Manifest Destiny: Westward Expansion

Prompt: Using information you gathered from a variety of texts, write a letter from the chosen group’s point of view, stating their opinion of Westward Expansion by answering the question, “Was Westward Expansion worth it?” Quote evidence from the text to support your claim.

Manifest Destiny is the big idea of exploration and expansion to the West and further movement of discovery. The United States had explored towards the West previous to this and they did not set up much civilization though. Moving to the West they bought land from other nearby countries like Mexico. America has expanded greatly to the West during this

In this compelling book titled Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion, it focuses on social, cultural, and political content. Manifest destiny is an important principle in American history. Manifest destiny came about in the 1840s that sped up the western settlement and continued continental expansion. This book overviews manifest destiny and the expansion in the time before the Civil War. It explains how and why the manifest destiny formed and how territorial expansion was different. During the 1840s, manifest destiny was a positive movement, although it was aggressive.1 During this paper, it will cover how Manifest Destiny and American Expansion sought and promoted financial, territory, social acquirement in the United States.

Throughout history, many debates have occurred over national events. Whether it be the Civil War or the robotic revolution, each event leaves behind a mark on our history, changing our nation. In addition, these events also spark controversy among the American people. One of these moments that many people look back on with either support or opposition is the western expansion of the United States. This topic of the United States expansion was a highly controversial topic among people.

Westward expansion in the United States began in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase. President Thomas Jefferson during this time in history almost doubled the size of the nation by negotiating with France, in which the United States acquired 800,000 miles of land west of the Mississippi River. One of the main reasons the United States began to move west ward, was our belief in Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny was a belief that America was destined to run from coast to coast, from the Pacific ocean all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

While Manifest Destiny and territorial expansion created conflict with foreign nations, including the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), and within the United States, it worked to unify the United States from 1830 to 1860 by strengthening the nation as a whole, creating economic opportunities for people from all different walks of life, and expanding the United States through the annexation of Texas and the acquisition of California from Mexico.

In the early to mid 1800s, Americans began to want to expand the country again. Some Americans did not agree with the idea of expansion, and wanted to remain complacent with the amount of territory that they currently owned. The nation was torn. There were supporters and opponents of the idea of expansion. Each side presented their points but we eventually ended up expanding.

Manifest Destiny was the act of expanding west to settle and gain more land. Some of the people of America believed that God told them to expand westward so they would have land from coast to coast. They also wanted to expand westward, because the population of America was growing and they would eventually not have enough land for more people. This lead to many positives and negatives like the Mexican/American war and the Louisiana Purchase.

Manifest destiny and westward expansion was a tremendous key component to the growth of the nation economically because of the impact it had on native americans, women empowerment, and expanding the population of the country.

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 the Native Americans living there at the time. I personally feel having to define Manifest Destiney is not as black and white as either good or bad. Generally, expansions mean improvement and progress. With Manifest Destiny, America became what it is today, one of the most dominant countries in the world. Americans were given the chance to discover other places for personal gain, socially, emotionally and spiritually. People established colonies outside of their original communities to escape the confines of persecution, poverty and political issues to worship their gods more freely. Manifest

The main purpose of the settlers going to the conlines is because they had religious freedom there without persecution . This is what everyone was looking for because in England there was a power struggle against the puritans and King . Another reason settlers settled in the middle colonies was because there was a good government , so they could vote for who they wanted in the house. It was the people who wanted to start over who went to the middle colonies because they wanted to get away from the monarchy in England and if that meant that they went to the southern colonies . so they wanted to go to the middle colonies because of those certain things. Then they settled in the southern colonies because they would plant lots of crops there

How do you see progress, as a process that is beneficial or in contrast, that it´s a hurtful process that everyone at one point of their lives has to pass through it? At the time, progress was beneficial for the United States, but those benefits came with a cost, such cost that instead of advancements and developments being advantageous factors for humanity, it also became a harmful process in which numerous people were affected in many facets of life. This all means that progress is awsome to achieve, but when achieved, people have to realize the process they had to do to achieve it, which was stepping on other people to get there.

Rapid population growth and overuse of the land east of the Mississippi River, coupled with the knowledge that there was an abundance of land for new settlement west of the river, led to the ideology of expansionism; the ideology became simply known as Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion, written by Amy S. Greenburg, deeply explains the motivation of the individuals looking to expand their settlements westward. Since the time of publication, we have realized that we could have handled the situation, in which we removed the inhabitants of the west from their homeland, in a better way. Americans believed that it was their God-given right to expand westward by destroying anything in their path. “…courageous pioneers believed that America had a divine obligation to stretch the boundaries of their noble republic to the Pacific Ocean.” (“29. Manifest Destiny.”)

Westward Expansion in the United States created controversy about the admission of new states into the union. The first provision of the Westward Expansion was the Compromise of 1850. This compromise was designed to settle disputes among the North and South states about slavery expansion. Senator Henry Clay proposed that California be admitted as a free slave in a trade-off for tougher fugitive slave laws for runaways.

Upon the United States’ inception as an independent country, the concept of expansion began to slowly root itself as a desirable vision among government officials and common citizens alike. As early as the beginning of the nineteenth century, these initial thoughts and visions of expansion began to cultivate into an achievable reality. With boundless territory to conquer and a growing sense of nationalism, many citizens of the United States felt that it was their duty and obligation to expand from coast to coast. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the United States continued to expand westward across the continent while also shifting focus on expanding its international power and presence by conquering foreign countries