crusader State (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1998); Walter Russell Mead’s Special Providence (New York, NY: Knopf, 2001); and Robert Kagan’s Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (New York, NY: Knopf, 2006).
7. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 8, November 20, 1787, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed08.asp.
8. John Quincy Adams, Diary 30, May 27, 1817, 202 [electronic edition], in The Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection (Boston, MA: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2005), https://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/php/.
9. John Quincy Adams to John Adams, August 1, 1816, Writings, Volume VI: 58 ff.
10. “From Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Jones, 14 August 1787,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-02-0038. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 12, 7 August 1787 – 31 March 1788, ed. Julian P. Boyd. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955), 33–35.]
11. John Quincy Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, February 14, 1801, Writings, Volume I, 499. Emphasis in original.
12. John Quincy Adams to Charles Adams, June 9, 1796, Writings, Volume I, 493.
13. John Quincy Adams, Diary 27, July 11, 1807, 297 [electronic edition].
14. John Quincy Adams to Abigail Adams, June 30, 1811, in Writings, Volume IV, 128.
15. John Quincy Adams, Writings, Volume I, 140.
16. John Quincy Adams, Jubilee of the Constitution, A Discourse Delivered at the Request of The New York Historical Society, in the city of New York, on Tuesday, the 30th of April 1830 (New York, NY: Samuel Colman, 1839), 88. Emphasis in original.
17. John Quincy Adams, “Observations on the Communications recently received from the Minister from Russia,” Department of State, November 27, 1823. Worthington Chauncey Ford’s “John Quincy Adams and the Monroe Doctrine,” The American Historical Review 8:1 (1902): 43.
18. Hamilton, Federalist 11, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed11.asp.
19. John Quincy Adams to Abigail Adams, January 1, 1812, Writings, Volume IV, 286.
20. John Quincy Adams to Abigail Adams, January 17, 1814, Writings, Volume V, 7.
21. John Quincy Adams to Peter Paul Francis De Grand, April 28, 1815, Writings, Volume V, 314.
22. Hamilton, Federalist 11.
23. Hal Brands and Charles Edel, “The Disharmony of the Spheres,” Commentary Magazine, January 2018, 20–27.
24. James Madison, Federalist 10, November 23, 1787. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp.
25. John Quincy Adams, Diary 31, November 16, 1819, 205 [electronic edition].
26. “From Benjamin Franklin to George Whitefield, 2 July 1756,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-06-02-0210. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 6, April 1, 1755, through September 30, 1756, Leonard W. Labaree, ed. (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1963), 468–69.]
27. US Constitution, Article IV, Section III, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript.
28. “From George Washington to Timothy Pickering, 1 July 1796,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-20-02-0239. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, Volume 20, 1 April–21 September 1796, David R. Hoth and William M. Ferraro, eds. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2019), 349–50.]
29. “From Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, 13 October 1785,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-08-02-0497. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 8, 25 February–31 October 1785, Julian P. Boyd, ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953), 631–34.]
