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Essay on the cause of manifest destiny
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Between 1840 and 1860, the idea of Manifest Destiny led pioneers West expanding our borders and making America “Great.” The motivation and opportunities that took Americans West were varied. In the 1840s Americans began their push west of the Mississippi River. Thousands of Americans left their homes in the Eastern and Midwestern part of the U.S. The pioneers traveled to what is now Texas, Oregon, California, Utah, and all the unsettled land west of the Rocky Mountains. The pioneers traveled to an unsettled land. Their biggest opportunities included: the dream of finding gold, getting rich farmland, freedom of religion, adventure, and to make a fresh start. In time, the boundaries of the U.S. stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific …show more content…
Ocean. America had always been great, but with the addition of large areas of land between 1840 and 1860 the greatness of America got better. By 1840, Americans knew about settlers that had gone to Texas, Oregon, Utah, and California.
Many Americans began to think they wanted to claim all that land. Many believed it was God’s plan to settle the lands that reached to the Pacific Ocean. The motivation of Manifest Destiny started the westward movement. At one time, the U.S. owned land to the Rocky Mountains. The president who encouraged the westward expansion was President James K. Polk. His goal was to expand the U.S. from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Manifest destiny was what Polk believed in. Manifest destiny means “clear to see” or “obvious” (Sheinkin 34) One of the supporters of this idea was journalist, John O’Sullivan. He wrote, “The American claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty” ( 34) …show more content…
. The annexation of Texas in 1845 was an opportunity for the U.S. to expand its borders. In the 1840s people from Alabama. Mississippi, and Louisiana left notes on their doors that read “GTT.” Everyone knew that meant Gone to Texas. (Sonneborn 54). Many believed that Texas should be added to the Union based on the idea of manifest destiny. Texas was appealing to pioneers because the region was good for growing cotton, raising cattle, and the land was cheap. Many Americans who went to Texas came from the South. Stephen Austin and 300 families moved to Texas. ( Sheinkin 23). The early settlers living in Texas had no loyalty to Mexico. American settlers governed themselves. Conflicts grew between the Mexican government and the settlers. The Mexican government feared that Americans wanted to make Texas a part of the U.S. The Americans wanted to fight for their independence. Manifest destiny led settlers to Texas. President Polk encouraged pioneers to move West. He wanted the nation to expand by the idea of manifest destiny. Word spread of how beautiful the land was in the Oregon Territory. The valleys had good farmland and the climate was mild. Lots of deer, elk, and wild plants were everywhere. People who were living in the East heard stories of the West. One story said, “Fully cooked wild pigs stuck with forks roamed the Oregon countryside, just waiting for hungry travelers to grab them” (Sonneborn 47). In the early 1940s Great Britain and the U.S. shared ownership of the Oregon Territory. A peaceful settlement set the border at the 49th parallel. Thousands of people began to take the Oregon Trail. They went by covered wagon across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains to Oregon. Many of the pioneers were led by the theory of manifest destiny. The trip West was long and dangerous, but the pioneers felt that they had a right to claim the lands in the Oregon Territory. Amelia Stewart Knight was one traveler on the trail. She kept a diary of her family’s experience. She and her family traveled from Iowa to Oregon in 1853. Her diary entries give a lot of information about her trip. Monday, May 2: Indians came to our camp every day, begging money and something to eat. Children are getting used to them. Wednesday, June 1: It has been raining all day long...The little ones and myself are shut up in the wagon from the rain. All this for Oregon. Oregon you must be a wonderful country. Sunday, July 17: We crossed Swamp Creek this morning, and Goose Creek this afternoon...Here Chat, our son, fell out of the wagon, but did not get hurt much ( The Diary of Amelia Stewart Knight” ). Because of manifest destiny, the Rocky Mountains were no longer the boundary of the U.S. The Mexican Cession was land turned over to the U.S.
