George Washington's Empire

In 1783, the year the United States formally gained its independence from Great Britain, George Washington described the newborn republic as a "rising empire." He elaborated a few years later, as the fledgling nation struggled for viability under the restraints imposed by the Articles of Confederation and the constraints imposed by the European powers. America was but an "infant empire," Washington conceded to his former comrade-in-arms, the Marquis de Lafayette. "However unimportant America may be considered at present," he nevertheless predicted, "there will assuredly come a day, when this country will have some weight in the scale of Empires."

--Richard H. Immerman, Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 1.