Manifest destiny

Manifest Destiny
by Juan Carvajal

What is “Manifest Destiny”

Ø Belief that the USA should expand its territory from the Atlantic seaboard to Pacific Ocean.

• It was used to justify other territorial acquisitions.

Advocates of Manifest Destiny believed that:

• Expansion was obvious (“manifest”)

• Expansion was certain (“destiny”)

• “Manifest Destiny” eventually became a synonym of the expansion of the United States.

• It was used to promote the annexation of the Western United States

• Oregon Territory

• The Texas Annexation

• Mexican Cession

Power of an idea

• Capture the imagination of people.

• To extend American Democracy to the rest of the continent was essentially an insatiable ambition for land.

• Extension of the area of Freedom also signified extension of the area of the Sla

very.

• The Assertion of the superiority of the American race.

• Denigration of Mexico

• Grateful way to justify something unjustifiable.

Origin

The origin could go back from the first settlers or pilgrims who arrive

d from England and Scotland.

They were mostly Protestants and Puritans.

John Cotton, a Puritan minister wrote in 1630:

“No nation has the right to expel another , if not by a special design of the sky like the one that had Israel, unless the natives worked wrongly.

In this case they will be entitled to begin,

legally, a war with them as well as to subdue them”.

John O'Sullivan was the first one who used this expression (1845).

".... 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…

Manifest Destiny, key themes

• 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 U.S.

• The destiny under God to accomplish this work.

Thomas Paine

This is the opportunity to create a new, better society.

“ We have the 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…”

Columbia

This painting (circa 1872) by John Gast called American Pr

ogress, is an allegorical representation of Manifest Destiny.

• American angel or woman

• She leads civilization westward wi

th American settlers

• She holds a school book

• She is stringing telegraph wire as she travels

• The different economic activities of the pioneers are highlighted and, espec

ially, the changing forms of transportation.

• In her wake come farms, villages and homesteads.

• The light of civilization dispel the darkness of ignorance and barbarity.

On the other hand the darkness is represented by:

• Wild animals (bears, wolves and buffalo).

• They have to be removed before Columbia so she

can bring the prosperity promised to the United States.

Clearly this painting represented the thinking of many Americans during the m

id-19th century.

James K. Polk Mr. Manifest Destiny

• Elected President in 1844

• James Knox Polk was the eleventh President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1845 to March 4, 1849.

• Added more territory to the US (by any means) than any other President

• Died 103 days after his single period ended

In Latin America