Manifest Destiny, By John O ' Sullivan

Imagine you are the President of a rapidly expanding country. If you got offered 530 million acres of land for $15 million, would you buy it? President Thomas Jefferson and his advisers were faced with this exact decision. Thomas Jefferson, envious of France’s New Orleans, sent Monroe and Livingston to Paris with the hope of at least getting the port rights to New Orleans, if incapable of buying it with a budget of $9.3 million. When Livingston and Monroe reached Paris, they were surprised to find Napoleon and his French government not only willing to sell, but almost forcing a sale on the American ambassadors. Not only that, they wanted to sell all 830,000 square miles of the Louisiana Territory, including New Orleans. Constantly expanding and exploring, Livingston and Monroe knew America needed more room to grow. 530 Million acres worth of land would be more than sufficient for 1803 America. At 3 cents per acre, the Louisiana Purchase was a great deal as far as cost is concerned. Before they had even signed the contract sealing the deal, President Thomas Jefferson had already recruited a close friend and fellow botanist, Meriwether Lewis to explore the new Territory. Before the public even knew about the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark Expedition had set out. The Louisiana Purchase was a good idea because it provided room for rapidly-expanding America to grow and explore at an incredibly low price but also increased America’s global prowess.

During Jefferson’s presidential term, his idea was to expand territory west for settlement. In order for Jefferson to expand the land, he had to purchase New Orleans from France. At the time, Napoleon Bonaparte had Louisiana under his control and it didn’t took too much time for Napoleon to sell the land for $15 million. Napoleon not only sold New Orleans, but all of Louisiana because France was out of money and a war between France and Britain was coming up soon therefore they needed money to get supplies and food. Not only would the Louisiana Purchase add more land to the United States, but also in New Orleans the Mississippi River was the main transportation. After purchasing the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William

Conquering this new foreign land was the plan for English settlers that sailed here and landed on to the eastern coast of America. After many years had passed, John O 'Sullivan, a democratic leader, named this progressive movement Manifest destiny in 1845. The term Manifest Destiny originated in the 1840s. It expressed the belief that it was US Americans mission to expand their civilization and institutions across the breadth of North America. Manifest Destiny wasn’t just an idea to have all the land from one ocean to another. It was a cause every man, woman, and child believed in, if you were from the America. Most Americans truly believed that Manifest Destiny was god’s plan that we as Americans will conquer this land and make it our home. It was one of Americas great causes that everyone could support and help achieve. This movement inspired thousands of the U.S. eastern settlers to travel westward. While the idea of moving to western America was in everyone’s mind, there were many events that occurred such as: The Mexican-American war, the gold rush, and how the civil war. These events helped morph and shape our country into what it is today.

Manifest Destiny is a term coined by John L. Sullivan in 1845 when talking about the annexation of Texas. He believed, along with other expansionists, that it’s inevitable that the US population would spread across North America because the land is given by Providence to the United States and that it’s natural that the land should be part of the country [Doc 1]. The idea of westward expansion and Manifest Destiny had positive and negative effects on the politics, society and the economics of the United States and

Westward expansion seemed natural to many Americans in the mid-nineteenth century (29. Manifest Destiny). Pioneers believed America had an obligation to stretch the boundaries to the East Coast. After claiming land to the Mississippi River and the Louisiana Purchase was explored, Americans started going west. The Second Great Awakening also spawned the drive to move west and many people believed God blessed the growth of the nation. Native Americans were considered

President Thomas Jefferson purchased Louisiana territory from the French government for fifteen million dollars in 1803. The Louisiana Purchase nearly doubled the size of the Unites States and stretched from The Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to New Orleans. Jefferson strongly believed that the key to a nation’s health was expanding westward. He believed that a republic needed an independent and virtuous citizenry for its survival, along with the belief that independence and virtue went together with land ownership, specifically the ownership of small farms. If Jefferson was to provide enough land for the yeomen, the United States would have to expand more. The most defining themes in nineteenth century American history is the westward expansion.

Manifest Destiny took place in the US in the mid-1800. Manifest Destiny was used among the Americans in the 1840’s as a defense for U.S. territorial expansion. It is the presumption that God had destined the American people to at divine mission of American movement and conquest in the name of Christianity and democracy.

Throughout the American history, we have seen “Manifest Destiny” at work, and how it has helped grow our nation. The idea of Manifest Destiny helped in creating revolutions that would help them find freedom in the U.S., but it also had some negative effects. Most believe that “Manifest Destiny” began in the 1840’s, when John L.O’Sullivan coined the term “Manifest Destiny” in 1845, but if we look closer we can see that even all the way back to the first settlers we can see that“Manifest Destiny” was already at work as in, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The term is defined and recognized as, the Americans belief that it was their destiny given to them by God, to expand into the Western territories “ The whole continent was to be theirs.”1 We

“In 1845, John L. O 'Sullivan, a newspaper reporter in New York City, coined the phrase "manifest destiny." O 'Sullivan claimed that it was the God-given destiny of the United States of America to spread over North America. O ' Sullivan summarized his view this way: And that claim is by 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.”(OHC) The Idea of Manifest destiny may have created a nation that could be considered the greatest of all nations. These few words have caused a lot of trouble and a lot of good. Manifest Destiny has had a huge effect on North America some of the events caused have been positive, but manifest destiny has been used to promote racial superiority over all nonwhite races living in areas desired by Americans, and was used to defended the reasons for going west.

