Manifest destiny

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Manifest destiny good or evil? For some it was a God “given” right that white supremacy should rule a whole continent. For others, it meant lives. Manifest Destiny affected the U.S, Mexico, and Native Americans. The proposal of Manifest Destiny influenced the U.S. The Mexican-American War was the first American military conflict fought entirely on another country's soil and the first to be closely recorded by the press. Jackson declared the war by invoking congress to recognize the existence of war (James k. Polk, Message on war). The war ended with American victory and a treaty that increased the nation's size by more than 500,000 square miles (2014 Shmoop University, Inc.). The next diplomatic settlement was a disagreement over the boundaries of the Oregon Territory, known as the Fifty-Four Forty or Fight (United States History, Harcourt Education Company), was between the United States and Britain in 1818. They established a joint claim over the Oregon Territory ,but ended in the addition another quarter million square miles to the U.S nation. This rapid ex...

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    The United States of America has never been content with stagnation. The landmass of the Thirteen Colonies was enough to rival that of the Mother country from which they separated. The forefathers believed that it was the manifest destiny of this nation to eventually claim the expansion from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. By 1890, nearly a hundred years following the original claim of Manifest Destiny, the land that was once open, was now under American control. But no sooner was the Great American Frontier closed, than was the door to East Asian expansion opened with the great gold key of American diplomacy. In a world where imperialism was contagious, and cartographers had to work around the clock to keep up with an ever-changing geopolitical landscape, the United States seized the opportunity to establish herself as a significant world power. With great expansionist minds at her helm, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Howard Taft the United States began to grow beyond her border to claim stake in this wide-open world. This new expansionism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a different institution than its early to mid nineteenth century counterpart. Still, the drive to exercise the sovereignty of the United State and to propel itself over the world’s stage was the same then as it was in the time of Thomas Jefferson. In order to understand this assertion, attention must be given to three levels of analysis. First, the similarities that exist between the drive and purpose of old and new expansion must be taken into account. Second, the differences in the global political scene must be considered. Finally, there exits differences in the means by which expansion occurred.

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