The Monroe Doctrine (1823) - Domination Translator Series - Part 6

The Monroe Doctrine

At the opening of the Johnson v. McIntosh ruling Chief Marshall makes a lengthy and rather cryptic opening statement we have previously quoted. In the statement, he provides a brief explanation of the thought process undertaken by the Court to come to a decision. The Court, he explains, has made a distinction between two different categories of nationhood. The first category is that of what he termed “civilized nations.” The nations in this category, he said, are “acknowledged” by the Court as possessing “perfect independence,” and these nations are deemed to deserve a specific kind of treatment based on aforementioned “principles.”

By implication, Marshall was alluding to a second category of nations which were considered not “civilized.” Regarding these nations, Marshall said that another sector of the U.S. government had “given” the Court a different set of principles to use as what Marshall called, “the rule for our decision.” Here’s the statement in its entirety:

As the right of society to prescribe those rules by which property may be acquired and preserved is not and cannot be drawn into question, as the title to lands especially is and must be admitted to depend entirely on the law of the nation in which they lie, it will be necessary in pursuing this inquiry to examine not singly those principles of abstract justice which the Creator of all things has impressed on the mind of his creature man and which are admitted to regulate in a great degree the rights of civilized nations, whose perfect independence is acknowledged, but those principles also which our own government has adopted in the particular case and given us as the rule for our decision.

The Supreme Court handed down the Johnson ruling during the presidential administration of James Monroe. What has been known as “the Monroe doctrine” was also expressed in 1823 by President Monroe during his second annual address. According to Monroe, the nations of the world were obligated to accept the entire western hemisphere as the geographical area of influence of the United States, which is accurately understood as having been founded as and maintained as the “American empire.”

Presciently, in his 1789 book American Geography,Boston minister Jedidiah Morse expressed the view that the entire continent of North America rightfully belonged the people of the thirteen British colonies situated along the coastline of the North American continent. He said, for example, “Judging upon probable grounds, the Mississippi was never designed as the western boundary of the American empire.”

Thirty-four years later, in 1823, President Monroe put the world on notice that he was extending this attitude of American political and imperial influence throughout the western hemisphere. It was the Monroe administration’s view that the nations of Western Europe ought to regard the entire hemisphere across the Atlantic Ocean as off limits to European colonization. It would seem that the United States was thereby declaring a form of “ultimate dominion” [a claimed right of domination] in relation to, the entire hemisphere.

In The Rising American Empire, Van Alstyne points out that in 1895, U.S. Secretary of State Richard Olney expressed “the hidden purpose of the Monroe Doctrine, the assertion of a right of unlimited intervention in any issue concerning the two American continents.” Van Alstyne added: “The testiness of Olney, the Democrat, was meanwhile outmatched the very same year by Henry Cabot Lodge, the Republican.” He further said:

Recommending that the United States add Canada, the Nicaraguan canal, Hawaii and Samoa to its dominions, Lodge assumed a threatening attitude toward Britain because of her West Indian possessions. “We should have among those islands at least one strong naval station, and when the Nicaraguan canal is built, the island of Cuba … will become to us a necessity.” The American public during this decade was feeling its oats, and the pose struck by Olney and Lodge showed that the stream of imperialism was once more in full view and flowing along at a rapid pace.

Here’s the general idea of a specific U.S. foreign policy called “The Monroe Doctrine.” The United States was putting the major political powers of Western Europe on notice that the U.S. would not tolerate those powers interfering with the Western Hemisphere. The United States would not tolerate any European meddling in the affairs of the countries of this hemisphere. The Western Hemisphere is America’s hemispheric zone of influence.

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Cases

• Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v. McIntosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543 (1823). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/21/543
• Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. (5 Pet.) 1 (1831). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/30/1
• Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515 (1832). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/31/515

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Copyright

© Copyright Steven T. Newcomb, January 1, 2026