Manifest Destiny: The Expansion Into The West

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Recommended: Social changes after the civil war and reconstruction

Manifest Destiny is the ideology that the expansion into the American West was not only inevitable, but the duty of the American people. This expansion was justified throughout American history, as it was believed to be necessary for the progress of civilization and as a moral obligation for white Americans. The implementation of Manifest Destiny was considered the will of God for Americans to spread civilization and Protestantism. However, the definition of Manifest Destiny shifts throughout the United State’s expansion into modernity as race, class, and gender roles redefine the very essence of what it means to be an American. Post-civil war in the United States cultivated the core of Manifest Destiny. The end of the war, while establishing the rights of African Americans by law, brought about dramatic social change and tension without much guidance or assistance from the government. Reconstruction: The Second Civil War highlights these tensions, discussing the Black Codes that limited African American freedoms at the State level. The expansion into the West …show more content…

Manifest Destiny in this age included the idea of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” and survival of the fittest. Challenging over civilization, the concepts of masculinity and the balance between industrialized society and the wild are illustrated in works of the time, including The Call of the Wild. The novel’s main character, Buck, struggles between his civilized upbringing and the new wildness he find himself in which clearly illustrates the struggle of Americans to develop new ways of understanding their rapidly industrialized society. London’s idea of “the law of club and fang” illuminate the obsession with the idealized wild nature of the world that can be conquered versus the civilized world the United States has transformed

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