What was Manifest Destiny?
Learn more about the concept of Manifest Destiny and how it influenced U.S. history.
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Transcript
Manifest Destiny was a popular belief in the mid-to-late 19th century.
Its proponents claimed that the United States had the divine right to expand westward—meaning that U.S. expansion was the will of God.
Popular in the decades before the American Civil War, Manifest Destiny was used as a pretext for the United States to acquire land in the Oregon Country, Texas, Mexico, and California, even if the U.S. had to pay large amounts for new land, start a war with neighboring countries, or battle Native Americans who had lived on the land for generations.
The term manifest destiny was coined by John L. O’Sullivan, editor of the United States Magazine, and Democratic Review, using the phrase in that magazine.
Expanding his idea, he later wrote in the New York Morning News about “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.”
After the Civil War, politicians extended Manifest Destiny farther afield, as the United States purchased Alaska, and the “New Manifest Destiny” was invoked as the country annexed Hawaii, went to war with Spain, and made plans for a canal across Central America.
Manifest Destiny continued as a key American philosophy until after World War I.
Despite Woodrow Wilson’s push toward global politics, Americans were frightened of further conflict, and the country chose isolationism over involvement.
For more, visit Britannica.com
Its proponents claimed that the United States had the divine right to expand westward—meaning that U.S. expansion was the will of God.
Popular in the decades before the American Civil War, Manifest Destiny was used as a pretext for the United States to acquire land in the Oregon Country, Texas, Mexico, and California, even if the U.S. had to pay large amounts for new land, start a war with neighboring countries, or battle Native Americans who had lived on the land for generations.
The term manifest destiny was coined by John L. O’Sullivan, editor of the United States Magazine, and Democratic Review, using the phrase in that magazine.
Expanding his idea, he later wrote in the New York Morning News about “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.”
After the Civil War, politicians extended Manifest Destiny farther afield, as the United States purchased Alaska, and the “New Manifest Destiny” was invoked as the country annexed Hawaii, went to war with Spain, and made plans for a canal across Central America.
Manifest Destiny continued as a key American philosophy until after World War I.
Despite Woodrow Wilson’s push toward global politics, Americans were frightened of further conflict, and the country chose isolationism over involvement.
For more, visit Britannica.com
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