Download Untitled

Expansion westward seemed perfectly natural to many Americans in the mid-nineteenth
century. Like the Massachusetts Puritans who hoped to build a "city upon a hill,
"courageous pioneers believed that America had a divine obligation to stretch the
boundaries of their noble republic to the Pacific Ocean. Independence had been won in
the Revolution and reaffirmed in the War of 1812. The spirit of nationalism that swept
the nation in the next two decades demanded more territory. The "every man is equal"
mentality of the Jacksonian Era fueled this optimism. Now, with territory up to the
Mississippi River claimed and settled and the Louisiana Purchase explored, Americans
headed west in droves. Newspaper editor JOHN O'SULLIVANcoined the term
"MANIFEST DESTINY" in 1845 to describe the essence of this mindset.
The religious fervor spawned by the Second Great Awakening created another incentive
for the drive west. Indeed, many settlers believed that God himself blessed the growth
of the American nation. The Native Americans were considered heathens. By
Christianizing the tribes, American missionaries believed they could save souls and they
became among the first to cross the Mississippi River.
Economic motives were paramount for others. The fur trade had been dominated by
European trading companies since colonial times. German immigrant John Jacob Astor
was one of the first American entrepreneurs to challenge the Europeans. He became a
millionaire in the process. The desire for more land brought aspiring homesteaders to
the frontier. When gold was discovered in California in 1848, the number of migrants
increased even more.
At the heart of manifest destiny was the pervasive belief in American cultural and racial
superiority. Native Americans had long been perceived as inferior, and efforts to
"civilize" them had been widespread since the days of John Smith and MILES
STANDISH. The Hispanics who ruled Texas and the lucrative ports of California were
also seen as "backward."
Expanding the boundaries of the United States was in many ways a cultural war as well.
The desire of southerners to find more lands suitable for cotton cultivation would
eventually spread slavery to these regions. North of the Mason-Dixon line, many citizens
were deeply concerned about adding any more slave states. Manifest destiny touched on
issues of religion, money, race, patriotism, and morality. These clashed in the 1840s as
a truly great drama of regional conflict began to unfold.
Manifest Destiny was the idea that the Americans who colonized the Eastern Seaboard, won the
Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, and took advantage of the Louisiana Purchase were
following a preordained path when they expanded further westward, all the way to the West Coast of
North America.
The term itself was first used in print by New York editor John L. O'Sullivan, in an article urging
support for the annexation of Texas. The article, titled "Annexation," appeared in the July-August
1845 edition of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review. In particular, O'Sullivan wrote,
that it was America's "manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the
free development of our yearly multiplying millions."
The United States annexed Texas and won the consequent Mexican-American War. As a result, in the
particulars of the Mexican Cession, the U.S. gained a wide swath of new territory, further fueling the
fevor of expansion. It wasn't until the border dispute with Great Britain, however, over the Oregon
Territory that the term Manifest Destiny appeared again. This was in December of 1845, and the U.S.
and Britain were squabbling over the boundaries of the Oregon Territory. Despite looming war with
Mexico, many Americans wanted to go to war over Oregon as well. The northern border of the
Oregon Territory was at the 54th parallel and 40. War hawks who wanted American soldiers to seize
all of the Oregon Territory adopted the cry "54 40 or right" to plead their case. O'Sullivan argued for
annexation of Oregon as well (all of it), again using the term "manifest destiny." This time, the
description stuck.
The belief of O'Sullivan and others was that Americans were following a path laid out for them by
Providence, or God, in pursuing westward expansion. Another tenet of Manifest Destiny was a nearly
religious fervor for spreading the ideas behind the democratic-republican government and proponent
of individual liberty that the United States had become. Whatever the driver, the term became a
commonly used one, more and more often used a synonym for westward expansion.
The term Manifest Destiny took on political overtones. In the mid 1800s, the American political scene
was very much a two-party struggle, between the Democrats and the Whigs. Democratic
President James K. Polk drove the annexation of Texas, and others in his political party thought the
same way as Polk did. The Whig Party, by contrast, was suspicious of expansion that was too rapid.
When the Whig Party gave rise to the Republican Party, the struggle continued and also morphed into
North vs. South, with both sides of each divide trying to claim that right was on their side in the
further expansion (or not) of American settlement.
Standing in the way of this westward expansion, of course, were the hundreds of Native American
tribes living in the Midwest and West. The U.S. repeatedly signed treaties with tribes, giving up
money for land, and then broke those treaties, taking back the money in many cases. It was not an
uncommon belief at the time that white Europeans were superior to nonwhite Native Americans (and
African-Americans). This thinking drove settlers onward and westward, in pursuit of what they
thought was their right (and, in some cases, duty) to fulfill their destiny.
The term made a bit of a comeback at the end of the 19th Century, in rhetoric in support of the
Spanish-American War. Usage then wasn't so much about expansion from coast to coast as it was of
standing on the world stage.