![American Progress (John Gast painting)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/American_Progress_%28John_Gast_painting%29.jpg)
Manifest destiny was a cultural belief in the
19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand across
North America.
There were three basic tenets to the concept:
* The special virtues of the American people and their institutions
* The mission of the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
to redeem and remake the
West
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...
in the image of the
agrarian East
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...
* An irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty
Historians have emphasized that "manifest destiny" was always contested; many endorsed the idea, but the large majority of
Whigs and many prominent Americans (such as
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...
and
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Ar ...
) rejected the concept. Historian
Daniel Walker Howe
Daniel Walker Howe (born January 10, 1937) is an American historian who specializes in the early national period of U.S. history, with a particular interest in its intellectual and religious dimensions. He was Rhodes Professor of American Histor ...
writes, "American imperialism did not represent an American consensus; it provoked bitter dissent within the national polity while the ''Whigs'' saw America's moral mission as one of democratic example rather than conquest.
The term was used by the then-Democrats in the 1840s to justify the
Mexican–American War
The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1 ...
, and it was also used to negotiate the
Oregon boundary dispute
The Oregon boundary dispute or the Oregon Question was a 19th-century territorial dispute over the political division of the Pacific Northwest of North America between several nations that had competing territorial and commercial aspirations in ...
. Historian
Frederick Merk says manifest destiny always limped along because of its internal limitations and the issue of
slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
, and never became a national priority of the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
.
By 1843, former U.S. President
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams (; July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States ...
, originally a major supporter of the concept underlying manifest destiny, had changed his mind and repudiated
expansionism because it meant the expansion of slavery in Texas.
Newspaper editor
John O'Sullivan is generally credited with coining the term ''manifest destiny'' in 1845 to describe the essence of this mindset; other historians believe the unsigned editorial titled "Annexation" in which it first appeared was written by journalist and annexation advocate
Jane Cazneau
Jane Maria Eliza Cazneau (née McManus, widowed Storm; April 6, 1768 – December 12, 1878) was an Irish-American journalist, lobbyist, and publicist who advocated the annexation of all of Mexico during the Mexican–American War.
Education and ea ...
.
Context
There was never a set of principles defining manifest destiny; it was always a general idea rather than a specific policy made with a motto. Ill-defined but keenly felt, manifest destiny was an expression of conviction in the morality and value of expansionism that complemented other popular ideas of the era, including
American exceptionalism
American exceptionalism is the belief that the United States is inherently different from other nations.
Peggy Noonan, an American political pundit, wrote in ''The Wall Street Journal'' that "America is not exceptional because it has long att ...
and
Romantic nationalism.
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as ...
, who spoke of "extending the area of freedom", typified the conflation of America's potential greatness, the nation's budding sense of Romantic self-identity, and its expansion.
Yet Andrew Jackson would not be the only president to elaborate on the principles underlying manifest destiny. Owing in part to the lack of a definitive narrative outlining its rationale, proponents offered divergent or seemingly conflicting viewpoints. While many writers focused primarily upon American expansionism, be it into Mexico or across the Pacific, others saw the term as a call to example. Without an agreed upon interpretation, much less an elaborated political philosophy, these conflicting views of America's destiny were never resolved. This variety of possible meanings was summed up by Ernest Lee Tuveson: "A vast complex of ideas, policies, and actions is comprehended under the phrase 'Manifest Destiny'. They are not, as we should expect, all compatible, nor do they come from any one source."
Etymology
![John O'Sullivan](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/John_O%27Sullivan.jpg)
Journalist
John L. O'Sullivan
John Louis O'Sullivan (November 15, 1813 – March 24, 1895) was an American columnist, editor, and diplomat who used the term "manifest destiny" in 1845 to promote the annexation of Texas and the Oregon Country to the United States. O'Sullivan ...
was an influential advocate for
Jacksonian democracy
Jacksonian democracy was a 19th-century political philosophy in the United States that expanded suffrage to most white men over the age of 21, and restructured a number of federal institutions. Originating with the seventh U.S. president, And ...
and a complex character, described by
Julian Hawthorne
Julian Hawthorne (June 22, 1846 – July 14, 1934) was an American writer and journalist, the son of novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody. He wrote numerous poems, novels, short stories, mysteries and detective fiction, essays, t ...
as "always full of grand and world-embracing schemes". O'Sullivan wrote an article in 1839 that, while not using the term "manifest destiny", did predict a "divine destiny" for the United States based upon values such as equality, rights of conscience, and personal enfranchisement "to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man". This destiny was not explicitly territorial, but O'Sullivan predicted that the United States would be one of a "Union of many Republics" sharing those values.
[ ]
Six years later, in 1845, O'Sullivan wrote another essay titled ''Annexation'' in the ''Democratic Review'',
in which he first used the phrase ''manifest destiny''. In this article he urged the U.S. to
annex
Annex or Annexe refers to a building joined to or associated with a main building, providing additional space or accommodations.
It may also refer to:
Places
* The Annex, a neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada
* The Annex (New H ...
the
Republic of Texas, not only because Texas desired this, but because it was "our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by
Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions". Overcoming Whig opposition, Democrats
annexed Texas in 1845. O'Sullivan's first usage of the phrase "manifest destiny" attracted little attention.
O'Sullivan's second use of the phrase became extremely influential. On December 27, 1845, in his newspaper the ''New York Morning News'', O'Sullivan addressed the
ongoing boundary dispute with Britain. O'Sullivan argued that the United States had the right to claim "the whole of Oregon":
And 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.[McCrisken, Trevor B.]
"Exceptionalism: Manifest Destiny"
in ''Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy'' (2002), Vol. 2, p. 68
That is, O'Sullivan believed that Providence had given the United States a mission to spread
republican democracy ("the great experiment of liberty"). Because the
British government would not spread democracy, thought O'Sullivan, British claims to the territory should be overruled. O'Sullivan believed that manifest destiny was a moral ideal (a "higher law") that superseded other considerations.
O'Sullivan's original conception of manifest destiny was not a call for territorial expansion by force. He believed that the expansion of the United States would happen without the direction of the U.S. government or the involvement of the military. After Americans immigrated to new regions, they would set up new democratic governments, and then seek admission to the United States, as Texas had done. In 1845, O'Sullivan predicted that California would follow this pattern next, and that
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
would eventually request annexation as well. He disapproved of the
Mexican–American War
The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1 ...
in 1846, although he came to believe that the outcome would be beneficial to both countries.
Ironically, O'Sullivan's term became popular only after it was criticized by
Whig opponents of the
Polk administration. Whigs denounced manifest destiny, arguing, "that the designers and supporters of schemes of conquest, to be carried on by this government, are engaged in treason to our Constitution and Declaration of Rights, giving aid and comfort to the enemies of republicanism, in that they are advocating and preaching the doctrine of the right of conquest". On January 3, 1846, Representative
Robert Winthrop ridiculed the concept in Congress, saying "I suppose the right of a manifest destiny to spread will not be admitted to exist in any nation except the universal Yankee nation." Winthrop was the first in a long line of critics who suggested that advocates of manifest destiny were citing "Divine Providence" for justification of actions that were motivated by chauvinism and self-interest. Despite this criticism, expansionists embraced the phrase, which caught on so quickly that its origin was soon forgotten.
Themes and influences
![Mitchell A New Map of Texas, Oregon, and California 1846 UTA](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Mitchell_A_New_Map_of_Texas%2C_Oregon%2C_and_California_1846_UTA.jpg)
Historian
Frederick Merk wrote in 1963 that the concept of Manifest destiny was born out of "a sense of mission to redeem the Old World by high example ... generated by the potentialities of a new earth for building a new heaven". Merks also states that Manifest destiny was heavily contested concept within the nation:
From the outset Manifest Destiny—vast in program, in its sense of continentalism—was slight in support. It lacked national, sectional, or party following commensurate with its magnitude. The reason was it did not reflect the national spirit. The thesis that it embodied nationalism, found in much historical writing, is backed by little real supporting evidence.[
]
The major ideas of manifest destiny can be traced to the original ideology of the 15th-Century decree of the Doctrine of Christian Discover.
Historian Nick Estes links the 15-th century the catholic churches Doctrine of distinguishing Christians from Non-Christians in the expansion of European nations.
Estes and international jurist Tonya Gonnella Frichner further link the doctrine of discovery to ''Johnson v. M'Intosh'' and frame their arguments on the correlation between Manifest Destiny and Doctrine of Christian Discovery by using the statement made by Chief Justice John Marshall during the case, as he "spelled out the rights of the United states to Indigenous lands" and drew upon the Doctrine of Christian Discovery for his statement.