by Mexico. This land was given to the U.S. at the end of the Mexican War. California and Utah were a part of the Mexican Cession. The desire to find gold, get farmland, and for the Mormons to find a place to live so that they could practice their religion were motives for moving west. The largest group to move into the Mexican Cession were the Mormons. Brigham Young and his followers moved West outside the boundaries of the U.S. in the 1840s. They followed the Mormon Trail to Great Salt Lake. The journey was difficult, but the Mormons felt that it was their destiny to head West. Young had to remind the Mormons about their behavior as they traveled the trail. He said, “Joking, nonsense, profane language, trifling conversation and loud laughter do not belong to us. Suppose the angels were witnessing the hoe-down the other evening, and listening to the haw haws...would they not be ashamed of it?” (Barnard 181)/ The Mormons had to learn to live in dry climate conditions. Brigham Young called the dry land of Utah Deseret after the Mormon name for the honeybee (182). Often the winters were hard on the Mormon pioneers. The winter of 1848-49 was called the “Starving Time.” “The Mormons were cold and ate glue soup which was a mixture of oxhide boiled in water” ( 182). Once they learned how to live in the dry lands around the Great Salt Lake things improved. The Mormons learned that they could make money from the
pioneers that were heading to California. The Mormon pioneers set up good trade with the pioneers heading west. They sold all the items a prospector might need to mine for gold. California was a part of the Mexican Cession. The desire to get rich and find gold took pioneers to California. Other opportunities and manifest destiny brought pioneers to the West. Some came for adventure. Wild stories reached East about how plentiful gold was. One story was “there was so much gold dust in the air that a California man found sixteen dollars’ worth just by washing out his beard” (Sonneborn 60). The pioneers who moved West in search of gold were called the forty-niners. Many pioneers were able to buy large amounts of land at a cheap price. John Sutter got 49,000 acres of land from the Mexican Cession (Lavender 217). Sutter set up a trading post on the California Trail. The California Trail was just as difficult as the Oregon Trail. J. Goldsborough Bruff said: “Fatigue and heat cause the train to move slowly... .road-powder blinding and choking one. I found, near an orange colored clay spur, a well, or tank, of water, and a crowd of thirsty men and animals surrounding it. A few yards to the left of this another similar hole, filled up with a dead ox, his hind quarters and legs still sticking out above ground. Dead oxen thick about here and stench suffocating” (Monaghan 111). Not everyone found gold but many came to California in all conditions. “All were off for the mines, some on horses, some on carts, and some on crutches, and one went in a litter” (Lavender 249). The best way to make money in California is the 1840s was to sell stuff to the gold miners. The miners paid for what they needed in gold. One example of how a trading post owner made money was Levi Strauss. Strauss invented a new kind of pants that wouldn’t fall apart. He used denim fabric, dyed blue and held together with metal rivets. His invention became became blue jeans (Sheinkin 82). Trading post owners also made money by selling food at an expensive price. For example, in 1849, eggs cost 75 cents to $1.00 each. A small potato was 25 cents and a duck could cost from $2.00 to $5.00 each (Monaghan 147). The dream of manifest destiny came true. More land was added to the U.S., when President Pierce sent James Gadsden to Mexico to buy land. For $10 million, the U.S. added 30,000 square miles. This became known as the Gadsden Purchase (Cavendish). The dream of President Polk to extend the borders from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean was finished. With a strong belief in manifest destiny, the U.S. nearly doubled in size between 1840 and 1860. The pioneers took land that they felt was rightfully theirs. They settled the land in what is now Texas. They claimed the land found in the Oregon Territory and they added land from the Mexican Cession. The pioneers made America great!
Many Americans packed few belongings and headed west during the middle to the late nineteenth century. It was during this time period that the idea of manifest destiny became rooted in American customs and ideals. Manifest Destiny is the idea that supported and justified expansionist policies, it declared that expansion was both necessary and right. America’s expansionist attitudes were prominent during the debate over the territorial rights of the Oregon territory. America wanted to claim the Oregon territory as its own, but Great Britain would not allow that. Eventually the two nations came to an agreement and a compromise was reached, as seen in document B. The first major party of settlers that traveled to the west settled in Oregon.
America’s Manifest Destiny first surfaced around the 1840’s, when John O’Sullivan first titled the ideals that America had recently gained on claiming the West as their ‘Manifest Destiny.’ Americans wanted to settle in the West for multiple reasons, from the idea that God wanted them to settle all the way to the West co...
Through Manifest Destiny, the U.S. conquered many new territories. Ever since the U.S. became its own country, they always wanted more land. They thought that the Manifest Destiny gave them the right to expand and conquer more land. The United States were offered a deal known as the Louisiana Purchase which doubled their size. Even after they received this land, they were thirsty for more. They wanted to have Texas as their own. After Texas got their independence from Mexico, President Polk annexed it. Polk had his eye set on California next. But before he could get California, he had to deal with border dispute in Texas, leading to the war with Mexico. So, did the United States have a good reason to go to war with Mexico? The answer is simple, the U.S. was not justified into going to war with Mexico. This is proven through the Manifest Destiny, border disputes, and an American viewpoint on the war.
Man has always had the desire to expand, venture forth to develop greater wealth. With the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory and the prospects of future land acquisition, Americans used the idea of Manifest Destiny to justify their actions for moving westward and their treatment of Native Americans. The idea of Manifest Destiny was created directly by the European-used Doctrine of Discovery and industrialization; this direct correlation was proven to be true from the verdict of the court case Johnson v. M’Intosh.
In the 1830’s America was highly influenced by the Manifest Destiny Ideal. Manifest Destiny was the motivating force behind the rapid expansion of America into the West. This ideal was highly sponsored by posters, newspapers, and various other methods of communication. Propaganda was and is still an incredibly common way to spread an idea to the masses. Though Manifest Destiny was not an official government policy, it led to the passing of the Homestead Act. The Homestead Act gave applicants freehold titles of undeveloped land outside of the original thirteen colonies. It encouraged Westward colonization and territorial acquisition. The Homestead Act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. To America, Manifest Destiny was the idea that America was destined to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic, to the Pacific Ocean. Throughout this time Native Americans were seen as obstacles because they occupied land that the United States needed to conquer to continue with their Manifest Destiny Ideal. Many wars were fought between the A...
