But that
isolation from European entanglements was necessary to fulfil it was
equally appreciated. Washington had expressed this conviction in his
farewell address. Jefferson had been goaded into the wish that an ocean
of fire separated the two hemispheres. Madison in 1811, fearing that
Great Britain intended interfering in Florida affairs, questioned
whether the United States should not announce that it could not see,
"without serious inquietude," neighbouring territory pass from Spain
to any other foreign power. "The provinces belonging to this hemisphere
are our neighbors," said President Monroe in a special message to
Congress in 1822. "The foothold which the nations of Europe had in
either America is slipping from under them," wrote ex-President
Jefferson to Monroe, "so that we shall soon be rid of their
neighborhood." "The American continents are no longer subjects for any
new European colonial establishments," said Secretary of State John
Quincy Adams to the Russian Minister, in discussing the proper limits
of Russian America on the north-west coast. The United States
representative to England was authorised by Adams to announce the fact
that the American continents would be no longer subject to European
colonisation.
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