The Concept of expansion has been a recurring theme throughout U.S history from the beginning of the formation of the country, through the Revolution and Civil War. There were many ideologies that influenced and fueled expansion through the U.S. These main ideologies were Manifest Destiny, racism, and the culture of the cash crop systems that fundemented the country’s wealth up until the Industrial Revolution. These ideologies were carefully crafted and spread to mask a much more simple agenda, which was profit.The influences by these ideas determined the country’s political, economic, and social aspects by exploiting and abusing the slaves and Native Americans. It transformed the lives of all people within U.S soil, leaving some prosperous …show more content…
The notion of the American Dream, has coined the U.S. as the land of opportunities for all, but throughout history these ideologies have made this dream exclusive, rather than inclusive at the expense of the sacrifices of certain groups of people. The idea of Manifest Destiny is what paved the way for expansion of U.S territory. It was the belief that the ones in power were put there by God himself and it was their responsibility to expand their dominion and rule over all. This dangerous philosophy led to the belief of self entitlement with many of the men in power. They believed that what they were doing was right and taking land from the Indians was predestined and God’s will. In the name of their God, they committed horrible atrocities and gained a level of self-entitled superiority over all other races of human beings. Manifest Destiny was only used as a mask for their greed and they utilized it to manipulate a population of people. The ideology of Manifest Destiny was a contributing factor in the Louisiana Purchase, Indian Removal, slavery, and the expansion into Mexican territory. This idea that a group of elites were predestined to rule the world became into racial …show more content…
African people were brought over to the Americans through the Atlantic Slave Trade by force. “What the Englishmen were developing, concurrently with slavery, was a new criterion of status. The idea of race, whose rationale could be situated in the “natural divisions” of humankind.”(The Significance of Slavery in the Creation of Race”p.143) They were ripped away and separated from their families, and had their cultures, beliefs, and ideologies completely drained by their white owners. Black people were seen as the most inferior human beings in all existence, just below indigenous people. The classification of “homortoglodytes” derived from the belief of the intermediate state of ape and human. Africans were seen as the last to evolve, and according to science it was the white man’s job to rule over all other inferior races of people. “As the barbarities of slavery progressed, it was easier to seize upon speculations about the physical resemblance of Negroes to apes to diminish the humanness of the slave.”(Black Inferiority: The Lowest of Them All p182) This led Blacks to be dehumanized, they were seen as property not as humans obstructed from sympathy and compassion.These ideologies were not just planned and created for the progress of knowledge but for the profit of the elite. If they could
What Really transformed the country was the ability to move products across great distances and the Erie Canal was a huge turning point for economic growth in America. Opened in 1825, The Erie Canal was the engineering breakthrough of the nineteenth century: Its Four waterways would connect manufacturing and eastern ports with the rest of the country. Farmers could now ship their goods, they can move out, come down the Hudson river and this way of commute became a part of a global economy. This Moment would bring about the thought of expansion which will become the fuse to enormous economic growth that will ultimately in the next century, becomes the Belief of manifest destiny. The nation that both reflected the pride which reflected American nationalism, And the idealistic image of social perfection through god and the church caused the nation to separate. As many people will support it, several will oppose
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 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.
From western expansion to foreign imperialism the United States has always been an expansionist country. Early America’s focus was to conquer the natives and obtain western land within North America, but in the latter of America’s history, specifically in the nineteenth and twentieth century, foreign imperialism became the new focus. America’s activity in foreign imperialism was a continuation and departure of the United States’ early expansionism. It was a continuation in terms of manifest destiny, the spread of Christianity, and by the concept of “the city on a hill” and a departure in terms of foreign involvement.
United States expansionism in the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century is both a continuation and a departure of past United States expansionism. Expansionism in the United States has occurred for many reasons. Power (from land), religion, economics, and the ideas of imperialism and manifest destiny are just a few reasons why the U.S. decided to expand time and again throughout the course of its 231 year history. Expansionism has evolved throughout the years as the inhabitants of the country have progressed both socially (the Second Great Awakening, the women's suffrage movement, the populist party and the early 19th and 20th century social reformers) and economically (factories, better farms, more jobs, etc.) Expansion changed from non-interference policies to the democratic control of the government as the United States grew in both size and population. Through the use of the documents and events during two major-expansion time periods (1776-1880) and 1880-1914), I will display both the continuation and departure trends of United States expansionism.
I believe that the American policy of Manifest Destiny was justified for many reasons. It comes down to the Louisiana purchase when Thomas Jefferson made the risk of purchasing land that was almost double the size of the country that they had already established. There are many reasons why I believe the Manifest Destiny like, land benefits, resources and the transportation industry. But yet there are a couple reasons why it should not be justified like how they had to kill of and take most of the indians territory. This had to be done though. All in all I believe that the Manifest Destiny should be justified for many reasons.
Approaching the mid-1800’s, a movement coined as “Manifest Destiny” took over the American nation. Manifest Destiny was the overall idea that Americans had the “divine right” to expand towards the west. Many reasons were considered when talking about settling west, reasons such as cheap land, economic growth, and job opportunities, etc. Americans wanted to expand the national territory from ocean to ocean and express their superiority. Overall, the purpose of Manifest Destiny was to spread American values and expand the geographical borders of the nation.
The “Manifest Destiny,” was the belief that the United States was destined to take occupation and possession of the entire continent. Its intention was to promote further territorial expansion spreading a common system of principles across every area between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the early United States. The concept of American expansion was not a new thought. Years ago, many Europeans had also shared a similar understanding, claiming a divine right to obtain new lands as their own to tame. “A Plea for Compromise” Robert C. Winthrop recalls, “Spain and Portugal, we all know, in the early part of the sixteenth century, laid claim to the jurisdiction of this whole northern continent of America” (Winthrop). However, Journalist John
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.
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.
Manifest Destiny is a phrase used to express the belief that the United States had a mission to expand its borders, thereby spreading its form of democracy and freedom. Originally a political catchphrase of the nineteenth-century, Manifest Destiny eventually became a standard historical term, often used as a synonym for the territorial expansion of the United States across North America towards the Pacific Ocean. The United States government believed that the Native Americans were a problem that was hindering Manifest Destiny from being fulfilled (or at the very least, used the idea of Manifest Destiny to gain land and resources the Indians possessed), and would do everything in their power to exterminate the “Indian Problem.” The U.S. government, along with the majority of the U.S. population, eradicated this problem through lies, forced removal, and murder. This eradication nearly wiped out a race of people, whose only crime was mere existence in a land they had lived on, respected, and cherished for hundreds of years. The U.S. government had three main ways of solving the “Indian Problem”. They would remove them, kill them, or segregate them from the “civilized” white man by placing the Indian on reservations. The Indians soon learned that the U.S. government could not be trusted, and fought fiercely against the harsh injustices that were being administered. Tragically, the Indians would eventually have their spirits broken, living out their meager existence in the terrible homes called reservations.
Various factors in the United States in early 1800’s caused the nation to become grabbed with the Western Expansion. First, there were geographical and psychological issues. After Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase in 1803, which had doubled the United States’ size, Americans explored this huge territory in limited numbers. Then the fever of expansion swept through country; Americans believed that their movement westward and southward was destined and ordained by God.
Many causes fueling America's need to expand and acquire new lands existed. One of the reasons was Americans were experiencing "a large birthrate increase due to immigration. And because agriculture provided the primary economic structure, large f...
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.