December 2, 1823. James Monroe announces the Monroe Doctrine
The Constitution requires the President of the United States to provide Congress with information regarding the “state of the union” without specifying when or how. From this requirement arose the now annual televised event known as the State of the Union address. Prior to the radio/television age, most presidents complied with the requirement via a written report read to the Congress by a clerk, a method pioneered by Thomas Jefferson.
Most presidents wrote their own address; today it is usually crafted by speechwriters with prepared applause lines and references to invited guests and other props, part of a political theater for voter consumption.
In 1823, President James Monroe was concerned over the revolutions taking place in the Spanish South American colonies and the danger of Spain’s European rivals using them as an opportunity to construct Empires in the New World. European hegemony posed a threat to American trade and American expansion. Monroe and his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, used the threat posed by the European powers, chiefly England and France, to announce that henceforth the continents of the New World and their proximate islands were forever closed to European colonization, but that the United States would remain neutral on the subject of existing colonies.
Not yet 50 years old, the United States had already four times gone to war to protect its interests, against France (briefly), England, and the Berber States of the Mediterranean. American willingness to protect its shores and national interests was noted by the Europeans, mindful of the costs of irritating their western neighbor.
Despite continental blustering over the impertinence of the Americans, much of it from the German states, England recognized the advantage of its rivals being kept from acquiring an American empire and supported the doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine has remained a linchpin of American Foreign policy ever since, despite often being battered by prevailing political winds.