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Us history chapater 12 manifest destiny
Us history chapter 12 manifest destiny
What was america's manifest destiny
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Manifest Destiny has been around for centuries. It has been present in dozens of historical events, and is still the reason the world is how it is now. Manifest Destiny is interpreted in different ways, by different people. Some positive and some negative. I believe that the concept of Manifest Destiny has shaped the world of today. The concept has benefited the world socially, economically, politically and territorially. Such as expansion of land, increase of power, and benefiting trade. Every event where Manifest Destiny was present had one thing in common, expansion. My interpretation of Manifest Destiny is expansion. When it comes to Manifest Destiny it was said by many that it is just another word for expansion. Fredrick Merk said “It …show more content…
meant expansion, prearranged by Heaven, over an area not clearly defined.” Back in the day Manifest Destiny was used a lot. Not only as a term, but in dozens of historical events. Some events where the term was not used, it was still present. However, some people may not see that because it can be interpreted differently, and not only one interpretation of it is correct. Back in the nineteenth century Manifest Destiny was looked at as an attitude. It was an attitude people had towards expansion. People saw it as their destiny. “Jacksonian Americans began to see and fulfill what they believed to be their destiny.” The attitude helped fuel western settlement, the Mexican war and also Native American removal. The term was used to express the Anglo-Saxon Americans goals to expand their civilizations across North America. Manifest Destiny was used to express the progress of liberty and also economic opportunity. Manifest Destiny was a term first employed by John L.
O’Sullivan in an article over the annexation of Texas, which was published in 1854 in the Democratic Review and United States magazine which O’Sullivan published himself. He looked at Manifest Destiny as a term of peace. Manifest Destiny was a phrase used by US expansionists during the US Mexican war, and the phrase was continued to be used after the war. During the Mexican war many war manifest destiny supporters believed that the United States goal was to revive Mexico by bringing progress and Protestantism southward. Robert May stated “Many wartime proponents of Manifest Destiny fused into the ideology a belief that the United States had a mission to regenerate Mexico by bringing progress and Protestantism southward.”(May 4). The use of this quote is to support my thesis statement that Manifest Destiny is all about expansion. After the Mexican war ended the slogan Manifest Destiny spread throughout different areas, and was continued being used throughout the nineteenth …show more content…
century. One of the most important points of Manifest Destiny in terms of expansion was progress.
In order to understand Manifest Destiny, it is said that you must understand the United States need to expand. Not only physically but socially, economically, and politically also. The United States at the time was suffering high birth rates, and their population was rising quickly. These high birth rates made the need to expand their territories very crucial. Between 1840 and 1850 the US suffered from two major depressions, causing a lot of people to move to frontier land which was very inexpensive. Moving to these frontier lands opened opportunities for self-advancement. Manifest Destiny was very important, and expansion was crucial. It lead to new opportunities which was a form of
progress. The trails of tears was another time in history where Manifest Destiny was present. The article The Trail of Tears stated, “The trail of tears was all about expanding American territory by forcing the Native Americans to move westward.”(2) This was so Americans could expand their territory to the Mississippi. River. The trail of tears was an eight hundred mile journey of sickness, misery and death. Men, women, and children died through this journey. Americans were able to expand their land and find areas to expand their territories into. The trail of tears helped Manifest Destiny because moving westward would lead to new opportunities, riches, and comfort to the settlers. This expansion was very important because it helped lead to the civil war. Manifest Destiny/expansion was a big factor of the civil war because “it was one of the major events where American settlers obtained more western land, and moved many people westward. This led to the Civil War by causing lots of tension between people in America and between Native Americans.” Which was also stated in the article The Trail of Tears. My point of this quote is to demonstrate that where the term manifest destiny is used, expansion is always present. Manifest Destiny and expansion are two of the same words in my opinion. Manifest Destiny could not have been present without expansion. Events such as the Mexican war and the trail of tears were all helped by Manifest Destiny. They were helped by expansion. Westward expansion was so important throughout these events. The progress made by this expansion and these events are also what is valuable. These events lead to social, territorial, and economical benefits. Things that could not be present then and now without the concept of Manifest Destiny.