John Marshall ruled on the case that "indigenous peoples possess 'occupancy' rights, meaning their lands could be taken by the powers of 'discovery'".
Frichner explains that "The newly formed United States needed to manufacture an American Indian political identity and concept of Indian land that would open the way for united states and westward colonial expansion."
In this way, Manifest Destiny was inspired by the original European colonization of the Americas, and it excuses U.S. violence against Indigenous Nations.
Another possible influence is racial predominance, namely the idea that the American Anglo-Saxon race was "separate, innately superior" and "destined to bring good government, commercial prosperity and Christianity to the American continents and the world". Author Reginald Horsman wrote in 1981, this view also held that "inferior races were doomed to subordinate status or extinction." and that this was used to justify "the enslavement of the blacks and the expulsion and possible extermination of the Indians".
Historian William E. Weeks noted in 1996 that three key themes were usually touched upon by advocates of manifest destiny:
* the ''virtue'' of the American people and their institutions;
* the ''mission'' to spread these institutions, thereby redeeming and remaking the world in the image of the United States;
* the ''destiny'' under God to do this work.
The origin of the first theme, later known as
American exceptionalism
American exceptionalism is the belief that the United States is inherently different from other nations.
Peggy Noonan, an American political pundit, wrote in ''The Wall Street Journal'' that "America is not exceptional because it has long att ...
, was often traced to America's
Puritan
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. ...
heritage, particularly
John Winthrop
John Winthrop (January 12, 1587/88 – March 26, 1649) was an English Puritan lawyer and one of the leading figures in founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the second major settlement in New England following Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led t ...
's famous "
City upon a Hill" sermon of 1630, in which he called for the establishment of a virtuous community that would be a shining example to the
Old World. In his influential 1776 pamphlet ''
Common Sense
''Common Sense'' is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected various moral and political arg ...
'',
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; – In the contemporary record as noted by Conway, Paine's birth date is given as January 29, 1736–37. Common practice was to use a dash or a slash to separate the old-style year from the new-style year. In th ...
echoed this notion, arguing that the
American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...
provided an opportunity to create a new, better society:
We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand...
Many Americans agreed with Paine, and came to believe that the United States' virtue was a result of its special experiment in freedom and democracy.
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the natio ...
, in a letter to
James Monroe
James Monroe ( ; April 28, 1758July 4, 1831) was an American statesman, lawyer, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825. A member of the Democratic-Republican Party, Monroe was ...
, wrote, "it is impossible not to look forward to distant times when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits, and cover the whole northern, if not the southern continent."
To Americans in the decades that followed their proclaimed freedom for mankind, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, could only be described as the inauguration of "a new time scale" because the world would look back and define history as events that took place before, and after, the Declaration of Independence. It followed that Americans owed to the world an obligation to expand and preserve these beliefs.
The second theme's origination is less precise. A popular expression of America's mission was elaborated by President Abraham Lincoln's description in his December 1, 1862, message to Congress. He described the United States as "the last, best hope of Earth". The "mission" of the United States was further elaborated during Lincoln's
Gettysburg Address
The Gettysburg Address is a speech that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered during the American Civil War at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery, now known as Gettysburg National Cemetery, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on the ...
, in which he interpreted the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
as a struggle to determine if any nation with democratic ideals could survive; this has been called by historian Robert Johannsen "the most enduring statement of America's Manifest Destiny and mission".
The third theme can be viewed as a natural outgrowth of the belief that God had a direct influence in the foundation and further actions of the United States.
Clinton Rossiter
Clinton Lawrence Rossiter III (September 18, 1917 – July 11, 1970) was an American historian and political scientist at Cornell University (1947-1970) who wrote ''The American Presidency'', among 20 other books, and won both the Bancroft Prize a ...
, a scholar, described this view as summing "that God, at the proper stage in the march of history, called forth certain hardy souls from the old and privilege-ridden nations ... and that in bestowing his grace He also bestowed a peculiar responsibility". Americans presupposed that they were not only divinely elected to maintain the North American continent, but also to "spread abroad the fundamental principles stated in the Bill of Rights". In many cases this meant neighboring colonial holdings and countries were seen as obstacles rather than the destiny God had provided the United States.
Faragher Faragher is a surname of Manx origin.
Surname
* Danny Faragher (born 1947), American rock/soul musician
*Davey Faragher (born 1957), American bass guitarist
* Donna Faragher (born 1975), Australian, politician
*Edward Faragher (1831-1908), Manx p ...
's 1997 analysis of the political polarization between the
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to:
*Democratic Party (United States)
Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to:
Active parties Africa
*Botswana Democratic Party
*Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea
*Gabonese Democratic Party
*Demo ...
and the
Whig Party is that:
Alternative interpretations
With the
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase (french: Vente de la Louisiane, translation=Sale of Louisiana) was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. In return for fifteen million dollars, or app ...
in 1803, which doubled the size of the United States,
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the natio ...
set the stage for the continental expansion of the United States. Many began to see this as the beginning of a new
providential mission: If the United States was successful as a "
shining city upon a hill", people in other countries would seek to establish their own democratic republics.
Not all Americans or their political leaders believed that the United States was a divinely favored nation, or thought that it ought to expand. For example, many
Whigs opposed territorial expansion based on the Democratic claim that the United States was destined to serve as a virtuous example to the rest of the world, and also had a divine obligation to spread its superordinate political system and a way of life throughout North American continent. Many in the Whig party "were fearful of spreading out too widely", and they "adhered to the concentration of national authority in a limited area". In July 1848,
Alexander Stephens
Alexander Hamilton Stephens (February 11, 1812 – March 4, 1883) was an American politician who served as the vice president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865, and later as the 50th governor of Georgia from 1882 until his death in 1 ...
denounced
President Polk
James Knox Polk (November 2, 1795 – June 15, 1849) was the 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849. He previously was the 13th speaker of the House of Representatives (1835–1839) and ninth governor of Tennessee (183 ...
's expansionist interpretation of America's future as "mendacious".
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Ar ...
, served in the war with Mexico and later wrote:
I was bitterly opposed to the measure o annex Texas and to this day regard the war ith Mexicowhich resulted as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory.
In the mid‑19th century, expansionism, especially southward toward Cuba, also faced opposition from those Americans who were trying to abolish slavery. As more territory was added to the United States in the following decades, "extending the area of freedom" in the minds of southerners also meant extending the institution of slavery. That is why slavery became one of the central issues in the continental expansion of the United States before the Civil War.
Before and during the Civil War both sides claimed that America's destiny was rightfully their own. Lincoln opposed anti-immigrant
nativism, and the imperialism of manifest destiny as both unjust and unreasonable. He objected to the Mexican war and believed each of these disordered forms of patriotism threatened the inseparable moral and fraternal bonds of liberty and union that he sought to perpetuate through a patriotic love of country guided by wisdom and critical self-awareness. Lincoln's "
Eulogy to Henry Clay", June 6, 1852, provides the most cogent expression of his reflective patriotism.
Era of continental expansion
![John Quincy Adams](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/John_Quincy_Adams.jpeg)
The phrase "manifest destiny" is most often associated with the
territorial expansion of the United States
The United States of America was created on July 4, 1776, with the U.S. Declaration of Independence of thirteen British colonies in North America. In the Lee Resolution two days prior, the colonies resolved that they were free and independent ...
from 1812 to 1867. This era, from the
War of 1812
The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States, United States of America and its Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom ...
to the
acquisition of Alaska in 1867, has been called the "age of manifest destiny". During this time, the United States expanded to the Pacific Ocean—"from sea to shining sea"—largely defining the borders of the
continental United States
The contiguous United States (officially the conterminous United States) consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the Federal District of the United States of America. The term excludes the only two non-contiguous states, Alaska and Hawaii ...
as they are today.
