delanceyplace.com 07/22/05 - america feels its strength

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In today's excerpt - the contretempts between the US and Great Britain in 1895 regarding a border dispute between British Guiana and Venezuela which Americans had come to view as a British violation of the Monroe doctrine:

"... On July 20th, [President] Cleveland's Secretary of State, Richard Olney, delivered a Note to Great Britain stating that disregard of the Monroe Doctrine would be 'deemed an act of unfriendliness toward the United States', whom he described in terms of not very veiled belligerence [and astonishing American confidence given the year], as 'masters of the situation and pratically invulnerable against any and all comers [especially the British].'

"[Prime Minister Lord Salisbury finally replied by remarking] coldly that 'the disputed frontier of Venezuela has nothing to do with any question dealt with by President Monroe' and to refuse flatly to arbitrate 'the frontier of a British possession which belonged to the throne of England before the Republic of Venezuela came into existence. ... "

The escalating tensions were only put aside as England got embroiled in Africa in the fiasco of the Boer War.