Thomas Jefferson, the Apostle of Americanism

by Gilbert Chinard

We specially ought to pray that the powers of Europe may be so poised and counterpoised among themselves, that their own safety may require the presence of all their force at home, leaving the other quarters of the globe in undisturbed tranquillity. When our strength will permit us to give the law to our hemisphere, it should be that the meridian of the mid-Atlantic should be the line of demarkation between war and peace, on this side of which no act of hostility should be committed, and the lion and the lamb lie down in peace together.[511]

The progress of the revolt of the Spanish colonies was at first to strengthen him in the position he had already taken.

Jefferson received the news without any elation. For a long time he had known that the link between the Spanish and Portuguese colonies was growing weaker. He doubted very much, however, that the colonies were ready for self-government. There might have been some hope for Mexico, because of her proximity to the United States: "But the others, I fear," he wrote to Baron Alexander von Humboldt, "will end in military despotisms. The different castes of their inhabitants, their mutual hatred and jealousies, their profound ignorance and bigotry, will be played off by cunning leaders, and each be made the instrument of enslaving the others." The important point he made was in what followed, and Jefferson here indulged in one of his curious political prophecies, in which he so often hit the mark:

But in whatever government they will end, they will be American governments, no longer to be involved in the never-ceasing broils of Europe. The European nations constitute a separate division of the globe; their localities make them part of a distinct system; they have a set of interests of their own in which it is our business never to engage ourselves. America has a hemisphere to itself. It must have its separate system of interests; which must not be subordinated to those of Europe. The insulated state in which nature has placed the American continent, should so far avail it that no spark of war kindled in the other quarters of the globe should be wafted across the wide oceans which separate us from them and it will be so. In fifty years more the United States alone will contain fifty millions of inhabitants, and fifty years are soon gone over.... And you will live to see the period ahead of us; and the numbers which will then be spread over the other parts of the American hemisphere, catching long before that the principles of our portion of it, and concurring with us in the maintainance of the same system.[512]

For the present the situation was entirely different—and as he had done during the Revolution with regard to France, he advocated prudence and slowness. It was one thing for the American colonies to engage in a war with the mother country in order to preserve the liberties they had hitherto enjoyed, and again it was another entirely different thing for people who had not the faintest experience of self-government to declare their independence and suddenly to sever all connections with the past. In addition he was fully aware that the new republics would be in no condition to fight off foreign aggressors and thus would become an easy prey for the unscrupulous and greedy nations of Europe. Unable to stand on their own feet, the most natural course for South America was to fall back on Spain. Jefferson did not visualize the "foris familiation" of the colonies without a sort of moral protectorate of the mother country: "if she extends to them her affection, her aid, her patronage in every court and country, it will weave a bond of union indissoluble by time."[513] At the time Jefferson did not go further, and as a matter of fact he long held that this would have been the best solution for South America. As late as January, 1821, he still maintained this opinion in a letter to John Adams:

The safest road would be an accomodation to the mother country which shall hold them together by the single link of the same chief magistrate, leaving to him power enough to keep them in peace with one another, and to themselves the essential power of self-government and self-improvement, until they will be sufficiently trained by education and habits of freedom to walk safely by themselves. Representative government, native functionaries, a qualified negative on their laws, with a previous security by compact for freedom of commerce, freedom of the press, habeas corpus, and trial by jury, would make a good beginning. This last would be the school in which their people might begin to learn the exercise of civic duties as well as rights. For freedom of religion they are not yet prepared.[514]

This was the ideal solution, but "the question was not what we wish, but what is practicable." If consequently the new republics refused such a compromise, another alternative could be offered:

As their sincere friend and brother, I do believe the best thing for them, would be for themselves to come to an accord with Spain, under the guarantee of France, Russia, Holland, and the United States, allowing to Spain a nominal supremacy, with authority only to keep the peace among them, leaving them otherwise all the powers of self-government, until their experience in them, their emancipation from their priests, and advancement in information shall prepare them for complete independence. I exclude England from this confederacy, because her selfish principles render her incapable of honorable patronage or disinterested co-operation; unless indeed, what seems now probable, a revolution should restore to her an honest government, one which will permit the world to live in peace.[515]