War of 1812
One of the goals of the War of 1812 was to threaten to annex the British colony of
Lower Canada
The Province of Lower Canada (french: province du Bas-Canada) was a British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence (1791–1841). It covered the southern portion of the current Province of Quebec an ...
as a bargaining chip to force the British to abandon their fortifications in the Northwestern United States and support for the various
Native American tribes residing there. The result of this overoptimism was a series of defeats in 1812 in part due to the wide use of poorly-trained
state militia
A militia () is generally an army or some other fighting organization of non-professional soldiers, citizens of a country, or subjects of a state, who may perform military service during a time of need, as opposed to a professional force of r ...
s rather than regular troops. The American victories at the
Battle of Lake Erie
The Battle of Lake Erie, sometimes called the Battle of Put-in-Bay, was fought on 10 September 1813, on Lake Erie off the shore of Ohio during the War of 1812. Nine vessels of the United States Navy defeated and captured six vessels of the Briti ...
and the
Battle of the Thames
The Battle of the Thames , also known as the Battle of Moraviantown, was an American victory in the War of 1812 against Tecumseh's Confederacy and their British allies. It took place on October 5, 1813, in Upper Canada, near Chatham. The Britis ...
in 1813 ended the Indian raids and removed the main reason for threatening annexation. To end the War of 1812
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams (; July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States ...
,
Henry Clay and
Albert Gallatin
Abraham Alfonse Albert Gallatin (January 29, 1761 – August 12, 1849) was a Genevan–American politician, diplomat, ethnologist and linguist. Often described as "America's Swiss Founding Father", he was a leading figure in the early years o ...
(former treasury secretary and a leading expert on Indians) and the other American diplomats negotiated the
Treaty of Ghent
The Treaty of Ghent () was the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom. It took effect in February 1815. Both sides signed it on December 24, 1814, in the city of Ghent, United Netherlands (now in ...
in 1814 with Britain. They rejected the British plan to set up an
Indian state in U.S. territory south of the Great Lakes. They explained the American policy toward acquisition of Indian lands:
A shocked
Henry Goulburn
Henry Goulburn PC FRS (19 March 1784 – 12 January 1856) was a British Conservative statesman and a member of the Peelite faction after 1846.
Background and education
Born in London, Goulburn was the eldest son of a wealthy planter, Munbee G ...
, one of the British negotiators at Ghent, remarked, after coming to understand the American position on taking the Indians' land:
Continentalism
The 19th-century belief that the United States would eventually encompass all of North America is known as "continentalism",
a form of
tellurocracy
Tellurocracy (from and ) is a concept proposed by Aleksandr Dugin to describe a type of civilization or state system that is defined by the development of land territories and consistent penetration into inland territories. Tellurocratic states ...
. An early proponent of this idea, Adams became a leading figure in U.S. expansion between the
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase (french: Vente de la Louisiane, translation=Sale of Louisiana) was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. In return for fifteen million dollars, or app ...
in 1803 and the
Polk administration in the 1840s. In 1811, Adams wrote to
his father:
The whole continent of North America appears to be destined by Divine Providence to be peopled by one ''nation'', speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs. For the common happiness of them all, for their peace and prosperity, I believe it is indispensable that they should be associated in one federal Union.
![Alfred Jacob Miller - Fort Laramie - Walters 37194049](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Alfred_Jacob_Miller_-_Fort_Laramie_-_Walters_37194049.jpg)
Adams did much to further this idea. He orchestrated the
Treaty of 1818
The Convention respecting fisheries, boundary and the restoration of slaves, also known as the London Convention, Anglo-American Convention of 1818, Convention of 1818, or simply the Treaty of 1818, is an international treaty signed in 1818 betw ...
, which established the
Canada–U.S. border as far west as the Rocky Mountains, and provided for the joint occupation of the region known in American history as the
Oregon Country and in British and Canadian history as the
New Caledonia and
Columbia District
The Columbia District was a fur trading district in the Pacific Northwest region of British North America in the 19th century. Much of its territory overlapped with the disputed Oregon Country. It was explored by the North West Company betw ...
s. He negotiated the
Transcontinental Treaty
Transcontinental may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* "Transcontinental", a song by the band Pedro the Lion from the album ''Achilles Heel''
* TC Transcontinental, a publishing, media and marketing company based in Canada, a subsidiary ...
in 1819, transferring
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
from Spain to the United States and extending the U.S. border with Spanish Mexico all the way to the Pacific Ocean. And he formulated the
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine was a United States foreign policy position that opposed European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It held that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act ...
of 1823, which warned Europe that the Western Hemisphere was no longer open for European colonization.
The Monroe Doctrine and "manifest destiny" formed a closely related nexus of principles: historian Walter McDougall calls manifest destiny a corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, because while the Monroe Doctrine did not specify expansion, expansion was necessary in order to enforce the doctrine. Concerns in the United States that European powers were seeking to acquire colonies or greater influence in North America led to calls for expansion in order to prevent this. In his influential 1935 study of manifest destiny, done in conjunction with the
Walter Hines Page School of International Relations
The Walter Hines Page School of International Relations was a research institute that was part of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It began official operations in 1930, although it had trouble acquiring sufficient fu ...
, Albert Weinberg wrote: "the expansionism of the
830s
The 830s decade ran from January 1, 830, to December 31, 839.
Significant people
* Al-Mu'tasim
* Louis the Pious
* Egbert of Wessex
* Ansgar
* Wiglaf of Mercia
* Turgesius
Turgesius (died 845) (also called Turgeis, Tuirgeis, Turges, and Thorge ...
arose as a defensive effort to forestall the encroachment of Europe in North America".
Transcontinental Railroad
Manifest destiny played an important role in the development of the
transcontinental railroad
A transcontinental railroad or transcontinental railway is contiguous railroad trackage, that crosses a continental land mass and has terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks can be via the tracks of either a single ...
. The transcontinental railroad system is often used in manifest destiny imagery like John Gast's painting, American Progress where multiple locomotives are seen traveling west.
According to academic
Dina Gilio-Whitaker, "the transcontinental railroads not only enabled
.S. control over the continentbut also accelerated it exponentially."
Historian Boyd Cothran says that "modern transportation development and abundant resource exploitation gave rise to an appropriation of indigenous land,
ndresources."
All Oregon
Manifest destiny played its most important role in the
Oregon boundary dispute
The Oregon boundary dispute or the Oregon Question was a 19th-century territorial dispute over the political division of the Pacific Northwest of North America between several nations that had competing territorial and commercial aspirations in ...
between the United States and Britain, when the phrase "manifest destiny" originated. The
Anglo-American Convention of 1818 had provided for the joint occupation of the
Oregon Country, and thousands of Americans migrated there in the 1840s over the
Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail was a east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of what is now the state of Kans ...
. The British rejected a proposal by U.S. President
John Tyler
John Tyler (March 29, 1790 – January 18, 1862) was the tenth president of the United States, serving from 1841 to 1845, after briefly holding office as the tenth vice president in 1841. He was elected vice president on the 1840 Whig tick ...
(in office 1841–1845) to divide the region along the
49th parallel, and instead proposed a boundary line farther south, along the
Columbia River, which would have made most of what later became the state of
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
part of
their colonies in North America. Advocates of manifest destiny protested and called for the annexation of the entire Oregon Country up to the Alaska line (
54°40ʹ N). Presidential candidate Polk used this popular outcry to his advantage, and the Democrats called for the annexation of "All Oregon" in the
1844 U.S. presidential election.
![Emanuel Leutze - Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way - Smithsonian](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Emanuel_Leutze_-_Westward_the_Course_of_Empire_Takes_Its_Way_-_Smithsonian.jpg)
As president, Polk sought compromise and renewed the earlier offer to divide the territory in half along the 49th parallel, to the dismay of the most ardent advocates of manifest destiny. When the British refused the offer, American expansionists responded with slogans such as "The whole of Oregon or none" and "Fifty-four forty or fight", referring to the northern border of the region. (The latter slogan is often mistakenly described as having been a part of the 1844 presidential campaign.) When Polk moved to terminate the joint occupation agreement, the British finally agreed in early 1846 to divide the region along the 49th parallel, leaving the lower Columbia basin as part of the United States. The
Oregon Treaty of 1846 formally settled the dispute; Polk's administration succeeded in selling the treaty to Congress because the United States was about to begin the
Mexican–American War
The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1 ...
, and the president and others argued it would be foolish to also
fight the British Empire.
Despite the earlier clamor for "All Oregon", the Oregon Treaty was popular in the United States and was easily ratified by the Senate. The most fervent advocates of manifest destiny had not prevailed along the northern border because, according to
Reginald Stuart, "the compass of manifest destiny pointed west and southwest, not north, despite the use of the term 'continentalism.
