APPENDIX

THE AMERICAN SYSTEM

The Annunciation of the American System

"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation—"

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

"We, therefore the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as Free and Independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which Independent States may of right do. And, for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."

The Continental Congress. Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776.

The Adoption of the American System by the American Union in its Constitution, as Applying to its External Justiciary Relations

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America....

"The Executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America....

"The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States....

"The Judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.... The Judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority."

The Constitutional Convention. The Constitution of the United States, of September 17, 1787.

The American System Differentiated from the European by President Washington

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness—these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity....

"Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct. And can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it?...

"The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible....

"Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

"Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at anytime resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

"Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

President Washington. Farewell Address, September 17, 1796.

The American System as Defined by President Jefferson

"I deem the essential principles of our government [to be] Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none, the support of the State Governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies, the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet-anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad."

President Jefferson. First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801.

The Extension of the European System to the Western Hemisphere Declared Incompatible with the American System, by President Monroe.

"The political system of the Allied Powers is essentially different ... from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective Governments, and to the defence of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted. We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those Powers, to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety....

"It is impossible that the Allied Powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and happiness."

President Monroe Annual Message of December 2, 1823

The American System Declared to Have Extended Itself to the Whole Western Hemisphere, by President John Quincy Adams

"Among the inquiries which were thought entitled to consideration before the determination was taken to accept the invitation [to the proposed Congress of the American Republics at Panama], was that whether the measure might not have a tendency to change the policy, hitherto invariably pursued by the United States, of avoiding all entangling alliances and all unnecessary political connections.

"Mindful of the advice given by the Father of our Country in his Farewell Address, that the great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible, and faithfully adhering to the spirit of that admonition, I can not overlook the reflection that the counsel of Washington in that instance, like all counsels of wisdom, was founded upon the circumstances in which our country and the world around us were situated at the time when it was given that the reasons assigned by him for his advice were that Europe had a set of primary interests which to us had none or a very remote relation, that hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which were essentially foreign to our concerns, that our detached and distant situation invited and enabled us to pursue a different course, that by our union and rapid growth, with an efficient Government, the period was not far distant when we might defy material injury from external annoyance, when we might take such an attitude as would cause our neutrality to be respected, and, with reference to belligerent nations, might choose peace or war, as our interests, guided by justice, should counsel."

Compare our situation and the circumstances of that time with those of the present day and what, from the very words of Washington then, would be his counsels to his countrymen now? Europe has still her set of primary interests, with which we have little or a remote relation. Our distant and detached situation with reference to Europe remains the same. But we were then the only independent nation of this hemisphere, and we were surrounded by European colonies, with the greater part of which we had no more intercourse than with the inhabitants of another planet. These colonies have now been transformed into eight independent nations, extending to our very borders, seven of them Republics like ourselves, with whom we have an immensely growing commercial and must have, and have already, important political connections, with reference to whom our situation is neither distant nor detached, whose political principles and systems of government, congenial with our own, must and will have an action and counteraction upon us and ours to which we cannot be indifferent if we would.

The rapidity of our growth, and the consequent increase of our strength, has more than realized the anticipations of this admirable political legacy. Thirty years have nearly elapsed since it was written, and in the interval our population, our wealth, our territorial extension, our power—physical and moral—have nearly trebled. Reasoning upon this state of things from the sound and judicious principles of Washington, must we not say that the period which he predicted, as then not far off, has arrived, that America has a set of primary interests which have none or a remote relation to Europe, that the interference of Europe, therefore, in those concerns should be spontaneously withheld by her upon the same principles that we have never interfered with hers, and that if she should interfere, as she may, by measures which may have a great and dangerous recoil upon ourselves, we might be called, in defence of our altars and firesides, to take an attitude which would cause our neutrality to be respected, and choose peace or war as our interest guided by justice, should counsel?

"The acceptance of this invitation, therefore, far from conflicting with the counsel or the policy of Washington, is directly deducible from and conformable to it. Nor is it less conformable to the views of my immediate predecessor, as declared in his Annual Message to Congress of the 2d December, 1823."

President John Quincy Adams. Communication to the House of Representatives, in answer to their Resolution of Inquiry, regarding the proposed Panama Congress, March 15, 1826.

The American People Rededicated to the Preservation of the American System, by President Lincoln, at Gettysburg.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

President Lincoln. Address at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, November 19, 1863.

The American System Applied in the External Justiciary Relations of the American Union, by President McKinley.

"In order to facilitate the most humane, specific, and effective extension of authority throughout [the Philippine Islands], and to secure with the least possible delay the benefits of a wise and generous protection of life and property, I have named Jacob G. Schurman, Rear-Admiral George Dewey, Major-General Elwell S. Otis, Charles Denby, and Dean C. Worcester to constitute a Commission to aid in the accomplishment of these results....

"The Commissioners will endeavor,... to ascertain what amelioration in the condition of the inhabitants and what improvements in public order may be practicable, and for this purpose they will study attentively the existing social and political state of the various populations particularly as regards the forms of local government, the administration of justice, the collection of customs and other taxes, the means of transportation and the need of public improvements.

"They will report to the State Department according to the forms customary or hereafter prescribed for transmitting and preserving such communications, the results of their observations and reflections, and will recommend such Executive action as may from time to time seem to them wise and useful....

"It is my desire that in all their relations with the inhabitants of the Islands the Commissioners exercise due respect for all the ideals, customs, and institutions of the tribes and races which compose the population, emphasizing upon all occasions the just and beneficent intentions of the Government of the United States.'

"It is also my wish and expectation that the Commissioners may be received in a manner due to the honored and authorized representatives of the American Republic, duly commissioned, on account of their knowledge, skill and integrity, as bearers of the good will the protection, and the richest blessings of a liberating rather than a conquering nation."

President McKinley—Instructions to the Secretary of State regarding the First Philippine Commission, January 20, 1899.

The Definition of the American System as Applied Both to the Internal and External Relations of the American Union—by President Roosevelt.

"When all is said and done, the rule of brotherhood remains as the indispensable prerequisite to success in the kind of national life for which we strive. Each man must work for himself, and unless he so works no outside help can avail him, but each man must remember also that he is indeed his brother's keeper, and that while no man who refuses to walk can be carried with advantage to himself or any one else yet that each at times stumbles or halts, that each at times needs to have the helping hand outstretched to him. To be permanently effective, aid must always take the form of helping a man to help himself, and we can all best help ourselves by joining together in the work that is of common interest to all....

"It is no light task for a nation to achieve the temperamental qualities without which the institutions of free government are but an empty mockery. Our people are now successfully governing themselves, because for more than a thousand years they have been slowly fitting themselves, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, toward this end. What has taken us thirty generations to achieve, we cannot expect to see another race accomplish out of hand, especially when large portions of that race start very far behind the point which our ancestors had reached even thirty generations ago. In dealing with the Philippine people we must show both patience and strength, forbearance and steadfast resolution. Our aim is high. We do not desire to do for the islanders merely what has elsewhere been done for tropic peoples by even the best foreign governments. We hope to do for them what has never before been done for any people of the tropics—to make them fit for self-government after the fashion of the really free nations."

President Roosevelt. First Message, December 3, 1901.