. Thomas Jefferson, another founder, went even further, arguing that since Americans were creating the first truly free society, by definition it must enlarge so man could continue to be free. Thus, it would be an ôempire for libertyö (Stephanson 22). JeffersonÆs theory reflected the American belief that they ôinhabit a special universe, or at least a special part of the ordinary oneö (Mead 3).
The U.S. completed its first stage of expansion by the 1820s. A huge chuck of the land (the Louisiana Purchase) had been bought from France in 1803, and the Americans followed by purchasing Florida from Spain in 1819. The British and the Americans tired of fighting one another after the War of 1812, and the treaty that ended the war helped secure further American expansion on the Frontier west of the Mississippi River without British interference.
Native Americans provided the only remaining obstacle. By 1840, campaigns led by Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison had ended the large-scale military capability of Native Americans in what was then the American Frontier. Much of the IndiansÆ land also was ôexpropriated through trickery, legal manipulation, intimidation, deportation, concentration camps, and murderö (Stephanson 24). How to justify that with American principles of self-determination and freedom for all?
Americans appealed to religion, finding answers in old Testament passages. They relied in part on the philosophy of Emerich de Vattel, and 18th century thinker who argued that God had given whites an ôobligation to cultivate the earth.ö Native Americans obviously could not cultivate the land (because they had not), so white Americans had to step in and fulfill GodÆs wishes (Stephanson 25). No one expressed those sentiments better than John Calhoun. In 1824, Calhoun, then the governor of Georgia, wrote that treaties with Native Americans ôwere expedients by which ignorant, intractable, and savage ...