In 1869, American historian
Frances Fuller Victor
Frances Auretta Fuller (Barritt) Victor ( pen names: Florence Fane, Dorothy D.) (May 23, 1826 – November 14, 1902) was an American historian and historical novelist. She has been described as "the first Oregon historian to gain regional and nat ...
published ''
Manifest Destiny in the West'' in the ''
Overland Monthly'', arguing that the efforts of early American fur traders and missionaries presaged American control of Oregon. She concluded the article as follows:
Mexico and Texas
Manifest destiny played an important role in the expansion of Texas and American relationship with
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
. In 1836, the
Republic of Texas declared independence from Mexico and, after the
Texas Revolution, sought to join the United States as a new state. This was an idealized process of expansion that had been advocated from Jefferson to O'Sullivan: newly democratic and independent states would request entry into the United States, rather than the United States extending its government over people who did not want it. The
annexation of Texas
The Texas annexation was the 1845 annexation of the Republic of Texas into the United States. Texas was admitted to the Union as the 28th state on December 29, 1845.
The Republic of Texas declared independence from the Republic of Mexico ...
was attacked by anti-slavery spokesmen because it would add another slave state to the Union. Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren declined Texas's offer to join the United States in part because the slavery issue threatened to divide the Democratic Party.
Before the election of 1844, Whig candidate Henry Clay and the presumed Democratic candidate, former president, Van Buren, both declared themselves opposed to the annexation of Texas, each hoping to keep the troublesome topic from becoming a campaign issue. This unexpectedly led to Van Buren being dropped by the Democrats in favor of Polk, who favored annexation. Polk tied the Texas annexation question with the Oregon dispute, thus providing a sort of regional compromise on expansion. (Expansionists in the North were more inclined to promote the occupation of Oregon, while Southern expansionists focused primarily on the annexation of Texas.) Although elected by a very slim margin, Polk proceeded as if his victory had been a mandate for expansion.
All of Mexico
![Nebel Mexican War 12 Scott in Mexico City](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Nebel_Mexican_War_12_Scott_in_Mexico_City.jpg)
After the election of Polk, but before he took office, Congress approved the annexation of Texas. Polk moved to occupy a portion of Texas that had
declared independence from Mexico in 1836, but was still claimed by Mexico. This paved the way for the outbreak of the Mexican–American War on April 24, 1846. With American successes on the battlefield, by the summer of 1847 there were calls for the annexation of "All Mexico", particularly among Eastern Democrats, who argued that bringing Mexico into the Union was the best way to ensure future peace in the region.
This was a controversial proposition for two reasons. First, idealistic advocates of manifest destiny like O'Sullivan had always maintained that the laws of the United States should not be imposed on people against their will. The annexation of "All Mexico" would be a violation of this principle. And secondly, the annexation of Mexico was controversial because it would mean extending U.S. citizenship to millions of Mexicans, who were of dark skin and majority Catholic. Senator
John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who had approved of the annexation of Texas, was opposed to the annexation of Mexico, as well as the "mission" aspect of manifest destiny, for racial reasons. He made these views clear in a speech to Congress on January 4, 1848:
We have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind, of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race.... We are anxious to force free government on all; and I see that it has been urged ... that it is the mission of this country to spread civil and religious liberty over all the world, and especially over this continent. It is a great mistake.
This debate brought to the forefront one of the contradictions of manifest destiny: on the one hand, while identitarian ideas inherent in manifest destiny suggested that Mexicans, as non-whites, would present a threat to white racial integrity and thus were not qualified to become Americans, the "mission" component of manifest destiny suggested that Mexicans would be improved (or "regenerated", as it was then described) by bringing them into American democracy. Identitarianism was used to promote manifest destiny, but, as in the case of Calhoun and the resistance to the "All Mexico" movement, identitarianism was also used to oppose manifest destiny. Conversely, proponents of annexation of "All Mexico" regarded it as an anti-slavery measure.
![USA Territorial Growth 1850](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/USA_Territorial_Growth_1850.jpg)
The controversy was eventually ended by the
Mexican Cession, which added the territories of
Alta California and
Nuevo México to the United States, both more sparsely populated than the rest of Mexico. Like the "All Oregon" movement, the "All Mexico" movement quickly abated.
Historian
Frederick Merk, in ''Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation'' (1963), argued that the failure of the "All Oregon" and "All Mexico" movements indicates that manifest destiny had not been as popular as historians have traditionally portrayed it to have been. Merk wrote that, while belief in the beneficent mission of democracy was central to American history, aggressive "continentalism" were aberrations supported by only a minority of Americans, all of them Democrats. Some Democrats were also opposed; the Democrats of Louisiana opposed annexation of Mexico, while those in Mississippi supported it.
These events related to the Mexican–American War and had an effect on the American people living in the Southern Plains at the time. A case study by David Beyreis depicts these effects through the operations of a fur trading and Indian trading business named Bent, St. Vrain and Company during the period. The telling of this company shows that the idea of Manifest Destiny was not unanimously loved by all Americans and did not always benefit Americans. The case study goes on to show that this company could have ceased to exist in the name of territorial expansion.
Filibusterism
After the Mexican–American War ended in 1848, disagreements over the expansion of slavery made further annexation by conquest too divisive to be official government policy. Some, such as
John Quitman, Governor of Mississippi, offered what public support they could. In one memorable case, Quitman simply explained that the state of Mississippi had "lost" its state arsenal, which began showing up in the hands of filibusters. Yet these isolated cases only solidified opposition in the North as many Northerners were increasingly opposed to what they believed to be efforts by Southern slave owners—and their friends in the North—to expand slavery through
filibustering
A filibuster is a political procedure in which one or more members of a legislative body prolong debate on proposed legislation so as to delay or entirely prevent decision. It is sometimes referred to as "talking a bill to death" or "talking out ...
.
Sarah P. Remond on January 24, 1859, delivered an impassioned speech at
Warrington
Warrington () is a town and unparished area in the borough of the same name in the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England, on the banks of the River Mersey. It is east of Liverpool, and west of Manchester. The population in 2019 was estimat ...
, England, that the connection between filibustering and slave power was clear proof of "the mass of corruption that underlay the whole system of American government". The
Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso was an unsuccessful 1846 proposal in the United States Congress to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican–American War. The conflict over the Wilmot Proviso was one of the major events leading to the ...
and the continued "
Slave Power" narratives thereafter, indicated the degree to which manifest destiny had become part of the sectional controversy.
Without official government support the most radical advocates of manifest destiny increasingly turned to
military filibustering. Originally filibuster had come from the Dutch ''vrijbuiter'' and referred to buccaneers in the West Indies that preyed on Spanish commerce. While there had been some filibustering expeditions into Canada in the late 1830s, it was only by mid-century did filibuster become a definitive term. By then, declared the ''
New-York Daily Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' "the fever of Fillibusterism is on our country. Her pulse beats like a hammer at the wrist, and there's a very high color on her face." Millard Fillmore's second annual message to Congress, submitted in December 1851, gave double the amount of space to filibustering activities than the brewing sectional conflict. The eagerness of the filibusters, and the public to support them, had an international hue. Clay's son, a diplomat in Portugal, reported that the invasion created a sensation in Lisbon.
![WilliamWalker](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/WilliamWalker.jpg)
Although they were illegal, filibustering operations in the late 1840s and early 1850s were romanticized in the United States. The Democratic Party's national platform included a plank that specifically endorsed William Walker's filibustering in
Nicaragua
Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the countr ...
. Wealthy American expansionists financed dozens of expeditions, usually based out of New Orleans, New York, and San Francisco. The primary target of manifest destiny's filibusters was Latin America but there were isolated incidents elsewhere. Mexico was a favorite target of organizations devoted to filibustering, like the Knights of the Golden Circle. William Walker got his start as a filibuster in an ill-advised attempt to separate the Mexican states Sonora and Baja California.
Narciso López
Narciso López (November 2, 1797, Caracas – September 1, 1851, Havana) was a Venezuelan-born adventurer and Spanish Army general who is best known for his expeditions aimed at liberating Cuba from Spanish rule in the 1850s. His troops carrie ...
, a near second in fame and success, spent his efforts trying to secure Cuba from the
Spanish Empire
The Spanish Empire ( es, link=no, Imperio español), also known as the Hispanic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Hispánica) or the Catholic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Católica) was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its prede ...
.
The United States had long been interested in acquiring Cuba from the declining Spanish Empire. As with Texas, Oregon, and California, American policy makers were concerned that Cuba would fall into British hands, which, according to the thinking of the Monroe Doctrine, would constitute a threat to the interests of the United States. Prompted by O'Sullivan, in 1848 President Polk offered to buy Cuba from Spain for $100 million. Polk feared that filibustering would hurt his effort to buy the island, and so he informed the Spanish of an attempt by the Cuban filibuster López to seize Cuba by force and annex it to the United States, foiling the plot. Spain declined to sell the island, which ended Polk's efforts to acquire Cuba. O'Sullivan eventually landed in legal trouble.
