A few notes on the rapid expansion of Anglo power across North America, and the world.
Definitions:
Wikipedia: Manifest Destiny.
- The special virtues of the American people and their institutions
- The mission of the United States to redeem and remake the West in the image of the agrarian East
- An irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty
Historians have emphasized that "manifest destiny" was always contested; many endorsed the idea, but the large majority of Whigs and many prominent Americans (such as Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant) rejected the concept.[7][8][9] Historian Daniel Walker Howe writes, "American imperialism did not represent an American consensus; it provoked bitter dissent within the national polity while the Whigs saw America's moral mission as one of democratic example rather than conquest.[3][10] The term was used by the then-Democrats in the 1840s to justify the Mexican–American War, and it was also used to negotiate the Oregon boundary dispute. Historian Frederick Merk says manifest destiny always limped along because of its internal limitations and the issue of slavery, and never became a national priority of the United States.[3] By 1843, former U.S. President John Quincy Adams, originally a major supporter of the concept underlying manifest destiny, had changed his mind and repudiated expansionism because it meant the expansion of slavery in Texas.
. . . Six years later, in 1845, O'Sullivan wrote another essay titled Annexation in the Democratic Review,[20] in which he first used the phrase manifest destiny.[21] In this article he urged the U.S. to annex the Republic of Texas,[22] not only because Texas desired this, but because it was "our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions".[23] Overcoming Whig opposition, Democrats annexed Texas in 1845. O'Sullivan's first usage of the phrase "manifest destiny" attracted little attention.[24]
O'Sullivan's second use of the phrase became extremely influential. On December 27, 1845, in his newspaper the New York Morning News, O'Sullivan addressed the ongoing boundary dispute with Britain. O'Sullivan argued that the United States had the right to claim "the whole of Oregon"
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Let's walk through the process:
- The Origins of Colonial America - Dates of establishment of colonies.
