George Washington's Foreign Policy

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George Washington never wanted to be president. After many years of being a general in the war, all he wanted was to go home to his family and spend the rest of his life in peace. But the government had other plans for Washington. He never really ended up running for president, it was a unanimous vote from the electoral committee. When he was elected, this country was brand new, and there was lots of work to be done, lots of wrinkles in the system to be ironed out. The main problems he had to figure out where how to pay off the war debt, infighting within the cabinet, and how to stay consistent with the policy of neutrality. The first and debatably the biggest problem he had to fix was how to pay off the debt from the war. Alexander Hamilton …show more content…

This was mostly a big deal during the French Revolution. The commoners took over France, beheading the king and queen publicly, and waging war on Britain. French demanded help from America because, during the American revolution, the French helped up, but then the British wouldn’t trade with us. If we stood with the British, the French would be mad, and would be standing with the very thing we fought against not so long ago; freedom. It was a lose-lose situation. This is when the policy of neutrality started. Instead of picking sides, America remained neutral, and no matter how hard it was, we didn’t pick sides. In order to finalize this policy, George Washington released this statement. “Whereas it appears that a state of war exists between Great Britain… and France.. the United States [will] require that it would … pursue a conduct friendly and impartial towards both countries” (Document D) This states that America will remain neutral in the war. Another outside source gives us more information, “The Neutrality Proclamation of 1793 was authorized by George Washington on April 22, 1793, and stated that the US would take no part in a war between two or more other powers, specifically France and Great Britain.”(Neutrality Policy) This tells us that, once again, during late April in 1793, Washington addressed America and said that they would remain neutral in the war.
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