Traditional American Foreign Policy of Old

 

 Washington, Georgia

Georgian Robert Toombs, like many other political leaders of antebellum times, followed Secretary of State John Quincy Adam’s 1821 dictum that “she [America] goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”  Hungarian revolutionary Louis Kossuth visited Wilmington, North Carolina in 1852; he raised a great deal of money though it was quickly absorbed by his own expenses “and large Hungarian retinue.”

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman

North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission

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Traditional American Foreign Policy of Old

“[Toombs spoke] at a congressional banquet at Willard’s Hotel in commemoration of Washington’s birthday [in 1852] and took this occasion, along with other speakers present, to attack the Hungarian rebel chieftain, Louis Kossuth, who was in the United States enlisting money and support for the continuation of the struggle against Austrian domination. In strongly conservative . . . terms, he condemned the solicitations of the popular revolutionary, saying Kossuth wished the United States to “turn knight-errant, imitate the knight of La Mancha [Don Quixote], and travel up and down the world, revenging or righting the wrongs of all injured nations.” 

The United States, should not, he said, interfere with the institutions of another country, in view of the difficulty it was having agreeing on the proper principles of its own internal policy. Let it look after its own affairs and steer clear of European entanglements. Those nations who desired to be free had only to will it. 

The New York Daily Times, ardent Kossuth champion, deplored the addresses, saying that the “mantle of Washington was [being] made to protect the interests and the political crimes of despots of Europe.”  The Kossuth rage continued for some time in the United States but finally evaporated when it appeared the Hungarian wanted active intervention by the United States in Europe, something traditional American policy opposed.”  

(Robert Toombs of Georgia, William Y. Thompson, LSU Press, 1994 (original 1966), pp. 82-83)