| Between 1787 and 1826 America's Founders faced a vexing dilemma: how should they, as former revolutionaries, respond to the wave of democratic revolutions that followed their own? This diplomatic and intellectual history draws on the Founders' foreign policy decisions and reflective works on revolution. It charts the changing perceptions of Washington, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and their younger protege, John Quincy Adams, regarding the promise and pitfalls of revolution in France (1787-1815), Spanish America (1787-1826), then post-Napoleonic Europe (1815-1826).;The study finds a shift in the Founders' responses to revolution. As a generation, they moved from guarded but unmistakable optimism for the outcome of such contests in 1787, to a high degree of caution and skepticism by 1815. Of revolution, they learned, in John Adams's words, to "rejoice with trembling.".;The French revolutionary experience was the decisive forge for the shift. The Founders split sharply on the merits of the French contest through the 1790s, but by 1800 universally denounced it, and took with them lessons of revolution they believed applied to Spanish America, and later revolutions in Europe.;The main lesson: successful revolution could only be enacted by an "enlightened people," a literate polity with experience in the instruments of self-government, one prepared to respect civil liberties and submit to majority rule. While recognizing the legitimacy of any revolution against absolute rule, the Founders (by 1815) favored "gradual" political movement from absolutism to republicanism over dramatic deposition. The remedies of "education and information," freedom of the press, and limited popular representation must be given time to "gradually mature (a revolutionary people) for the great trust" of self-government. Through the period the Founders came to reassess the international significance of the American Revolution. They believed the American experiment would serve as a beacon for other nations, but were increasingly impressed by the exceptional, perhaps unrepeatable, character American Revolution itself. |
