Border Law: The First Seminole War and American Nationhood, by Deborah A. Rosen

Abstract

Border Law: The First Seminole War and American Nationhood, by Deborah A. Rosen. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2015. ix, 316 pp. $45.00 US (cloth). In 1816 and 1818, General Andrew Jackson led US troops into Spanish Florida, where they seized forts, razed towns, executed Creek and British prisoners, and killed or enslaved dozens of Seminoles, Creeks, and black people. In Border Lazo, Deborah A. Rosen analyzes congressional and public debates that followed this invasion and evaluates their implications for American nation-building. In seven meticulously-researched chapters, Rosen demonstrates how Jackson's supporters rejected Enlightenment concepts of universal natural law and embraced ideas of positive, utilitarian law in order to justify US ambitions. Americans used this new legal framework in four ways: to demand US inclusion into European family of nations; to differentiate between Old and New Worlds; to define national borders and limits of legal protection along racial and cultural lines; and to change rules for acting across territorial borders in order to secure US interests abroad. As Rosen shows, these debates provided Americans with an opportunity to express their core values and to define their nationhood at a key moment in history of Early Republic. Ultimately, legal demarcations they created laid groundwork for the Monroe Doctrine, Dred Scott decision, US westward expansion, and late nineteenth-century interpretations of international law and overseas imperialism (p. 219). Although acquiring Florida had long been a US policy goal, Jackson's invasion of Spanish territory set off a political firestorm. Monroe administration officials launched a public relations campaign to justify general's actions to American public and international community. The invasion, they argued, was both necessary and entirely defensive in nature since Spain had failed to control so-called Seminole bandits who raided frontier settlements (p. 36). Jackson's critics retorted that along Florida border was mostly result of American aggression, rather than Indian violence (p. 75). They declared invasion unnecessary, unlawful, and unconstitutional since Jackson had not waited for Congress to declare war before entering Florida. To make their cases, groups cited legal writings of Swiss jurist Emer de Vattel, but they interpreted his work to suit their own purposes. Ultimately, arguments of Jackson's supporters resonated with Congress and American public. Spain's weak colonial hold on Florida put United States in danger. The United States had a right--even a duty--to secure its borders and expand throughout continent. In making these arguments, supporters maintained that United States was natural leading power in Western Hemisphere--an idea that found full expression in 1823 Monroe Doctrine. The claim that United States acted in self-defense rested on premise that Creeks, Seminoles, and allied blacks posed a serious threat to American settlers. …