Manifest Destiny

Any single statement that is used to describe the past of the United States is a bold one. America’s past is composed of many different events and eras. From reconstruction after the civil war to westward expansion, America’s history is laced with far too many significant events to be explained away or described by one statement. However, if one statement had to be chosen to describe the significance of America’s past, it would have to be that manifest destiny both religiously and politically is the main factors in shaping the United States.

History is based on facts that are more often than not tied to dates, but manifest destiny cannot be narrowed to specific dates because it is not an event in the traditional sense. Manifest destiny is more of a phenomenal movement. What is meant by this is that manifest destiny has been a part of this country since its inception, and is occurring today. It is a philosophy that has and still clutches the nation in its entirety, and in fact created what people call American history.

The name manifest destiny was given to the movement by John O’Sullivan. In addition to coining the name “Manifest Destiny”, he also wrote to defend America’s desire to expand: ".... the right of

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The American Indian tribes certainly suffered the most from the negative side of westward expansion. It took explorers roughly 200 years just to reach the Mississippi River, and many others believed that it would take a lifetime to reach the west coast. White Americans felt that Manifest Destiny gave them the God given right to take whatever they wanted with complete disregard to the native people who already lived there. This strategy worked, because in April of 1898, the United States went to war to support Cuba, which in turn resulted in the before mentioned acquisitions.

With its new acquisitions, America now had to evolve to maintain its new empire. Some saw it as raw nationalism, and others as an idealized version of national perfection through church and God. God had predetermined that America had to expand its territory.

Others still saw American expansion as the inevitable way to share liberty with the rest of the continent, and also as a way to advance the American economy. our manifest destiny to over spread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federal development of self government entrusted to us. Without Manifest Destiny there would be no America, and because of this, Manifest Destiny is as close to describing the American past in one statement that one would ever get. Further still, it can be applied today to economic expansion in the business world. These two components created distinctly different reasons to conquer North America, and together they described America’s need to dominate the continent. The term itself has been applied by expansionists to describe all acquisitions from Puerto Rico to Oregon Territory and California. It also describes how America came to be beginning with its colonization, because it was the Manifest Destiny of Britain to colonize the new world.

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