Napoleonic wars, which lasted for nearly a quarter of a century, the
United States was the principal neutral. The problems to which this
situation gave rise were so similar to the problems raised during the
early years of the World War that many of the diplomatic notes prepared
by Jefferson and Madison might, with a few changes of names and dates,
be passed off as the correspondence of Wilson and Lansing.
Washington's administration closed with the clouds of the European war
still hanging heavy on the horizon. Under these circumstances he
delivered his famous Farewell Address in which he said:

"The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in
extending our commercial relations to have with them as little
_political_ connection as possible. So far as we have already formed
engagements let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us
stop.

"Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very
remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies,
the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence,
therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial
ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary
combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

"Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a
different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient
government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury
from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will
cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously
respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making
acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us