Neutrality Acts

Neutrality Acts. Neutrality Acts have been considered by Congress at various times to keep the United States aloof from actual or imminent European wars.When in 1793 France declared war on Britain, the newly appointed French minister to the United States, “Citizen” Edmond Genêt, began to recruit American volunteers and sought to stimulate the revolt of British and Spanish colonists in Canada and Louisiana. In response, Congress in June 1794 passed its first neutrality law, confirming President George Washington's “Rules Governing Belligerents,” which prohibited the arming of belligerent vessels within American ports and military recruitment by belligerent powers within U.S. borders.

A different kind of legislation became an issue when World War I broke out. On 11 February 1916, in an effort to crack the British blockade, Germany announced that it would attack enemy merchant ships, endangering citizens of neutral states who might be traveling on such vessels. President Woodrow Wilson believed that travel by neutrals was a neutral right, but some in Congress wanted to ensure America's continued neutrality in the war by eliminating the possibility of provocation. In mid‐February 1916, Representative Jeff McLemore (Dem.‐Tex.) introduced a resolution requesting the president to warn Americans not to travel on armed belligerent vessels, and Senator Thomas P. Gore (Dem.‐Okla.) introduced a resolution denying passports—and protection—to Americans seeking passage on such ships. Under pressure from President Wilson, Congress early in March tabled both resolutions.

In the aftermath of World War I, when many Americans became convinced that the United States had entered the conflict because of the Wilson administration's pro‐Allied partisanship, Congress enacted various neutrality bills. The Johnson Act of 1934, not technically a neutrality act, prohibited private loans to any government in default of obligations to the U.S. government. In August 1935, in its first general neutrality act, Congress legislated that an arms embargo would become mandatory once the president declared that a war existed between two or more foreign powers. The bill also authorized the president to proclaim that Americans traveling on belligerents' ships did so at their own risk.

In a second neutrality bill enacted in February 1936, Congress extended the existing law by fourteen months while adding a prohibition on loans to belligerents. In 1937, Congress, by overwhelming majorities in both houses, reacted to the Spanish Civil War by enacting a nondiscriminatory embargo designed to minimize U.S. involvement on either side.

In May 1937, Congress passed a third neutrality bill. It retained bans on arms sales, loans, credit, and travel on belligerent ships whenever the president found a foreign or civil war endangering the United States. In addition, the 1937 act banned the arming of all merchant ships trading with belligerents. It gave the president discretionary authority to put the sale of nonembargoed goods on a “cash‐and‐carry” basis, requiring belligerents to pay at the time of purchase and to transport the goods on their own ships. The act also gave the president discretionary authority to prohibit armed belligerent ships from using American ports.

The neutrality laws of the 1930s proved short‐lived. In November 1939, two months after World War II began, Congress repealed the arms embargo. By December 1941, when the United States entered the war, it was already convoying munitions to Britain, making most neutrality legislation a dead letter.
See also Early Republic, Era of the; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Europe; Isolationism; Neutrality; Peace Movements.

Bibliography

Robert A. Divine , The Illusion of Neutrality, 1962.
Arthur S. Link , Wilson, vol. 4, Confusion and Crises, 1915–1916, 1964.

Justus D. Doenecke