The Influence of Natural Law and Divine Sanction in the Development of American Expansionism and Their Effect Upon the American Indian

Abstract

Little has been written of the influence that divine sanctions and the doctrine of natural law had upon English, and subsequently American thought towards landed expansion and property rights relative to the Indians of North America. Clearly, these two themes played a cardinal role in the settlement of America, from the time of initial colonization in the early seventeenth century to the frantic period of expansion that characterized the 1840's. Indeed much has been written on this topic of American expansionism, but most of that writing has centered upon the national (post 1776) period in American history. Much of this scholarship has also concentrated on the more popular rationalizations and concepts originating in the nineteenth century such as Manifest Destiny, to the "Large Policy" of 1898. To a great extent these popular ideas were of purely American origin and probably owe much of their sustenance to the fact that they were more "slogan" than actual law. But America was not always "American," it had evolved over a lengthy period of time from essentially European roots. And many cultural processes that by the mid-nineteenth century seemed to be distinctly American, really had their primary elements in Old World culture. American expansionism went through much the same process. Thus the primary focus of this study is to describe the source, and subsequent development in early English tradition, and later American use of two important ideas - that of natural law and divine sanctions (literal interpretations culled from scripture) and the role these ideas played in the settlement and expansion of America.