MONROE 



3901 



MONROE DOCTRINE 



MONROE, LA., the parish seat of Ouachita 

 Parish, is situated on the east bank of the 

 Washita River, in the north-central part of the 

 state. Baton Rouge, the state capital, is 155 

 miles southeast, Shreveport is ninety-seven 

 miles west, and. Vicksburg, Miss., is seventy-six 

 miles east. Monroe is served by the Arkansas, 

 Louisiana & Gulf, the Vicksburg, Shreveport 

 & Pacific and the Saint Louis, Iron Mountain & 

 Southern railroads, and by steamboats which 

 ply the river from New Orleans to Camden, 

 Ark. The area of the city is nearly five square 

 miles. The population, which in 1910 was 10,- 

 209, was 13,214 in 1916 (Federal estimate). 



Monroe is situated in one of the best agri- 

 cultural sections of the South and has a large 

 trade in cotton and lumber. The principal in- 

 dustries are machine shops, cotton compresses, 

 cottonseed oil mills and manufactories of auto- 

 mobile and wagon materials and other lumber 

 products. The city has a Federal building, 

 courthouse, city hall, public library, market 

 house, salt-water natatorium, Saint Francis 

 Sanatarium and a city park of fifty acres. 



A settlement on the site of Monroe was made 

 in 1785 while Louisiana belonged to the Span- 

 ish. In 1819 the place was renamed Monroe, 

 in honor of James Monroe, then President. It 

 was incorporated in 1820 and received city 

 charters in 1871 and in 1902. 



MONROE DOCTRINE, the name applied to 

 the policy of the United States toward pre- 

 serving the independence and safety of the 

 Latin American states. The Doctrine was first 

 clearly stated by President Monroe in a mes- 

 sage of 1823, though the main ideas of that 

 message, and some of the wording, are due to 

 John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State. 

 The reason for the pronouncement of the Doc- 

 trine was that by the American Revolution, 

 and then by the revolt of the Latin American 

 colonies, a new kind of state was created in the 

 world. Up to 1775, every civilized person in 

 North and South America was the subject of 

 some European power. It was a new thought 

 that American colonies could establish them- 

 selves as independent and sovereign nations. 

 The ideas of the Monroe Doctrine are as fol- 

 lows: 



(1) Two Spheres. It was held that the world 

 was divided into "two spheres," the Eastern 

 hemisphere and the Western. President Wash- 

 ington stated one side of that principle in his 

 doctrine of "Isolation," which was that the 

 United States was not called upon to take part 

 in the affairs, and especially in the wars, of 



Europe. The other side, as worked out by 

 Adams and Monroe, was that European powers 

 ought not to interfere in the affairs of Ameri- 

 cans. They recognized that Great Britain had 

 large interests in Canada and the West Indies, 

 and that France and some smaller European 

 nations had small interests in the West India 

 Islands and the coast of South America. As 

 Monroe put it in his message, "With the exist- 

 ing colonies or dependencies of any European 

 power we have not interfered and shall not 

 interfere." He goes on to say: "But with the 

 governments who have declared their inde- 

 pendence and maintained it, and whose inde- 

 pendence we have . . . acknowledged, we 

 could not view any interposition for the pur- 

 pose of oppressing them or controlling in any 

 other manner their destiny by any European 

 power in any other light than as the manifesta- 

 tion of an unfriendly disposition towards the 

 United States." 



(2) Political System. Monroe wrote, "The 

 political system of the allied powers is essen- 

 tially different . . . from that of America. 

 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 the hemi- 

 sphere as dangerous to our peace and safety." 

 By "political system," Monroe meant the com- 

 bination of European powers commonly called 

 the Holy Alliance (which see), which was 

 threatening to invade Latin America in order 

 to restore the new states to the rule of Spain 

 and Portugal. 



(3) Colonization. In his message Monroe 

 said, "The American continents, by the free and 

 independent condition which they have as- 

 sumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be 

 considered as subjects for future colonization 

 by any European powers." This was directed 

 against Russia, which laid claims to the Pacific 

 coast of America as far south as the fifty-first 

 parallel. 



(4) Peace. The purpose of Monroe and 

 Adams was to prevent wars of conquest in 

 America and especially to avoid wars 'which 

 might spring up between the United States and 

 new European neighbors. 



(5) Enlargements. The message of 1823, 

 with its strong statement of the position of the 

 United States, broke up all the plans for in- 

 vasion; and only once since has a European 

 power attempted to plant a colony in defiance 

 of the Monroe Doctrine. This was the French 



