1840s Democratic & Whig Perspectives • Modern Historical Debate
Was the United States built on stolen land? This question divides historians and citizens today — but in the 1840s, both Democrats and Whigs debated the means and morality of expansion using the same legal and intellectual tools.
Explore the arguments below from both sides, then see how historians weigh in.
Both Democrats and Whigs used the same legal and intellectual tools — but reached opposite conclusions.
Doctrine of Discovery gave first European claim. Treaties with Natives were sovereign agreements — Senate-ratified like with France.
Paid $15M (Louisiana), $18.25M (Mexico), and 370+ treaties with cash, goods, annuities, and reservations. Not theft — purchase.
Marshall called tribes “domestic dependent nations” — sovereign enough to sign binding treaties. This was diplomacy, not seizure.
Lakota took from Crow. Spain took from Aztecs. All nations expand — why condemn America alone?
Stage 1 hunting = waste. Stage 4 farming/commerce feeds millions. Progress is moral — we’re fulfilling God’s plan.
Discovery ignored millennia of Native use. Treaties signed under duress — not true consent.
Mexico signed with U.S. troops in capital. Native nations had no alternative buyer. Pennies per acre — and promises broken.
“Dependent” = not sovereign. Couldn’t refuse, couldn’t ally elsewhere. U.S. violated treaties at will.
Lakota-Crow or Aztec-Spain = ancient history. U.S. actions were recent, with living victims and broken treaties.
Native systems were sustainable. Cherokee had farms, laws, newspapers. “Elevation” via education — not removal.
“Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil… War exists by the act of Mexico herself.”
— James K. Polk, War Message to Congress, May 11, 1846
“The mountain plains of the Aztecs… shall yet become the abode of a free and enlightened people, under the banners of the stars and stripes.”
— Caleb Cushing, Recruiting Speech, 1847
“Let me ask: where is the spot on which the first act of hostility was committed by the Mexican troops? Show me the spot!”
— Abraham Lincoln, “Spot Resolutions,” January 1848
“This is a war to plant slavery on free soil… I wish to see no more territory — I want no more blood.”
— Henry Clay, Senate Speech, 1847
Over 370 treaties signed — legally binding under the Constitution.
Example: Treaty of New Echota (1835)
• Cherokee ceded all eastern lands
• Received $5M + land in Oklahoma
• Outcome: Trail of Tears — ~4,000 died
Democrat View: “Sovereign nations negotiated fair sales.”
Whig View: “Coerced surrenders under threat of force.”
U.S. expansion followed established law, involved compensation, and mirrored global historical patterns. Here are five key points:
Expansion used recognized laws: Doctrine of Discovery, treaties, Congressional acts, and property deeds. “Theft” implies lawlessness — but the U.S. followed its own legal system.
Laws written by the powerful to justify taking from the weak aren’t morally neutral. Slavery was legal too — legality ≠ justice.
U.S. paid: $15M (Louisiana), $18.25M (Mexican Cession), $10M (Gadsden). Over 370 treaties with Native nations included cash, goods, annuities, and reservations.
Mexico signed under occupation. Native nations had no choice. Compensation was pennies per acre and often never fully delivered.
Chief Justice Marshall called tribes “domestic dependent nations.” Treaties required Senate ratification — same as with Britain or France.
“Dependent” = not truly sovereign. Tribes couldn’t refuse or sell to others. U.S. broke treaties when convenient.
Every nation sits on land taken from someone else. Lakota displaced Crow. Mexico inherited Spanish conquests of Aztecs. Why single out the U.S.?
Other wrongs don’t excuse this one. U.S. expansion was recent (1840s), with living victims and broken treaties.
Stage 1 hunting lands supported few. Stage 4 agriculture/commerce supports millions. America turned “wilderness” into prosperous republics.
“Underutilized” is cultural bias. Native systems were sustainable. “More people” doesn’t justify displacement.
Paul Johnson (conservative): “The United States did not steal the vast territories it acquired in the nineteenth century; rather, it obtained them through a combination of purchase, treaty, and conquest—methods universally recognized in international law and historical practice. The Louisiana Purchase was a voluntary sale by France for $15 million; the Mexican Cession followed a war initiated, in American eyes, by Mexican aggression and was secured by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with $18.25 million in compensation; and over 370 treaties with Native nations involved cash payments, annuities, goods, and reserved lands, all ratified by the Senate as sovereign agreements. To label these transactions ‘theft’ is to ignore the legal frameworks of the era, the principle of compensation, and the doctrine of infinite regress: if every transfer of sovereignty through history is deemed illegitimate, then no nation—from the Lakota who displaced the Crow to the Aztecs conquered by Spain—could claim valid title. At some point, historical settlements must be accepted, or all borders dissolve into chaos.”
Daniel Walker Howe (liberal): “The United States indeed sits upon stolen land, for much of its continental expanse was wrested from Native nations through systematic dispossession—most egregiously via the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which precipitated the Trail of Tears and the expulsion of sovereign peoples like the Cherokee from ancestral domains they had cultivated with republican and agrarian virtues akin to our own. The Whigs, guardians of ordered liberty and moral stewardship, fiercely opposed this as a national sin: Theodore Frelinghuysen decried it as a violation of natural law and Christian duty, while John Quincy Adams later condemned the Mexican War’s land grabs as aggrandizement by force—betrayals of the very Enlightenment ideals and providential mission America professed, revealing the tragic contradiction between our rhetoric of progress and the violence that enabled it.”
Question: Can an action be both legally justified AND morally wrong?
How do we judge the past when its laws clash with our values?
“It was our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”
— John L. O'Sullivan, United States Magazine and Democratic Review (1845)“Go West, young man, and grow up with the country.”
— Horace Greeley, New York Tribune (popularized 1865)“The whole continent appears to be destined... to be peopled by one nation. The acquisition of a definite line of boundary to the [Pacific] forms a great epoch in our history.”
— John Quincy Adams, diary (1811)
“The dream is but the pretense of knowledge. The knowledge is the remembrance of the laws of the world. But the dream of expansion is a dream of violence and empire.”
— Henry David Thoreau, “Slavery in Massachusetts” (1854)“The Americans... will not stop here: they have already disturbed the equilibrium of the world... In a few years, the same white race will have spread over the whole of North America... and the indigenous peoples will have been swept away.”
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 1 (1835)