Manifest Destiny – U.S. territorial expansion Discussion Response
Humanities
News of the land available for agriculture in Oregon began spreading east in the early 1940s (Keene, Cornell, & O’Donnell, 2013). The migration to the West began to increase after John O’Sullivan created the notion “Manifest Destiny” in 1845 giving “voice to the belief that God had destined America to spread westward to the Pacific” (Keene, Cornell, & O’Donnell, 2013).
When Texas was admitted as a state in 1845 “idea that the United States must inevitably expand westward, all the way to the Pacific Ocean, had taken firm hold among people from different regions, classes and political persuasions” (History, 2018). Our text (Keene, Cornell, & O’Donnell, 2013) explains that Mexico had changed the way Indians and slaves were treated and by opening their borders to Americans in the 1820s stirred up trouble. Refusing to accept the Mexican ways and still being committed to slavery the American created and uprising within the Republic of Texas (Keene, Cornell, & O’Donnell, 2013). “In 1846, the United States declared war on Mexico,” even though unpopular with some Americans, it resulted in “American victory and seizure of northern Mexico, vastly increasing the size of the United States” (Keene, Cornell, & O’Donnell, 2013). The war tells us that at this period of American history people were still stuck in their ways, which really hasn’t changed much. The war happened because Americans strongly believed in slavery and refused to change their way of thinking.
I think that it was a little bit of God’s plan for the United States to extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and also the imperialists looking for a way to defend what they planned to do anyways. Our text (Keene, Cornell, & O’Donnell, 2013) explains that Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri elaborated on O’Sullivan’s notion of the “Manifest Destiny” “using both racial and religious terms: ‘The White race alone received the divine command, to subdue and replenish the earth! Civilization or extinction has been the fate of all people who have found themselves in the track of the advancing Whites’.” The expansion to the West was bound to happen, but with the help of Senator Benton and O’Sullivan the rate of expansion increased.
Megan
Keene, J. D., Cornell, S. & ODonnell, E. T. (2013). Visions of America: A History of the United States (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
History (2018) Manifest Destiny. A&E Television, LLC. Retrieved from: https://www.history.com/topics/westward-expansion/manifest-destiny (Links to an external site.)