[.]
Filibustering continued to be a major concern for presidents after Polk. Whigs presidents
Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 – July 9, 1850) was an American military leader who served as the 12th president of the United States from 1849 until his death in 1850. Taylor was a career officer in the United States Army, rising to th ...
and
Millard Fillmore
Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800March 8, 1874) was the 13th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853; he was the last to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House. A former member of the U.S. House of Represen ...
tried to suppress the expeditions. When the Democrats recaptured the White House in 1852 with the election of
Franklin Pierce, a filibustering effort by
John A. Quitman
John Anthony Quitman (September 1, 1798 – July 17, 1858) was an American lawyer, politician, and soldier. As President of the Mississippi Senate, he served one month as Acting Governor of Mississippi (from December 3, 1835, to January 7, 1836) a ...
to acquire Cuba received the tentative support of the president. Pierce backed off and instead renewed the offer to buy the island, this time for $130 million. When the public learned of the
Ostend Manifesto
The Ostend Manifesto, also known as the Ostend Circular, was a document written in 1854 that described the rationale for the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain while implying that the U.S. should declare war if Spain refused. Cuba's annex ...
in 1854, which argued that the United States could seize Cuba by force if Spain refused to sell, this effectively killed the effort to acquire the island. The public now linked expansion with slavery; if manifest destiny had once enjoyed widespread popular approval, this was no longer true.
Filibusters like
William Walker continued to garner headlines in the late 1850s, but to little effect. Expansionism was among the various
issues that played a role in the coming of the war. With the divisive question of the expansion of slavery, Northerners and Southerners, in effect, were coming to define manifest destiny in different ways, undermining nationalism as a unifying force. According to Frederick Merk, "The doctrine of Manifest Destiny, which in the 1840s had seemed Heaven-sent, proved to have been a bomb wrapped up in idealism."
The filibusterism of the era even opened itself up to some mockery among the headlines. In 1854, a San Francisco Newspaper published a satirical poem called "Filibustering Ethics". This poem features two characters, Captain Robb and Farmer Cobb. Captain Robb makes claim to Farmer Cobb's land arguing that Robb deserves the land because he is Anglo-Saxon, has weapons to "blow out" Cobb's brains, and nobody has heard of Cobb so what right does Cobb have to claim the land. Cobb argues that Robb doesn't need his land because Robb already has more land than he knows what to do with. Due to threats of violence, Cobb surrenders his land and leaves grumbling that "''might'' should be the rule of ''right'' among ''enlightened'' nations."
Homestead Act
![Hultstrand61](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Hultstrand61.jpg)
The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged 600,000 families to settle the West by giving them land (usually 160 acres) almost free. Over the course of 123 years, 200 million claims were made and over 270 million acres were settled, accounting for 10% of the land in the U.S.
They had to live on and improve the land for five years. Before the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
, Southern leaders opposed the
Homestead Acts
The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain, typically called a homestead. In all, more than of public land, or nearly 10 percent of t ...
because they feared it would lead to more free states and free territories. After the mass resignation of Southern senators and representatives at the beginning of the war, Congress was subsequently able to pass the Homestead Act.
In some areas, the Homestead Act resulted in the direct removal of Indigenous communities.
According to American historian
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (born September 10, 1938) is an American historian, writer, and activist, known for her 2014 book ''An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States''.
Early life and education
Born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1938 to ...
, all five nations of the "Five Civilized Tribes" signed treaties with the Confederacy and initially supported them in hopes of dividing and weakening the U.S so that they could remain on their land.
The United States Army, led by prominent Civil War generals such as William Tecumseh Sherman, Philip Sheridan, and George Armstrong Custer, waged wars on "non-treaty Indians" who continued to live on land that had already been ceded to the U.S. through treaty.
Homesteaders and other settlers soon followed and took possession of the land for farms and mining. Occasionally, white settlers would move ahead of the U.S. Army, into land that had not yet been settled by the United States, causing conflict with the Native people who still resided there. According to Anglo-American historian Julius Wilm, while the U.S. government did not approve of settlers moving ahead of the army, Indian Affairs officials did believe "the move of frontier whites into the proximity of contested territory—be they homesteaders or parties interested in other pursuits—necessitated the removal of Indigenous nations."
According to historian Hannah Anderson, the Homestead Act also lead to environmental degradation. While it succeeded in settling and farming the land, the Act failed to preserve the land. Continuous plowing of the top soil made the soil vulnerable to erosion and wind, as well as stripping the nutrients from the ground. This deforestation and erosion would play a key role in the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. Intense logging caused a decrease in much of the forests and hunting harmed many of the native animal populations, including the buffalo whose population was reduced to hundreds.
Acquisition of Alaska
The final U.S. territorial expansion of the North American mainland came in 1867 when the U.S. negotiated with the
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
to purchase
Alaska
Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...
. In the aftermath of the
Crimean War
The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia.
Geopolitical causes of the war included the ...
in the 1850s, Emperor
Alexander II of Russia decided to relinquish control of the ailing
Russian America
Russian America (russian: Русская Америка, Russkaya Amerika) was the name for the Russian Empire's colonial possessions in North America from 1799 to 1867. It consisted mostly of present-day Alaska in the United States, but a ...
(present-day Alaska) on fears that the territory would be easily be taken over by
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
in any future war between Russia and the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
. Following the end of the Civil War in 1865, U.S. Secretary of State
William H. Seward
William Henry Seward (May 16, 1801 – October 10, 1872) was an American politician who served as United States Secretary of State from 1861 to 1869, and earlier served as governor of New York and as a United States Senator. A determined oppon ...
entered into negotiations with Russian minister
Eduard de Stoeckl
Eduard Andreevich Stoeckl (russian: Эдуард Андреевич Стекль) (1804 in Constantinople – January 26, 1892 in Paris) was a Russian diplomat best known today for having negotiated the American purchase of Alaska on behalf of ...
for the purchase of Alaska. Seward initially offered $5 million to Stoeckl; the two men settled on $7 million and on March 15, 1867, Seward presented a draft treaty to the U.S. Cabinet. Stoeckl's superiors raised several concerns; to induce him to waive them, the final purchase price was increased to $7.2 million and on March 30, the treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate. The transfer ceremony took place in
Sitka, Alaska on October 18. Russian and American soldiers paraded in front of the governor's house; the
Russian flag
The national flag of Russia (russian: Флаг России, Flag Rossii), also known as the ''State Flag of the Russian Federation'' (russian: Государственный флаг Российской Федерации, Gosudarstvenny fla ...
was lowered and the
American flag
The national flag of the United States of America, often referred to as the ''American flag'' or the ''U.S. flag'', consists of thirteen equal horizontal stripes of red (top and bottom) alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the ca ...
raised amid peals of artillery.
The purchase added of new territory to the United States, an area about twice the size of Texas. Reactions to the purchase in the United States were mostly positive, as many believed the possession of Alaska would serve as a base to expand American trade in
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...
. Some opponents labeled the purchase as "Seward's Folly", or "Seward's Icebox", as they contended that the United States had acquired useless land. Nearly all Russian settlers left Alaska in the aftermath of the purchase; Alaska would remain sparsely populated until the
Klondike Gold Rush began in 1896. Originally organized as the
Department of Alaska
Department of Alaska was the designation for the government of Alaska from its purchase by the United States of America in 1867 until its organization as the District of Alaska in 1884. During the department era, Alaska was variously under ...
, the area was renamed the
District of Alaska
The District of Alaska was the federal government’s designation for Alaska from May 17, 1884 to August 24, 1912, when it became Alaska Territory. Previously (1867–1884) it had been known as the Department of Alaska, a military designation ...
and the
Territory of Alaska
The Territory of Alaska or Alaska Territory was an organized incorporated territory of the United States from August 24, 1912, until Alaska was granted statehood on January 3, 1959. The territory was previously Russian America, 1784–1867; the ...
before becoming the modern State of Alaska in 1959.
The start of the Klondike Gold Rush brought 200,000 prospectors to Alaska. The gold rush greatly increased the U.S. government's commitment to developing the industrial infrastructure, and in turn attracting new residents to maintain it. The increase in gold seekers brought epidemics and land conflicts between settlers and Indigenous Alaskans. According to Yupik historian Shari Huhndorf, "These changing demographics transformed social relationships between Native and the newcomers and soon led to Jim Crow-like segregation supported by a rapidly expanding territorial government."
