The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 1, Issue 1, April 2015 | Page 40

America would deal with its neighbors and the great powers across the Atlantic.
Alfred Bushnell Hart points to the idea of doctrine’s global significance in regards
to American policy. “The Monroe doctrine was founded on the idea of a territorial
division of the world into two separate hemispheres.” 7 The globe was thus divided
into two views and two American foreign policies. The United States would no
longer, in principle at least, limit herself to responding to direct attacks upon her
soil or citizenry, as in 1812. The adolescent nation was beginning to demand more
attention from its more mature forebears.
After America proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine, whatever a European
nation did to alter the governance of any American nation, be it Mexico or
Honduras, and later even South America, would be a concern of the United States. 8
Isolationist tendencies, always strong in America, still would not overrule this
issue. The Atlantic Ocean provided a buffer against the Old World, but not so for
concerns emanating from the Americas. If the European powers that had reached
around the globe wished to change the existing order in the New World, the United
States would have to emerge from its continental fortress and engage such a world
power, thereby globalizing American potential after 1823.
The evolution of the doctrine’s idea into an actual force affecting the
global balance of power would come into being in 1865. The American Civil War,
that bloody four-year-long cataclysm, would provide the impetus for a European
monarch, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte of France, known to history as Napoleon III,
nephew of the great Napoleon Bonaparte, to openly flaunt the Monroe Doctrine. At
that time, the risk of war with the United States was not likely, as these same states
were greatly pre-occupied in a war with each other. If the United States ceased to
exist, there would be an opportunity to fill in the vacuum of power and influence it
had left, but which nation would be bold enough to grasp it?
Napoleon III’s desire to compete with the United Kingdom for economic
and imperial ascendancy enticed him into an adventure in the New World. 9 Those
in the French press, such as Alphonse de Lamartine, argued the emperor’s goal was
“to obtain, not for France alone, but for Europe at large, a foothold upon the
American continent.” 10 The concerns of several countries complicated the entire
Mexican affair, though France would shoulder the greatest burden, and subsequent
consequences. The catalyst for setting this “new Napoleonic Vision” 11 into motion
was the status of the United States. After Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter,
the adolescent American power had suddenly turned upon itself. The consequences
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