Garfield Administration - Foreign Issues
Foreign Issues
Foreign affairs was of little interest to most Americans in the age when Garfield became president. The aftermath of the bloody American Civil War (1861–65) and the "amoral fatigue" that many voters felt at the failure of Reconstruction in the South (which had attempted to restructure southern society and create a place for ex-slaves in that society) led them to turn away from national and international affairs, and concentrate instead on their own communities. As president, Garfield did appear to have a foreign policy agenda at least slightly more forward-looking than the voters. His earlier speeches in Congress seemed to indicate that he believed in commercial expansion overseas and in reciprocal trade, where mutual agreements on tariff reduction were made with other countries to allow goods to flow back and forth. He was also wary of Great Britain's attempts to secure trade agreements that excluded the United...
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