In 1905, the Nelson Act was passed, which allowed the Territory of Alaska to open schools outside of incorporated towns and run them outside of the federal Bureau of Education's control. According to historian Carol Barnhardt, the Territory of Alaska opened schools for "white children and children of mixed blood leading a civilized life," while schools for Native children were still run by the Bureau of Education, which operated with the belief that it was important to transform Native Alaskans, along with all Indigenous people in America, into civilized Christians. The U.S. government saw education as the most effective way to achieve this goal. Overall, there was little recognition of the important differences between different groups of Indigenous people. The federal Bureau of Education also extended services such as medical services, cooperative stores, and a ship to supply remote coastal villages, slowly reducing the self-sufficiency of Native communities and allowing the U.S. government to assume more control of the lives of Native Alaskans. The effects of the Alaska Purchase are still felt by Native Alaskans. According to Inuit author
Sheila Watt-Cloutier
Sheila Watt-Cloutier (born 2 December 1953) is a Canadian Inuk activist. She has been a political representative for Inuit at the regional, national and international levels, most recently as International Chair for the Inuit Circumpolar Counc ...
, "The land that is such an important part of our spirit, our culture, and our physical and economic well-being is becoming an often unpredictable and precarious place for us."
Native Americans
![Across the Continent - Currier & Ives 1868](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Across_the_Continent_-_Currier_%26_Ives_1868.jpg)
Manifest destiny had serious consequences for Native Americans, since continental expansion implicitly meant the occupation and annexation of Native American land, sometimes to expand slavery. This ultimately led to confrontations and wars with several groups of native peoples via
Indian removal. The United States continued the European practice of recognizing only limited land rights of
indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
. In a policy formulated largely by
Henry Knox
Henry Knox (July 25, 1750 – October 25, 1806), a Founding Father of the United States, was a senior general of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, serving as chief of artillery in most of Washington's campaigns. Following the ...
,
Secretary of War
The secretary of war was a member of the U.S. president's Cabinet, beginning with George Washington's administration. A similar position, called either "Secretary at War" or "Secretary of War", had been appointed to serve the Congress of the ...
in the Washington Administration, the U.S. government sought to expand into the west through the purchase of Native American land in treaties. Only the Federal Government could purchase Indian lands and this was done through treaties with tribal leaders. Whether a tribe actually had a decision-making structure capable of making a treaty was a controversial issue. The national policy was for the Indians to join American society and become "civilized", which meant no more wars with neighboring tribes or raids on white settlers or travelers, and a shift from hunting to farming and ranching. Advocates of civilization programs believed that the process of settling native tribes would greatly reduce the amount of land needed by the Native Americans, making more land available for homesteading by white Americans.
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the natio ...
believed that, while the Indigenous people of America were intellectual equals to whites, they had to assimilate to and live like the whites or inevitably be pushed aside by them.
According to historian Jeffrey Ostler, Jefferson believed that once assimilation was no longer possible, he advocated for the extermination of Indigenous people.
On 27 February 1803, Jefferson wrote in a letter to William Henry Harrison:
"but this letter being unofficial, & private, I may with safety give you a more extensive view of our policy respecting the Indians... Our system is to live in perpetual peace with the Indians, to cultivate an affectionate attachment from them, by everything just & liberal which we can do for them within the bounds of reason, and by giving them effectual protection against wrongs from our own people. The decrease of game rendering their subsistence by hunting insufficient, we wish to draw them to agriculture, to spinning & weaving... when they withdraw themselves to the culture of a small piece of land, they will perceive how useless to them are their extensive forests, and will be willing to pare them off from time to time in exchange for necessaries for their farms & families. At our trading houses too we mean to sell so low as merely to repay us cost and charges so as neither to lessen or enlarge our capital. this is what private traders cannot do, for they must gain; they will consequently retire from the competition, & we shall thus get clear of this pest without giving offence or umbrage to the Indians. in this way our settlements will gradually circumbscribe & approach the Indians, & they will in time either incorporate with us as citizens of the U.S. or remove beyond the Mississippi."
Noted by Law Scholar and professor Robert J. Miller, Thomas Jefferson "Understood and utilized the Doctrine of Discovery
ka Manifest destinythrough his political careers and was heavily involved in using the Doctrine against Indian tribes."
Jefferson was "often immersed in Indian affairs through his legal and political careers" and "was also well acquainted with the process Virginia governments had historically used to extinguish Indian
and
or AND may refer to:
Logic, grammar, and computing
* Conjunction (grammar), connecting two words, phrases, or clauses
* Logical conjunction in mathematical logic, notated as "∧", "⋅", "&", or simple juxtaposition
* Bitwise AND, a boolea ...
titles".
Jefferson used this knowledge to make the Louisiana purchase in 1803, aided in the construction of the Indian Removal Policy, and laid the ground work for removing Native American tribes further and further into eventual small reservation territories.
The idea of "Indian removal" gained traction in the context of manifest destiny and, with Jefferson as one of the main political voices on the subject, accumulated advocates who believed that American Indians would be better off moving away from white settlers.
The removal effort was further solidified through policy by Andrew Jackson when he signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830.
In his First Annual Message to Congress in 1829, Jackson stated with regards to removal:
I suggest for your consideration the propriety of setting apart an ample district west of the Mississippi, and without the limits of any state or territory now formed, to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes as long as they shall occupy it, each tribe having a distinct control over the portion designated for its use. There they may be secured in the enjoyment of governments of their own choice, subject to no other control from the United States than such as may be necessary to preserve peace on the frontier and between the several tribes. There the benevolent may endeavor to teach them the arts of civilization, and, by promoting union and harmony among them, to raise up an interesting commonwealth, destined to perpetuate the race and to attest the humanity and justice of this government."
After major exploration and colonization to the western parts of the United States, resources and industry were needed to support such colonies.
Colville scholar Dina Gilo-Whitaker outlines how during this process, promises of innovative technologies and abundant resources were made to indigenous people as the settlers effectively began damming rivers, imposing railways, and seeking natural resources and minerals through mining and excavation of Native American lands.
According to historians Boyd Cothran and Ned Blackhawk, this influx of trade, industrialization, and development of transportation corridors killed surrounding livestock, caused waterway damage, and created sickness and disease for the Native American peoples living in those regions.
Historian Jeffery Ostler comments on some of the general theories about native American population decline due to these environmental factors. He shows that, over the course of this period, there were many forces "of destruction, including enslavement, disease, material deprivation, malnutrition, and social stress."
Following the forced removal of many Indigenous Peoples, Americans increasingly believed that Native American ways of life would eventually disappear as the United States expanded. Humanitarian advocates of removal believed that American Indians would be better off moving away from whites. As historian Reginald Horsman argued in his influential study ''Race and Manifest Destiny'', racial rhetoric increased during the era of manifest destiny. Americans increasingly believed that Native American ways of life would "fade away" as the United States expanded. As an example, this idea was reflected in the work of one of America's first great historians,
Francis Parkman
Francis Parkman Jr. (September 16, 1823 – November 8, 1893) was an American historian, best known as author of '' The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life'' and his monumental seven-volume '' France and England in North Am ...
, whose landmark book ''
The Conspiracy of Pontiac'' was published in 1851. Parkman wrote that after the French defeat in the
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. At the ...
, Indians were "destined to melt and vanish before the advancing waves of Anglo-American power, which now rolled westward unchecked and unopposed". Parkman emphasized that the collapse of Indian power in the late 18th century had been swift and was a past event.
Indian removal policies led to the current day reservation system which allocated territories to individual tribes. According to scholar
Dina Gilio-Whitaker, "the treaties also created reservations that would confine Native people into smaller territories far smaller than they had for millenia been accustomed to, diminishing their ability to feed themselves."
According to author and scholar David Rich Lewis, these reservations had much higher population densities than indigenous homelands. As a result, "the consolidation of native peoples in the nineteenth century allowed epidemic diseases to rage through their communities."
In addition to this "a result of changing subsistence patterns and environments-contributed to an explosion of dietary-related illness like diabetes, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, cirrhosis, obesity, gallbladder disease, hypertension, and hearth disease."
Beyond mainland North America
![Annexation Here to Stay](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Annexation_Here_to_Stay.jpg)
In 1859,
Reuben Davis, a member of the House of Representatives from Mississippi, articulated one of the most expansive visions of Manifest Destiny on record:
We may expand so as to include the whole world. Mexico, Central America, South America, Cuba, the West India Islands, and even England and France emight annex without inconvenience... allowing them with their local Legislatures to regulate their local affairs in their own way. And this, Sir, is the mission of this Republic and its ultimate destiny.
