ABSTRACT
James Madison, never as ideological or sentimental as his close friend Thomas Jefferson, was far more willing to use force to achieve his country’s objectives. Jefferson’s Republican/Enlightenment constraints of “compact and purchase,” limits that Jefferson would have been willing to waive if necessary, quickly became dated. A wave of religious enthusiasm, which changed the belief structure of many Americans, provided another justification for expansion: Americans had an obligation not just to civilize Native Americans, but also to save their souls and spread righteous Christianity throughout the hemisphere. Of course, those who did not want their souls saved might need to be dispensed with. God (or at least Providence) was particularly supportive of the American cause; the “divine right of kings” became the “divine right of Americans.” Nor did the country retain its republican squeamishness about war and glory. The political movement that would in a few decades be known as “Manifest Destiny”1 supplanted Jefferson’s Republican Empire premised upon Enlightenment values. Many other Americans did not want to save the souls of Jefferson’s “noble savages”; they sought to eliminate the race. Continued expansion in the West enhanced the political power of the Scotch-Irish, whom David Hackett Fisher has described as a particularly crude and violent group whose basic consciousness was formed by the constant wars along the borders of England and Scotland. Andrew Jackson emerged as their leader, eventually supplanting the Virginian gentlemen’s Enlightenment norms with his much more ruthless imperial vision.
