A new order for the New World was unfolding in the early nineteenth century,or so many in the United States believed. Between 1808 and 1825, all ofPortuguese America and nearly all of Spanish America broke away from Europe,casting off Old World monarchs and inaugurating home-grown governmentsinstead. People throughout the United States looked on with excitement, asthe new order seemed at once to vindicate their own revolution as well asoffer new possibilities for future progress. Free from obsolete Europeanalliances, they hoped, the entire hemisphere could now rally together aroundrepublican government and commercial reciprocity. Statesmen and politicianswere no exception, as men from Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe to JohnQuincy Adams and Henry Clay tried to exclude European influence from thehemisphere while securing new markets for American manufactures andagricultural surplus.