|
|
 |
Painting illustrates the concept
of Manifest Destiny |
Courtesy, Library of Congress
copyright George A. Crofutt
|
Santa Fe Trail
|
Wayside
Excursions: Manifest Destiny
|
The term “Manifest Destiny” appeared in print on September 15, 1845, when John L. O’Sullivan wrote in the New York Herald:
It was the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. No longer bounded by the limits of the confederacy, it looks abroad upon the whole earth, and into the mind of the republic daily sinks deeper and deeper the conviction that civilization on the earth—the reform of the governments of the ancient world—the emancipation of the whole race, are dependent, in a great degree, on the United States.
|
| William Weeks, in Building the Continental Empire (1996), contends that the origins of Manifest Destiny can be found in the Puritan era, when John Winthrop sermonized that the Massachusetts Bay Colony represented a “shining city upon a hill” from whence the regeneration of the world might proceed. Weeks suggests that "by the eighteenth century the European enlightenment viewed America as a special place where human society might begin anew, uncorrupted by Old World institutions and ideas.” Thomas Jefferson saw the movement west as necessary for the perpetuation of an “Empire of Liberty.” John Quincy Adams said that expansion across the North American continent was “as much the law of nature as that the Mississippi should flow to the sea.” |
O’Sullivan put a label on an idea that was rooted deep in the fabric of the American nation. The beliefs that fueled the enthusiasm for Manifest Destiny were compelling:
- As a nation we possessed special virtues and institutions.
- We were destined by Divine Providence to spread these virtues and institutions.
- Westward expansion was the way to do this.
|
| Inherent in this viewpoint was the racist idea that the Anglo-Saxon race was superior to Native Americans, blacks, and Mexicans. James Buchanan spoke of extending the blessings of Christianity and religious liberty over the whole continent, while Senator Thomas Hart Benton said in a speech to Congress in 1846, “It would seem that the white race alone received the divine command to subdue and replenish the earth!” |
|
|
