29-04-2017, 03:04 PM
In the nineteenth century, manifest destiny was a widely held belief in the United States that its settlers were destined to expand across North America. There are three basic themes for manifesting destiny:
• The special virtues of the American people and their institutions
• The mission of the United States to redeem and remake the West in the image of agricultural America
• An irresistible destiny to fulfill this essential duty
Historian Frederick Merk says that this concept was born of "a sense of mission to redeem the Old World by high example ... generated by the potentialities of a new earth to build a new heaven."
Historians have emphasized that "manifest destiny" was a controversial concept - the pre-civil war Democrats endorsed the idea but many prominent Americans (such as Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and most Whigs) rejected it. Historian Daniel Walker Howe writes: "US imperialism did not represent a US consensus, it provoked a bitter dissension within national politics ... The Whigs saw the moral mission of the United States as a democratic example rather than a conquest."
The newspaper editor John O'Sullivan is generally credited with coining the term manifest destiny in 1845 to describe the essence of this mentality, which was a rhetorical tone; However, the unsigned editorial entitled "Annexation" in which it appeared for the first time was possibly written by journalist and attorney Jane Cazneau. The term was used by the Democrats in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico and was also used to divide half of Oregon with the United Kingdom. But manifest destiny always hobbled because of its internal limitations and the subject of slavery, says Merk. It never became a national priority. In 1843, John Quincy Adams, originally a great supporter of the concept underlying manifest destiny, had changed his mind and repudiated expansionism because it signified the expansion of slavery in Texas.
• The special virtues of the American people and their institutions
• The mission of the United States to redeem and remake the West in the image of agricultural America
• An irresistible destiny to fulfill this essential duty
Historian Frederick Merk says that this concept was born of "a sense of mission to redeem the Old World by high example ... generated by the potentialities of a new earth to build a new heaven."
Historians have emphasized that "manifest destiny" was a controversial concept - the pre-civil war Democrats endorsed the idea but many prominent Americans (such as Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and most Whigs) rejected it. Historian Daniel Walker Howe writes: "US imperialism did not represent a US consensus, it provoked a bitter dissension within national politics ... The Whigs saw the moral mission of the United States as a democratic example rather than a conquest."
The newspaper editor John O'Sullivan is generally credited with coining the term manifest destiny in 1845 to describe the essence of this mentality, which was a rhetorical tone; However, the unsigned editorial entitled "Annexation" in which it appeared for the first time was possibly written by journalist and attorney Jane Cazneau. The term was used by the Democrats in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico and was also used to divide half of Oregon with the United Kingdom. But manifest destiny always hobbled because of its internal limitations and the subject of slavery, says Merk. It never became a national priority. In 1843, John Quincy Adams, originally a great supporter of the concept underlying manifest destiny, had changed his mind and repudiated expansionism because it signified the expansion of slavery in Texas.