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Territorial expansion in the New Republic was closely connected to the construction of an American national identity. Party to the pursuit of an expanding boarder, anthropologists and other scholars engaged in the debate over inherent land rights and the nature of property and ownership. The theories on men’s natural rights to property were of both theoretical and practical interest at this time. Ever conscience of a critical international audience, anthropologists in service to the government sought philosophical justification for taking territory from native inhabitants. According to Patterson, scholars and politicians used John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. Locke located a person’s right to ownership of their property within the labor that person expends on the land, therefore Native American had no right to the lands they occupied because they did not change and develop the land. This concept was codified in 1823 by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Marshell’s brief “Johnson and Graham’s Lesee V. McIntosh.”<ref>Patterson, p. 8.</ref> This relationship between law and philosophy concretizes understanding of the practical aspects of the human sciences.

Theories and conversations about race and manifest destiny were an important characteristic of the New Republic, argues Patterson, becoming an “increasingly prominent feature of everyday discourse during the 1830s and 1840s.”<ref>Patterson, p. 17.</ref> Polygenists, like Benjamin Rush and James Madison based their justification of African slavery and colonization, and Indian removal on racial difference arguing that Blacks and native Americans were “fixed at lower stages of development.” <ref>Patterson, p. 17.</ref> American Exceptionalism and Anglo-Saxon superiority were underpinned by men like physician and scholar, Samuel Morton, who distinguished and defined races according to cranial capacities and stages of civilization.<ref>Patterson, p. 19.</ref>

The debate over nature and nurture had powerful implications during this time of exploration and expansion. The search for an explanation for human difference inspired both philosophy and political policy, in Europe and North America, as nations sought the definition of the human species and justification for racial and social hierarchy. Colonial States and new republics used travel accounts and the developing discipline of anthropology to support their national identities and territorial agendas. Individual agency interacted with state-building projects, as theories of natural man and innate abilities defined the rights of humans to maintain their culture and territory. Taking different forms in Europe and North America, this debate continues to have profound implications in society today, as questions of race and human variety inform discussions of human potential.

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