{"id":3933,"date":"2020-09-09T17:01:41","date_gmt":"2020-09-09T17:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/?page_id=3933"},"modified":"2026-02-10T15:19:42","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T15:19:42","slug":"expansionist-diplomacy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/course-syllabus\/expansionist-diplomacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Expansionist Diplomacy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Was ‘manifest destiny’ an American policy or merely a partisan slogan?<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

CHAPTER 5: A Dose of Arsenic: Slavery, Expansion, and the Road to Disunion, 1837-1861<\/strong><\/h3>\n

“American expansionism in the 1840s was neither providential nor innocent. It resulted from design, rather than destiny, a carefully calculated effort by purposeful Democratic leaders to attain specific objectives that served mainly U.S. interests.\u00a0 The rhetoric of Manifest Destiny was nationalistic, idealistic, and self-confident, but it covered deep and sometimes morbid fears for America’s security against internal decay and external danger.\u00a0 Expansionism showed scant regard for the ‘inferior’ peoples who stood in the way.\u00a0 When combined with the volatile issue of slavery, it fueled increasingly bitter sectional and partisan conflict.”<\/p>\n

–George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower:\u00a0 U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 184.<\/p>\n