Monroe Doctrine

2 December 1823: an annual message, read and referred

On 2 December 1823, President James Monroe transmitted his seventh annual message to both houses of the Eighteenth Congress. The House read it and referred it to the Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union; the Senate ordered it printed.

The paragraph that later carried his name was prompted by negotiations with Russia over the northwest coast. In it Monroe declared that the American continents were no longer to be considered open to future European colonization.

The warnings, and the promises attached to them

An attempt by the allied European powers to extend their political system into the hemisphere, Monroe said, would be dangerous to U.S. peace and safety. European intervention to oppress or control the newly independent American governments the United States had recognized would show an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.

The same message promised no interference with European colonies already in existence, continued U.S. neutrality in Spain's war with its former colonies, and no interference in Europe's internal affairs.

A unilateral statement, quietly received

British foreign secretary George Canning had proposed an Anglo-American declaration against forcible European intervention in the former Spanish colonies. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams pushed instead for the United States to state its own position independently.

What Congress received and published was therefore a unilateral presidential policy statement. It created no treaty, statute, military commitment or enforcement mechanism that day, and European powers gave it relatively little notice.

The name is later than the message: the principles were not widely called the Monroe Doctrine until the 1850s.