Manifest Destiny was the belief that the United States was destined to expand from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean; it has also been used to advocate for or justify other territorial acquisitions. Advocates of Manifest Destiny believed that expansion was not only good, but that it was obvious and certain. Originally a political catch phrase of the 19th century, "Manifest Destiny" eventually became a standard historical term, often used as a synonym for the expansion of the United States across the North American continent.In the early 1840s John L. O’Sullivan, editor of the Democratic Review, inaugurated the expression Manifest Destiny to depict American expansionism. O’Sullivan described the nation’s extension as inevitable and criticized those that delayed that progression "for the avowed object of thwarting our policy, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."(Horsman 219) Horsman notes that even though O’Sullivan laid claim to the phrase manifest destiny, the idea was embedded in Anglo-Saxon heritage. In chapter one of Horsman the concept of ...
Manifest Destiny was the idea that it was the United States’ destiny to take over all of North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Most of the public was in favor of territorial expansion, though some politicians felt it contradicted the constitution.
In the early nineteenth century, most Northerners and Southerners agreed entirely that Americans should settle Western territories, and that it was God’s plan, or their “manifest destiny.” Northerners and Southerners who moved west were in search of a better life and personal economic gain; were they had failed before in the east, they believed they would do better in the west. The Panic of 1837 was a motivation to head
John L. O’Sullivan, an editor, coined the term “Manifest Destiny” and gave the expansionist movement its name in 1845. The “Manifest Destiny” was the belief that Americans had the divine right to occupy North America. The Americans believed they were culturally and racially superior over other nations and other races such as the Native American Indians and Mexicans. The notion of the ‘Manifest Destiny’ was that the Americans were morally superior and therefore morally obligated to try to spread enlighten and civilization to the less civilized societies. According to World History Group, “The closest America came to making ‘Manifest Destiny’ an official policy was The Monroe Doctrine, adopted in 1823, it put European nations on notice that the U.S. would defend other nations of the Western Hemisphere from further colonization” (World History, 2015). This divine American mission caused Anglo-Saxon Americans to believe they had the natural right to move west and bring blessings of self-government and religion, more specifically-
The Manifest Destiny was a progressive movement starting in the 1840's. John O'Sullivan, a democratic leader, named the movement in 1845. Manifest Destiny meant that westward expansion was America's destiny. The land that was added to the U.S. after 1840 (the start of Manifest Destiny) includes The Texas Annexation (1845), The Oregon Country (1846), The Mexican Cession (1848), The Gadsden Purchase (1853), Alaska (1867), and Hawaii (1898). Although this movement would take several years to complete, things started changing before we knew it.
Many believed in Manifest Destiny. That is was a God given right to spread Christianity and American ideals such as democracy all over the continent from coast to coast. This idea triggered over a million Americans to get up and sell their homes in the east and set out on Oregon, Mormon, Santa Fe, and California trails. Not everyone agreed with this expansion in the West. The slavery debate, once again, fueled many problems with Westward expansion.
The United States, as a young nation, had the desire to expand westward and become a true continental United States that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Various factors, strategic and economic, contributed to the desire to expand westward. According to John O’Sullivan, as cited by Hestedt in Manifest Destiny 2004; "the U.S. had manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence to the free development of our yearly multiplying millions" (¶2). As Americans ventured westward to settle the frontier, their inherent superior beliefs, culture and the principles of democracy accompanied them. America’s ruthless ambition to fulfill its manifest destiny had a profound impact on the nation’s economy, social systems and foreign and domestic policies; westward expansion was a tumultuous period in American History that included periods of conflict with the Native Americans and Hispanics and increased in sectionalism that created the backdrop for the Civil War.
In the late nineteenth century the expansion to the west increased the American culture. Since population was growing they needed to satisfy demands equally for every person. The idea of Manifest Destiny was used as a justification for the expansion and westward movement. Natives Americans were against the thought Americans had about the West. As a result Americans put a number of policies that helped remove the Natives Americans of the West. Americans were trying to destroy the culture Natives had.
One of the largest and most wealthy countries in the world, the United States of America, has gone through many changes in its long history. From winning its independence from Great Britain to present day, America has changed dramatically and continues to change. A term first coined in the 1840s, "Manifest Destiny" helped push America into the next century and make the country part of what it is today. The ideas behind Manifest Destiny played an important role in the development of the United States by allowing the territorial expansion of the 1800s. Without the expansion of the era, America would not have most of the western part of the country it does now.
Manifest Destiny! This simple phrase enraptured the United States during the late 1800’s, and came to symbolize an era of westward expansion through numerous powerful entities. The expansion can be inspected though many different contextual lenses, but if examined among the larger histories of the United States, this movement can be classified as one of the most influential developments of the post-Civil War period. While very influential to the larger part of American history, the seemingly barbaric methods that were used conquer the western lands and their peoples took physical and economical forms that proved to be a plague upon the West.