How Does Manifest Destiny Legitimize The Mexican-American War?

The Mexican War or Mexican-American War is a war that had occurred from 1846-1848 and the legitimacy of the war depends only on the idea of Manifest Destiny. The war was a conflict that began with a territory dispute between the United Mexican States and the United States of America. Many historians would argue that the conflict was inevitable and that the fight between territories was unavoidable as the United States had already began its path of seizing land by any means necessary including winning conflicts and purchasing land. The Mexican people were not the only people who were attacked and defeated for land, and the list of people also includes the Native Americans at the time that populated much of North America. Although many would

Even if the United States wanted only to acquire land assuming that the country’s intentions did not lie in starting a war, the thesis still begs the question: How exactly does Manifest Destiny legitimize the war? In order to answer this question one must first define all of the key terms in the question. Manifest Destiny was defined early by Robert J. Miller but what exactly is the definition of “legitimize”? In order to properly answer the thesis question one must define legitimize in the context of the Mexican War. In Merriam Webster, legitimize is defined as, “to make legitimate”. Legitimate is defined as “allowed according to rules or laws,” or “real, accepted, or official,” or “fair or reasonable”. Therefore the entire transitive definition of legitimize is “to be allowed or accepted according to laws, rules, or reasonability.” In other dictionaries, such as the Oxford dictionary and Dictionary.com, the definitions

Justified would imply that there is some type of universal reasoning that would state what occurred because of the war was a good outcome. The purpose of the thesis is not to justify the Mexican War but to simply see to what degree did Manifest Destiny legitimize it. Based on the definition of legitimize, all that is needed to legitimize it is either a law or a rule that allows for the war to be accepted. Manifest Destiny is that “rule” that allows for the American people to accept the war thereby making it legitimate. The reasons for legitimizing the Mexican War were quite simple at the time. The only things needed to legitimize the war were Manifest Destiny, opposing Christian values, and weapons. The reason this was only needed was because the majority of the country at the time was Christian and Christian ideas such as determinism could help legitimize the war. The idea that the United States’ destiny to expand westward was already present inside of the mindset of Americans long before the war had started. This mindset helped drive the forces of the American government and people to eventually spark the Mexican