Manifest Destiny is a term coined in the 1840s. It meant that the United States could, and was destined to, have all the land from coast to coast. The term “Manifest Destiny” was first used in an article by John O’Sullivan in 1845. O’Sullivan stated in his article “our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” This sentiment helped to fuel additional western settlement in the Oregon territory, increased desire to annex Texas, and war with Mexico. United States President Polk was a supporter of Manifest Destiny. Consequently, his presidency aw the greatest territorial expansion to dare.

There are people today who think that the United States of America’s boundary was created by fate; however, much complexity was involved in the gaining of our country’s boundaries. Manifest Destiny comes from the desire that Americans had to expand their borders. Americans wanted a distinct expansion from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The term “Manifest Destiny” originated when John L. Sullivan published an article on the annexation of Texas. O’Sullivan believed that the expansion of the United States would be beneficial and better our nation. The American settlers became very determined to expand their civilization across North America. The Second Great Awakening, the belief that God would bless the growth of the country, created another reason for Americans to want to expand. “The Democratic Review asserted that God had preordained expansion across the continent” (Greenberg, 15). Manifest Destiny has played a very important role in our country’s past, its present, and it will have a significant role on its future. “Without Manifest Destiny, the territorial expansion of the United States from a strip of Atlantic coast colonies to a continental empire in less than a -century would have been, literally, unthinkable” (Greenberg 2). If our country continues to expand its perimeter, the concept of Manifest Destiny will always play a role in history.

In a short history, American manifest destiny was a big mistake for Indian people in the past. The Indian people lived on the land before the Americans came. However, manifest destiny is the affliction Americans have that makes them believe God and took control all their land. For example, American settlers took their land and forced them into another uncomfortable place, less nature resource, and difficult to survive. Moreover, America settlers brought diseases into Indian tribes that made a lot of Indian people sick and dead. In addition, American settlers had a negative impact to the environment and natures resource such as more hunting and fishing that cost extinction, more cutting trees to build houses due to deforestation. In conclusion,

Manifest Destiny is a term that was first coined in 1845 by a journalist named John L. O’Sullivan, and was described as America’s destiny to expand, and that it was God’s will that America was to expand. According to Genovese, “The notion of westward expansion and domination of the white races struck a responsive chord in many Americans” (Genovese, 2017). The idea of expanding America’s territory was so popular that is was even later used in Congress to justify the claiming of Oregon’s territory. While the idea of expanding America seemed great to the Americans, it was not so great for those who were living on the land that the Americans would later claim. According to Hastedt, “The failure to assimilate and prosper was the fault of those receiving America’s goodness” (Hastedt, 2016). The Americans felt that they were superior to those whose lands they were trying to take, such as the Native Americans and Mexicans, and that they should be the ones to adopt American culture, even if they were there before the Americans claimed the land. The Americans even thought that those whose lands they were taking would be happy to convert to their way of living, as is stated by Hastedt, “The inherent superiority of American Values was sure to be recognized by those with whom they came in contact and would gladly be adopted” (Hastedt, 2016). This mindset would ultimately lead to the expansion of America, turning it into what we know today, but it would also ultimately result in conflict with those that the American’s were attempting to take the land from for the sake of expansion.

During the mid-nineteenth century, the rise of new territories increased the desire of Americans to expand into new territories in the western region. The term “Manifest Destiny” was first introduced by a magazine editor, John O’Sullivan, written in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review in 1845 to express the idea that the United States had a unique role in expanding the nation (OpenStax College 316,483). Manifest Destiny is widely defined as a justification of continental expansion as a calling to the American citizens to unify the land into the Union. I view Manifest Destiny as white males expressing their ideals of white supremacy unavoidably expanding new territories not yet defined by others (). With the new western land came the revival of the issue of slavery, should new territories become free or slave states? In several cases, the white settlers inflicted their morals about their policies and views of slavery in new territories acquired and bypassed all other principles of different races. They saw that their morals were above all and that they received a message from God to colonize the new land for themselves. Although Manifest Destiny posed conflict against Native Americans and slaves, new land and trade routes steered the United States to enter a realm of economic prosperity.

Manifest Destiny can be described as a belief, in the 19th century, that North-America was destined to stretch from coast to coast and that the expansion of the U.S. throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable. It is responsible for changing the face of America and creating a new nation (Lubragge, 1809-1900). North-America’s westward expansion was due the American belief “that the strength of American values and institutions justified moral claims…”, land west of the Mississippi River “were destined for American-led political and agricultural improvement.”, and that “God and the Constitution ordained an irrepressible destiny to accomplish redemption and democratization throughout the world.” (Beatty et al.,