Manifest Destiny
From Conservapedia
Manifest Destiny was the belief promoted by Democratic politicians such as James K. Polk that it was inevitable that the American people would create a nation from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. The goal was to promote Jacksonian Democracy by expanding the lands available to yeomen farmers and slave plantation owners. Conservatives at the time, led by the Whig Party, strongly rejected the doctrine and instead said that America's future was in modernization, urbanization and industrialization. Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln were leading Whigs who spoke out against manifest Destiny, especially when it entangled the U.S. in a war with Mexico in 1846.
The secret Ostend Manifesto, written in Ostend, Belgium in 1854 by the U.S. ambassadors to Spain, France, and Britain, was perhaps the first warning of the conflicts Manifest Destiny would soon cause. The document was essentially a plan for the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain.[1] Southern Democrats hoped the acquired island would become another slave state, and that future acquisitions would negate northerners' efforts to prevent the spread of slavery. Abolitionist presses, however, when the document was made public, denounced the agreement and the plan never went into effect. While this did not lead to armed conflict, it was only a matter of time before Manifest Destiny would be put to the test. Expansionist James K. Polk was sworn into office in 1845. "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!" became a catchphrase for the annexation of the entire Oregon Country, then co-owned with Great Britain. The slogan referred to the region's northern boundary of 54°40ʹ N latitude. Eventually, the 49th Parallel was settled upon, which now forms most of the US-Canada border. Polk also added the new state of Texas to the Union, and after the Mexican-American War, nearly annexed a large portion of Mexico.
Further reading
- Belohlavek, John M. et al. Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansionism (1998) excerpt and text search
- Heidler, David S. and Jeanne T. Heidler. Manifest Destiny. (2003).
- Hietala, Thomas. Manifest Design: American Exceptionalism and Empire, 2003. Previously published as Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America, 1985.
- McDougall, Walter A. Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776. (1997) by a conservative historian
- Merk, Frederick. Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation. (1963).
- Morrison, Michael A. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (1997).
- Stephanson, Anders. Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right (1995)
- Tuveson, Ernest Lee. Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America's Millennial Role. (1968).
- Weinberg, Albert K. Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansionism in American History. (1935), history of the idea
