Turning Sufferers into Settlers: Gender, Welfare, and National Expansion in Frontier Florida

TitleTurning Sufferers into Settlers: Gender, Welfare, and National Expansion in Frontier Florida
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2013
AuthorsShire, Laurel Clark
JournalJournal of the Early Republic
Volume33
Issue3
Pagination489-521
Abstract

This article traces American policies in Florida that harnessed gender to expansionist policies between 1836 and 1842, and argues that federal welfare policy evolved as a tool of expansionism during this period, and that policy makers employed gender to naturalize and justify this evolution. In the early years of the Second Seminole War, members of Congress invoked images of threatened and indigent women to build support for a welfare program aimed at the "suffering inhabitants" of Florida. As the war continued into the 1840s, federal and military leaders called on the ideal of the hardy, independent male pioneer as they shifted away from aiding victims toward a program under which those who wanted to continue to receive aid had to agree to colonize Florida. In 1842, building on that settlement program, Congress passed a very generous land policy, the Armed Occupation Act of 1842. It was designed to encourage white settlers ("armed occupiers") to settle and hold the Florida frontier. Twenty years later, the Homestead Act extended this policy for the rest of the country, which indicates that this pattern of policy-making shaped national growth well beyond the southern frontier.

URLhttps://doi.org/10.1353/jer.2013.0069
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