Example Of Manifest Destiny Research Paper

Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion was a book written by Amy S. Greenberg of the Pennsylvania state university. Amy is a professor and historian who focused on teaching politics, culture, and gender history. She has authored other books such as the antebellum and manifest manhood. Manifest destiny is an influential ideology covered in the book. It was an American belief by which the American settlers believed that they were destined to expand throughout the continent. The central theme of the book was to discuss whether the Americans were right in using manifest destiny in justifying their territorial expansion in antebellum. Amy focuses on the cultural, political and social factors that brought about manifest destiny.
Expansionism in America began when the Europeans discovered the new world. It evolved to become an articulated rationale where it was used to expand the American borders and grab land from the Mexicans and the Native Americans and later from Central America and Cuba. The author gives a context of how the American politicians and settlers labored ceaselessly to embrace their continental empire. The aim of their expansion was to enlighten other native traditions and spread their institutions, cultures, and traditions. They considered other people such as the Indians and the Hispanics as inferior and, therefore, there was a need to remake the whole world in the image of America. Amy describes how the Americans believed that the growth of America was God’s blessing, and this made them be assured of their racial and cultural superiority.
According to Amy, manifest destiny took a social and cultural context and finally gained momentum in the mid-nineteenth century. In the 1840s, the ideology ensured the continent’s expansion, especially towards the west. Brutal and racial based wars were considered legitimate and natural in displacing the Mexicans and Indians. The Americans believed that they had been ordained by God to expand the American territories. Within no time, the whole nation agreed with the belief that the American expansion was inevitable and natural. In the 1850s, the idea of manifest destiny was becoming ambiguous and expansive, and this saw some of the southerners grab the Caribbean, which was used to expand their slaveholding empire. The northerners were eying Canada and Hawaii around this time.
Politically, most politicians, especially the Republicans, feared that manifest destiny was uniting the American states and not the people. The Democrat politicians, on the other hand, believed that the ideology would enhance the annexation of the whole of the western hemisphere. The civil war that was caused by the refusal of the northerners and the southerners’ failure to compromise on the status of slavery led to the fracturing of the national consensus over the future of manifest destiny. The ideology went into an eclipse, and it was until thirty years that it was adopted again. During this period, the Americans remembered it as an antebellum relic with the nationalists pushing to control the international trade instead of advocating for foreign aid.
Amy in this book aims explains how manifest destiny contributed to the territorial expansion of America before the civil war with the British. She also explains when the United States took its continental form, and how the territorial expansion differed from manifest destiny during the times when the Republic was forming. What she also explained on manifest destiny was renewed in the late nineteenth century after thirty years of dropping the ideology. This belief was a manifestation of the intellectual and political knowledge that had an impact on the American expansion of territories. The ability of the Americans to expand their territories was attributed to a supreme being hence a social and religious context is introduced yet again. The Americans believed that they were a sacred nation that was set apart by God to liberate the rest of the world. The American geography that was studied in the eighteenth century supports this ideology while at the same time declaring that the American race as superior to the “savages,” who were placed in America to pave the way for the Americans who were more industrious and sturdy. Some of the reasons that made the Americans believe that they were chosen by God and hence promoted the Manifest Destiny include their origin from a great land, England, excellent religious settlement and increased population growth, racial superiority over other community and finally their victory over England in the civil war.
The ideology of manifest destinies made the Americans believe that they had every right to impose their religious, social, economic and cultural systems of other cultures. This is what led to the expansion to regions such as Cuba and Mexico as they believed it was no longer right for the native communities or the Hispanics to continue practicing their primitive way of life. All along, as the author explains, the settlers though illegally occupying the land expected the government to offer them with protection from the resident communities.
In conclusion, despite the author bringing out the social, cultural and political factors that led to the ideology of manifest destiny hence the territory expansionism, she did not elaborate on other factors like the economic. She only mentions that the Americans believed that they were industrious but not explain how their desire to bring the liberation was contributed by their economic way of life. All in all, she did good work that elaborates on how the manifest destiny came about in early America and its rebirth in the late nineteenth century.
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