They felt,
no doubt, that the new system would put them in a more respectable
attitude toward the other nations of the earth. But this was probably
the only definite popular notion on the subject. What our actual
relations with other nations should be, was something wholly vague,
and very varying ideas were entertained about it by communities and
by individuals, according to their various prejudices, opinions, and
interests.
The one idea, however, that the American people did not have on this
subject was, that they should hold themselves entirely aloof from the
politics of the Old World, and have with other nations outside the
Americas no relations except those born of commerce. It had not
occurred to them that they should march steadily forward on a course
which would drive out European governments, and sever the connections
of those governments with the North American continent. After a
century's familiarity, this policy looks so simple and obvious that
it is difficult to believe that our forefathers could even have
considered any other seriously; but in 1789 it was so strange that no
one dreamed of it, except perhaps a few thinkers speculating on the
future of the infant nation. It was something so novel that when
it was propounded it struck the people like a sudden shock of
electricity. It was so broad, so national, so thoroughly American,
that men still struggling in the fetters of colonial thought could not
comprehend it. But there was one man to whom it was neither strange
nor speculative.
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