The Manifest Destiny is the idea of continental expansion by the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, which naturally occurred out of a deep want and need to explore and conquer new lands and establish new borders. This idea contributed to several wars, including the US-Mexican War.
Mexico and the United States had its share of territorial issues. With only four more days of his presidency, on March 1, 1845, President John Tyler signed the Texas annexation bill. When the United States formally offered annexation to Texas in 1845, Mexico, protested. On December 29, 1845, Texas was formally admitted to the Union. Mexico refused to accept the loss of Texas, as written in the Treaty of Velasco that was created after the Battle of San Jacinto, in April 21, 1836, and still considered Texas to be Mexican territory, which obtained independence from Spain in 1821, that was under temporary rule of a rebel government. Mexico declared that the annexation of Texas was the same as an act of war. Around the same time, American President, James K. Polk (who took office on March 4, 1845) sent diplomat John Slidell to Mexico with an offer to buy Texas, New Mexico and California for about $30 million. Mexico rejected the offer.
President Polk wanted to define the “borderline” of America. He sent orders to US Army General Zachary Taylor to set up a defense system on the north bank of the Rio Grande River. In addition, Polk also wanted to influence the people who lived in the region to pressure the Mexicans to sell off the territory that was not actually under any established form of government at that time since Mexico’s frontiers had no formal king or leader. Polk ordered US Colonel Stephen Kearney to the New Mexico territor...
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... and the Oregon Territory establishment with Britain, along with the Missouri Compromise ended in a political aftermath of irreconcilable conflicts between the North and the South over the expansion of slavery, led to the beginning of the Civil War.
Source Cited
1. Hofstadter, Beatrice K. and Richard. Great Issues in American History, Volume II: From the Revolution to the Civil War, 1765 - 1865. Alfred A. knopf, Inc. and Random House, Inc., NY (1958) page 341.
Note: Document of the James K. Polk, War Message given to the US congress on May 11, 1846.
Other Recourses
PBS, "The U.S. - Mexican War: Homepage, " KERA, http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/index_flash.html (accessed 11.3.2006, 2006). http://millercenter.org/president/events/03_01 http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=26
http://www.nps.gov/cham/historyculture/mexican-american-war.htm
Polk, the new president, made a proposal to the Mexican government to purchase the disputed land. When that offer was rejected, troops from the United States were moved into the disputed territory of Coahuila. These troops were then attacked by Mexican troops, killing 12 American troops and taking 52 prisoners. These same Mexican troops later laid put upon a US fort along the Rio Grande. This would lead to the conflict that resulted in the loss of much of Mexico's northern territory.US forces quickly occupied Mexico and California Territory, then invaded parts of Northeastern Mexico and Northwest Mexico. The Pacific took control of several garrisons on the Pacific coast.
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 ...
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!
In 1844 the new president Polk got elected he had a vision to expand the U.S westward, provoking the war with Mexico. When Polk first got elected he concentrated on the land northwestward which was possessed b...
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.
Polk took office in 1845. His youth and strong views proved difficult, and conflict filled his tenure as president. Seen both as a brilliant supporter of the manifest destiny ideology and as a incompetent president, the controversy of his presidency revolved around his expansionist dreams of conquering all land between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. These issues came to a head in 1845 after President Polk was able to use a false claim to convince Congress to declare war on Mexico. Polk could not prove his claim was completely true, but he was determined to expand America’s land and thus sought to forcibly take the land through war with Mexico after the country refused his offers to purchase the land. These extreme actions were within Polk’s power as president, which were entrusted to him by the people of the United States, but do his ends justify his unethical means? President Polk may have had the best interest of Americans in mind, but his warping of the truth has led me to view his actions, and consequently the entire Mexican-American War, as a pointless
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.
Manifest destiny is the idea that Americans had, and have, the inherent right to expand the United States from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. As we know, this eventually happened, but it took a lot of time, money, blood, and effort in order to achieve this divine goal. We take for granted the size and span of our country, when for a good part of the 19th century, we shared the land mass with Spanish Mexico. It’s important to understand what drove us to pursue this goal, and the struggles that we encountered in obtaining, exploring, and settling the land.
Manifest Destiny is the idea that the Americans were destined to settle in the new territories and connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It was the belief that God supported American expansion westward, adding to the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 which, under President Jefferson, had doubled the size of the United States. A journalist by the name of John L. O'Sullivan wrote an article in 1839, through which he coined the term manifest destiny and predicted a divine destiny for the United States. Not only does this destiny have to do with westward expansion, but also each state would share the same values.
In the mid-19th century, the West drew increasing numbers of American settlers despite the hardships of the journey and the difficult living conditions that waited them at their journey’s end. Thus Americans were immediately sized on the phrase “ Manifest Destiny”- believing that United State’s destiny is manifest, inevitable, to expand to the Pacific Ocean and into Mexican territory.
Since the early 1800s the United States began a mission of westward expansion. Americans believed that they were entitled to North America which brought upon Manifest Destiny. The concept of Manifest Destiny encouraged Americans to spread their civilization all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and even down into Mexico. Manifest Destiny was the starting point of the development of America in many different aspects.
In year 1845, journalist John L. O’Sullivan used the phrase “manifest destiny” in an article to support the U.S. right to occupy new territories, saying: “[that 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 and federated self-government entrusted to us” (Boyer 388). O’Sullivan proposed the idea that the expansion of the United States wouldn’t happen if it was not supposed to. The topic created a big controversy whether the Manifest Destiny confers the United States the destiny to expand or it is an excuse to take other people’s land (Allard par. 1).
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.
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.
Carpenter, F.B. “First Reading of the Proclamation” 1886. Library of Congress. web. 2 February 2014