{"id":3004,"date":"2019-02-18T13:55:39","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T13:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/?p=3004"},"modified":"2021-10-28T00:34:02","modified_gmt":"2021-10-28T00:34:02","slug":"manifest-destiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/2019\/02\/18\/manifest-destiny\/","title":{"rendered":"Manifest Destiny"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The catchphrase ‘Manifest Destiny’ summed up the expansionist thrust of the pre-Civil War era.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The concept expressed the exuberant nationalism and brash arrogance of the era.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Once viewed as a great national movement, an expression of American optimism and idealism, and the driving force behind expansion in the 1840s.\u00a0 Manifest Destiny’s meaning and significance have been considerably qualified in recent years.” –George Herring, From Colony to Superpower<\/em> (2008), p. 180<\/p>\n

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Discussion Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n