According to Kaufman, the United States was still a "fledgling Republic that was vulnerable to the major powers of a European state system in which there existed "domestic conditions " that made "establishing liberal democracy abroad unpropitious"" (Kaufman 6). In essence, the United States was in no position to be setting its sights on spreading democracy worldwide at such an infantile state of its development as a nation. There was much work that needed to be done domestically in the United States before the founders turned their attention to matters across the sea. John Quincy Adams echoed the isolationist sentiment put forth by George Washington when he stated that the United States would "not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy " and that the country would be "the champion and vindicator only of her own " (Kaufman 6). We first see this stance illustrated during the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1792. President Washington resisted pressures from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to engage militarily in the war between Great Britain and France and instead issued the Neutrality Proclamation of 1793 in which he pledged the neutrality of the United States in the struggle. Washington understood, as Kaufman writes, that the "United States was in no position to embark on ideological crusades in any event " and was best served to remain neutral in the conflict (Kaufman 7). It would have been dangerous and compromising for the United States to take a side in this conflict at a time when the young nation was still recovering from the wounds of the Revolutionary War. President Washington understood this and also realized that engaging in this war did not make sense geographically due to the fact that the United States was still occupied in parts by the Spanish and British. As Kaufman notes, "if the United States became embroiled in the French Revolution, the young nation would become perilously vulnerable to France's British and Spanish enemies sitting athwart its vital flanks " (Kaufman 8).