As the Civil War faded into history, the term ''manifest destiny'' experienced a brief revival. Protestant missionary
Josiah Strong
Josiah Strong (April 14, 1847 – June 26, 1916) was an American Protestant clergyman, organizer, editor, and author. He was a leader of the Social Gospel movement, calling for social justice and combating social evils. He supported missionary work ...
, in his best-seller of 1885,
''Our Country'', argued that the future was devolved upon America since it had perfected the ideals of civil liberty, "a pure spiritual Christianity", and concluded, "My plea is not, Save America for America's sake, but, Save America for the world's sake."
In the
1892 U.S. presidential election, the
Republican Party platform proclaimed: "We reaffirm our approval of the
Monroe doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine was a United States foreign policy position that opposed European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It held that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act ...
and believe in the achievement of the manifest destiny of the Republic in its broadest sense." What was meant by "manifest destiny" in this context was not clearly defined, particularly since the Republicans lost the election.
In the
1896 election, the Republicans recaptured the White House and held on to it for the next 16 years. During that time, manifest destiny was cited to promote
overseas expansion. Whether or not this version of manifest destiny was consistent with the continental expansionism of the 1840s was debated at the time, and long afterwards.
For example, when President
William McKinley
William McKinley (January 29, 1843September 14, 1901) was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. As a politician he led a realignment that made his Republican Party largely dominant in ...
advocated annexation of the
Republic of Hawaii in 1898, he said that "We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is manifest destiny." On the other hand, former President
Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837June 24, 1908) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president in American ...
, a Democrat who had blocked the annexation of Hawaii during his administration, wrote that McKinley's annexation of the territory was a "perversion of our national destiny". Historians continued that debate; some have interpreted American acquisition of other Pacific island groups in the 1890s as an extension of manifest destiny across the Pacific Ocean. Others have regarded it as the antithesis of manifest destiny and merely
imperialism.
Spanish–American War
![Well, I hardly know which to take first! 5-28-1898](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Well%2C_I_hardly_know_which_to_take_first%21_5-28-1898.JPG)
In 1898, the United States intervened in the Cuban insurrection and launched the
Spanish–American War
, partof = the Philippine Revolution, the decolonization of the Americas, and the Cuban War of Independence
, image = Collage infobox for Spanish-American War.jpg
, image_size = 300px
, caption = (cloc ...
to force Spain out. According to the terms of the
Treaty of Paris Treaty of Paris may refer to one of many treaties signed in Paris, France:
Treaties
1200s and 1300s
* Treaty of Paris (1229), which ended the Albigensian Crusade
* Treaty of Paris (1259), between Henry III of England and Louis IX of France
* Trea ...
, Spain relinquished sovereignty over Cuba and ceded the
Philippine Islands
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
,
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...
, and
Guam
Guam (; ch, Guåhan ) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean. It is the westernmost point and territory of the United States (reckoned from the geographic cent ...
to the United States. The terms of cession for the Philippines involved a payment of the sum of $20 million by the United States to Spain. The treaty was highly contentious and denounced by
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan (March 19, 1860 – July 26, 1925) was an American lawyer, orator and politician. Beginning in 1896, he emerged as a dominant force in the Democratic Party, running three times as the party's nominee for President ...
, who tried to make it a central issue in
the 1900 election. He was defeated in landslide by McKinley.
The
Teller Amendment
The Teller Amendment was an amendment to a joint resolution of the United States Congress, enacted on April 20, 1898, in reply to President William McKinley's War Message. It placed a condition on the United States military's presence in Cuba. Ac ...
, passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate before the war, which proclaimed Cuba "free and independent", forestalled annexation of the island. The
Platt Amendment
On March 2, 1901, the Platt Amendment was passed as part of the 1901 Army Appropriations Bill.[protectorate
A protectorate, in the context of international relations, is a state that is under protection by another state for defence against aggression and other violations of law. It is a dependent territory that enjoys autonomy over most of its int ...](_blank)
of the United States.
The acquisition of
Guam
Guam (; ch, Guåhan ) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean. It is the westernmost point and territory of the United States (reckoned from the geographic cent ...
,
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...
, and the
Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
after the war with Spain marked a new chapter in U.S. history. Traditionally, territories were acquired by the United States for the purpose of becoming new states on equal footing with already existing states. These islands were acquired as colonies rather than prospective states. The process was validated by the
Insular Cases
The Insular Cases are a series of opinions by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1901 about the status of U.S. territories acquired in the Spanish–American War. Some scholars also include cases regarding territorial status decided up unt ...
. The Supreme Court ruled that full constitutional rights did not automatically extend to all areas under American control.
According to Frederick Merk, these colonial acquisitions marked a break from the original intention of manifest destiny. Previously, "Manifest Destiny had contained a principle so fundamental that a Calhoun and an O'Sullivan could agree on it—that a people not capable of rising to statehood should never be annexed. That was the principle thrown overboard by the imperialism of 1899."
Albert J. Beveridge
Albert Jeremiah Beveridge (October 6, 1862 – April 27, 1927) was an American historian and US senator from Indiana. He was an intellectual leader of the Progressive Era and a biographer of Chief Justice John Marshall and President Abraham Linco ...
maintained the contrary at his September 25, 1900, speech in the Auditorium, at Chicago. He declared that the current desire for Cuba and the other acquired territories was identical to the views expressed by Washington, Jefferson and Marshall. Moreover, "the sovereignty of the Stars and Stripes can be nothing but a blessing to any people and to any land." The nascent
revolutionary government, desirous of independence, resisted the United States in the
Philippine–American War in 1899; it won no support from any government anywhere and collapsed when its leader was captured.
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan (March 19, 1860 – July 26, 1925) was an American lawyer, orator and politician. Beginning in 1896, he emerged as a dominant force in the Democratic Party, running three times as the party's nominee for President ...
denounced the war and any form of future overseas expansion, writing, Destiny' is not as manifest as it was a few weeks ago."
In 1917, all Puerto Ricans were made full American citizens via the
Jones Act, which also provided for a popularly elected legislature and a bill of rights, and authorized the election of a Resident Commissioner who has a voice (but no vote) in Congress. In 1934, the
Tydings–McDuffie Act
The Tydings–McDuffie Act, officially the Philippine Independence Act (), is an Act of Congress that established the process for the Philippines, then an American territory, to become an independent country after a ten-year transition period. ...
put the Philippines on a path to independence, which was realized in 1946 with the
Treaty of Manila. The
Guam Organic Act of 1950 established Guam alongside Puerto Rico as an unincorporated unorganized
territory of the United States
A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, particularly belonging or connected to a country, person, or animal.
In international politics, a territory is usually either the total area from which a state may extract power resources or a ...
, provided for the structure of the island's civilian government, and granted the people U.S. citizenship.
Legacy and consequences
The belief in an American mission to promote and defend democracy throughout the world, as expounded by Jefferson and his "
Empire of Liberty", and continued by Lincoln, Wilson and
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
, continues to have an influence on American political ideology. Under
Douglas MacArthur, the Americans "were imbued with a sense of manifest destiny," says historian John Dower.
![Panama canal cartooon 1903](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Panama_canal_cartooon_1903.jpg)
After the turn of the nineteenth century to the twentieth, the phrase ''manifest destiny'' declined in usage, as territorial expansion ceased to be promoted as being a part of America's "destiny". Under President
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
the role of the United States in the New World was defined, in the 1904
Roosevelt Corollary
In the history of United States foreign policy, the Roosevelt Corollary was an addition to the Monroe Doctrine articulated by President Theodore Roosevelt in his State of the Union address in 1904 after the Venezuelan crisis of 1902–1903. ...
to the Monroe Doctrine, as being an "international police power" to secure American interests in the Western Hemisphere. Roosevelt's corollary contained an explicit rejection of territorial expansion. In the past, manifest destiny had been seen as necessary to enforce the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere, but now expansionism had been replaced by
interventionism as a core value associated with the doctrine.
President Wilson continued the policy of interventionism in the Americas, and attempted to redefine both manifest destiny and America's "mission" on a broader, worldwide scale. Wilson led the United States into
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
with the argument that "The world must be made safe for democracy." In his 1920 message to Congress after the war, Wilson stated:
... I think we all realize that the day has come when Democracy is being put upon its final test. The Old World is just now suffering from a wanton rejection of the principle of democracy and a substitution of the principle of autocracy as asserted in the name, but without the authority and sanction, of the multitude. This is the time of all others when Democracy should prove its purity and its spiritual power to prevail. It is surely the manifest destiny of the United States to lead in the attempt to make this spirit prevail.
