“The catchphrase ‘Manifest Destiny’ summed up the expansionist thrust of the pre-Civil War era.  Coined in 1845 by the Democratic Party journalist John L. O’Sullivan to justify annexation of Texas, Oregon, and California, the phrase meant, simply defined, that God had willed the expansion of the United States to the Pacific Ocean –or beyond.  The concept expressed the exuberant nationalism and brash arrogance of the era.  Divine sanction, in the eyes of many Americans, gave them a superior claim to any rival and lent an air of inevitability to their expansion.  Manifest Destiny pulled together into a potent ideology notions dating to the origins of the republic with implications extending beyond the continent: that the American people and their institutions were uniquely virtuous, thus imposing on them a God-given mission to remake the world in their own image.  Many Americans have accepted the rhetoric of Manifest Destiny at face value, seeing their nation’s continental expansion as inevitable and altruistic, a result of the irresistible force generated by a virtuous people.  Once viewed as a great national movement, an expression of American optimism and idealism, and the driving force behind expansion in the 1840s.  Manifest Destiny’s meaning and significance have been considerably qualified in recent years.” –George Herring, From Colony to Superpower (2008), p. 180

Gast painting

Discussion Questions

  • Herring labels “Manifest Destiny” (which he usually capitalizes) as both “a catch-phrase” and “a potent ideology.”  But after reading his chapter, would you also label it as official US policy during the 1840s?
  • By the outbreak of Civil War in 1861, which side held the upper hand in the national debate: advocates for manifest destiny, or those who were more skeptical of territorial expansion?

Additional Resources                       Jackson, O'Sullivan, Polk

Origins of the term “manifest destiny” (1845)

On Texas (July 1845)

“…other nations have undertaken to intrude themselves into it, between us and the proper parties to the case, in a spirit of hostile interference against us, for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”

–Excerpted from John L. O’Sullivan, “Annexation,” The United States Magazine and Democratic Review 17 (July 1845): 5–10

On Oregon (December 1845)

“…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.”

–Excerpted from John L. O’Sullivan, New York Morning News, December 27, 1845 (see also Herring, 191)