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.
The point of view upon Manifest Destiny that I found most convincing and close to my own interpretation was “Manifest Destiny as an expression of white superiority is but one explanation for what became a clear rise of anti-Mexican sentiments in the 1850s”. This perspective to me seemed to be the only one that did not skirt around what seemed to be the logical truth and explanations for why Manifest Destiny took place: for the pursuit of Native American lands; anti-Mexican sentiments; for the prospects they were able to gain from western lands; and for political reasons. While a lot of other perspectives saw Manifest Destiny in the light of goodness and or because of religious reasons, I believe there was a bitter and more realistic truth;
...ver had the resources nor Polk's true imperialist nature. Polk's idea of "Manifest Destiny" was simply a way to rationalize the United States practice of imperialism in North America. Little of the land gained in the 19th century was given to the U.S.; most of it was taken using force and often violence. Financial compensation for the land was irrelevant considering the wars that took place to complete acquisition of the southwest. The motives of the United States government and President Polk were not only that of expansion. They had also wanted to gain new natural resources, land for agriculture, and the power that would be attained by the country's increased size. The country's belief in Polk's imperialistic form of expansion was the key to attaining a western seashore. The power gained by this expansion helped make America into a world powerhouse it is today.
Manifest Destiny did not end at Texas however, and neither did the debates over slavery and consequently the power of the government. In O’sullivan;s essay , The Annexation of Texas Is Part of America’s Manifest Destiny, O'Sullivan celebrated the annexation but also made this prediction, saying that the weak Mexican government, distracted by the war, could never hope to hold onto the large Californian territory and that “Already the advance guard of the irresistible army of the Anglo-Saxon emigration has begun to poor down upon it, armed with the plough and the rifle, and marking its trail with schools and colleges, courts and representative halls, mills and meeting houses.” (O'Sullivan Annexation). O'Sullivan spoke of the spread of democracy
The term “Manifest Destiny” was never actually used until 1845, but the idea was always implied from the Doctrine of Discovery. Without understanding the Doctrine, it is impossible to understand the reasons and fundamentals behind why Manifest Destiny began.This Doctrine was a set of ten steps and rules that European nations followed in order to avoid conflict over land holdings, created in the early 1400s. The first few steps give the discovering country full rights to buy the land from the native peoples. This is important, since it gave the discovering country the power of preemption. Conquered Indian peoples lose sovereign powers and the rights to free trade and diplomatic relations, and the land they occupy is said to be vacant. Religion played a massive role in the regulations of the Doctrine, since “non-Christian people were not deemed to have the same rights to land, sovereignty, and self determination as Christians”(Miller 4). These rules were all meant to favor the ethnocentric, with full understanding of the repercussions on those who lived in the places being conquered.
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 is 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.
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 ...
had created the Indian Removal act which sent them along the trail of tears to the
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.
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 accomplish fully, things started changing before we knew it. New technology took off right away!
O’ Sullivan. He was founder and editor of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review and editor of the New York Morning News. Most Americans believed that the superiority of their institutions and white culture bestowed on them a God-given right to spread across the continent. O’ Sullivan is credited with inventing the term “manifest destiny.” This term was created to justify white settlers taking the land they coveted. The independence of Texas was complete, therefore he believed that no obligation of duty toward Mexico tended in the least degree to restrain their right to effect the desired recovery of the fair provenance once their own. “She was released, rightfully and absolutely released, from all Mexican allegiance, or duty of cohesion to the Mexican political body, by the acts and fault of Mexico herself, and Mexico
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.
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.
“We are entering on its untrodden space, with the truths of God in our minds, beneficent objects in our hearts, and with a clear conscience unsullied by the past.” (O’Sullivan n. pag.) This quote from “John L. O’Sullivan on Manifest Destiny, 1839” demonstrates the beliefs the Americans of the time felt about moving. Westward expansion is an immense part of the history of the United States because it allowed the American culture to broaden. Many people in the nineteenth century believed that America would be a great and powerful nation in the years to come. However, these pioneers were often very arrogant and would forget flaws of their past and their government. Although Manifest Destiny was the American belief in the God-given right to move