This was the only time a president had used the phrase "manifest destiny" in his annual address. Wilson's version of manifest destiny was a rejection of expansionism and an endorsement (in principle) of
self-determination, emphasizing that the United States had a mission to be a world leader for the cause of democracy. This U.S. vision of itself as the leader of the "
Free World
The Free World is a propaganda term, primarily used during the Cold War from 1945 to 1991, to refer to the Western Bloc and similar countries. It also more broadly refers to all non-communist and democratic countries. It has traditionally prima ...
" would grow stronger in the 20th century after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, although rarely would it be described as "manifest destiny", as Wilson had done.
"Manifest destiny" is sometimes used by critics of U.S. foreign policy to characterize
interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere. In this usage, "manifest destiny" is interpreted as the underlying cause of what is denounced by some as "
American imperialism
American imperialism refers to the expansion of American political, economic, cultural, and media influence beyond the boundaries of the United States. Depending on the commentator, it may include imperialism through outright military conques ...
". A more positive-sounding phrase devised by scholars at the end of the twentieth century is "nation building", and State Department official Karin Von Hippel notes that the U.S. has "been involved in nation-building and promoting democracy since the middle of the nineteenth century and 'Manifest Destiny.
According to the
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust his ...
Encyclopedia,
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
's ''
Lebensraum
(, ''living space'') is a German concept of settler colonialism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, '' lso in:' became a geopolitical goal of Imper ...
'' was the "Manifest Destiny" for Germany's romanticization and imperial conquest of Eastern Europe. Hitler compared Nazi expansion to American expansion westward, saying, "there's only one duty: to Germanize this country
ussiaby the immigration of Germans and to look upon the natives as Redskins."
Environmental consequences
Many studies suggest environmental changes that directly impact Indigenous communities as a result of European settlement, according to Colville scholar
Dina Gilio-Whitaker, when manifest destiny reached California and Oregon, "Waters were diverted, interrupting farming practices: ancient food sources are eliminated: tribal self-determination was compromised with dams built on treaty adds: entire ecosystems were altered, interrupting cultural practices and dividing families: trauma inflicted by disruptions contributed to failing health conditions in tribal communities."
Further, "sudden loss of salmon-based economies and spiritual traditions was a seismic shock to cultures and psyches of the people who collectively call themselves Salmon People." "Specifically, 'The
Karuk
The Karuk people are an indigenous people of California, and the Karuk Tribe is one of the largest tribes in California. Karuks are also enrolled in two other federally recognized tribes, the Cher-Ae Heights Indian Community of the Trinidad ...
are a fishing people who have sustainably managed their Klamath River fishery through the use of ceremony and harvest techniques for tens of thousands of years. Since the arrival of non-Indians in the 1850s, however, the salmon populations have been damaged by overfishing and the degradation of their habitat." "Scholars such as environmental sociologist
Kari Norgaard
Kari Marie Norgaard is a Professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, a post she has held since 2017. She is known for her research into Indigenous environmental justice, climate change denial and the politics of global warming.
Indigeno ...
have shown that these issues continue into the present moment: "Ron Reed served as the Karuk tribal representative for the relicensing process. Reed became convinced that the lack of healthy food, specifically the loss of salmon, was directly affecting the health of his people, leading to high rates of diabetes, heart disease, and a decreased life expectancy."
Other environmental changes as a result of European settlement were discovered as a result of the pre-industrial era, according to historian Boyd Cothran, "It coincided with a national timber boom and the concurrent near exhaustion of the Great Lakes forests, leading American businesses to clamor for access to the vast timber stands located on many western Indian Reservations."
Biomolecular archaeologist Eric J. Guiry has shown that this deforestation had increasingly negative effects on Great Lakes ecosystems: 'in comparison with the industrial era..."Aquatic disruptions in great lakes have been linked to timber extraction through the loss of ecological resources. "Results show that, in comparison with the industrial era, the nitrogen cycle and trophic structure of the Great Lakes ecosystems remained remarkably stable until the 1830s, despite millennia of Indigenous agricultural and other land management, decades of European settlement, and climatic fluctuations. After this time, increased logging from forestry and agriculture induced soil erosion caused an unprecedented and abrupt bottom-up shift throughout the entire aquatic ecosystem of Lake Ontario."
Criticisms
Iranian researcher Farid Marjayi argues that a belief in manifest destiny, where American society is seen as exceptional and the conquest of the western United States was its historical destiny, led to
imperialist
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
actions outside the United States, including the occupations of the
Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
and
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
during the
Spanish–American War
, partof = the Philippine Revolution, the decolonization of the Americas, and the Cuban War of Independence
, image = Collage infobox for Spanish-American War.jpg
, image_size = 300px
, caption = (cloc ...
. Marjayi links this to the concept of
American exceptionalism
American exceptionalism is the belief that the United States is inherently different from other nations.
Peggy Noonan, an American political pundit, wrote in ''The Wall Street Journal'' that "America is not exceptional because it has long att ...
. Marjayi argues that the United States therefore sees itself as not accountable to international organizations, such as the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...
and the
International Criminal Court
The International Criminal Court (ICC or ICCt) is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal seated in The Hague, Netherlands. It is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals f ...
, and is consequently beyond international treaties and does not have to commit to them.
Some contemporary historians have condemned manifest destiny as an ideology used to justify dispossession and
genocide against Native Americans.
See also
*
54°40' or fight!
*
Christian mission
A Christian mission is an organized effort for the propagation of the Christian faith. Missions involve sending individuals and groups across boundaries, most commonly geographical boundaries, to carry on evangelism or other activities, such as ...
*
Civilizing mission
The civilizing mission ( es, misión civilizadora; pt, Missão civilizadora; french: Mission civilisatrice) is a political rationale for military intervention and for colonization purporting to facilitate the Westernization of indigenous pe ...
*
Discovery doctrine
The discovery doctrine, or doctrine of discovery, is a disputed interpretation of international law during the Age of Discovery, introduced into United States municipal law by the US Supreme Court Justice John Marshall in ''Johnson v. M'Intosh' ...
*
Frontierism
*
Irredentism
Irredentism is usually understood as a desire that one state annexes a territory of a neighboring state. This desire is motivated by ethnic reasons (because the population of the territory is ethnically similar to the population of the parent sta ...
*
Liberal internationalism
Liberal internationalism is a foreign policy doctrine that argues two main points: first, that international organizations should achieve multilateral agreements between states that uphold rules-based norms and promote liberal democracy, and, se ...
*
New Frontier
The term ''New Frontier'' was used by Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in his acceptance speech in the 1960 United States presidential election to the Democratic National Convention at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as the ...
*
Progress
Progress is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization have resulted, and by extension w ...
*
White man's burden
*
Wilsonianism
Wilsonianism, or Wilsonian idealism, is a certain type of foreign policy advice. The term comes from the ideas and proposals of President Woodrow Wilson. He issued his famous Fourteen Points in January 1918 as a basis for ending World War I and p ...
*
Young America movement
The Young America Movement was an American political, cultural and literary movement in the mid-19th century. Inspired by European reform movements of the 1830s (such as Junges Deutschland, Young Italy and Young Hegelians), the American group w ...
References
Citations
Sources
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Further reading
Journal articles
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Books
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* Cheathem, Mark R. and Terry Corps, eds. ''Historical Dictionary of the Jacksonian Era and Manifest Destiny'' (2nd ed. 2016), 544 pp
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* McDonough, Matthew Davitian. ''Manifestly Uncertain Destiny: The Debate over American Expansionism, 1803–1848''. PhD dissertation, Kansas State University, 2011.
* Merk, Frederick, and Lois Bannister Merk. ''Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation''. New York: Knopf, 1963.
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External links
President Polk's Inaugural AddressGayle Olson-Raymer, "The Expansion of Empire" 15-page teaching guide for high school students, Zinn Education Project/Rethinking Schools
Collection: "Manifest Destiny and the American West"from the
University of Michigan Museum of Art
The University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan with is one of the largest university art museums in the United States. Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alumni Memorial Hall ori ...
{{Authority control
1845 establishments in the United States
American Empire
American exceptionalism
American nationalism
American political catchphrases
Geopolitics
History of North America
History of United States expansionism
Imperialism
International relations theory
Mexico–United States relations
Native American history
Political terminology of the United States
Politics of the United States
Territorial evolution of the United States
United States federal Indian policy
1840s neologisms
Internal migrations in the United States