Empire of Liberty

The scholar Richard Drinnon observed that Jefferson spoke of establishing more amicable relations with Native Americans on America's Western Frontier at his "second inaugural address".

[10] In practice, however, Jefferson's imperial policy and implementation of the ideal of an Empire of Liberty for North America's Native American population was radically different.

One major reason the lands of the aboriginal inhabitants had been so drastically reduced was Jefferson's acquisition of a hundred million acres in treaties shot through with fraud, bribery, and intimidation.

And when Indians inter fered with white definitions of the national interest, as did the "backward" tribes of the Northwest in 1812, Jefferson's humanitarianism hardened: "These will relapse into barbarism and misery, lose numbers by war and want," he grimly predicted to John Adams, "and we shall be obliged to drive them, with the beasts of the forest into the Stony mountains.".

American Protestant and Catholic religious activists began missionary work in "pagan" areas from the 1820s, and expanded operations worldwide in the late 19th century.

[15] Religious reform organizations joined in attempts to spread modernity and worked to fight the corrupting effects of ignorance, disease, drugs and alcohol.

For example, the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WWCTU), a spinoff of the WCTU, had both strong religious convictions and a commitment to international efforts to shut down the liquor trade.

[17] Economic dimensions of the Empire of Liberty involved dissemination of American management methods (such as Taylorization, Fordism, and the assembly line), technology, and popular culture such as film.

[citation needed] Writers on the Left often capitalized on anti-imperialistic ideals by using the label American Empire in as a criticism of the United States foreign policy as imperialistic.