Manifest Destiny

Manifest Destiny

Introduction

Purportedly coined by New York editor John L. O'Sullivan, the term probably originated with one of O'Sullivan's staff writers, Jane McManus Storm, between 1839 and 1845. According to proponents, Manifest Destiny was a divinely ordained means by which a “superior” and “masculine” America could bring republican institutions to “inferior” and “effeminate” neighbors. American political leaders, military men, and entrepreneurs inspired by the concept hoped that conquering neighboring lands and incorporating them into the United States would provide economic opportunity while counteracting the international ambitions of monarchies like Great Britain (which was perceived by leaders such as Polk to be gaining inordinate influence in modern-day Oregon, the American Southwest, and Latin America).

Recent scholarship, however, has moved beyond associating the rhetoric of Manifest Destiny with a nationalism conceived in terms of masculinity. Historians now view it less as a mystical philosophy of national greatness (often substituting the terms manifest design or manifest dominion) and more as a rationale for the agency and interests of white men who claimed to act on its basis. As a result, it is seen less as a vehicle of republicanism than as an ideology used by rough-andtumble fortune hunters to further their economic ambitions and sense of masculine achievement .

The religious overtones of O'Sullivan's phrase are unmistakable and stand as a central theme in the American Anglo-Saxon narrative of divine providence. Drawing from colonial beliefs of America as the “New Israel” and “New Eden,” early Americans and particularly Puritans envisioned their new world as an extension of God's promise or covenant to his chosen people. As O'Sullivan himself noted, the Manifest Destiny of America lay not merely in the right to land, but rather in the entire “revelation of right” through which the “magnificent domain of time and space” becomes the domain of God's promise. Thus, the posturing of America as the “New Israel” had at its core not merely the historical break from Europe but also the theological break from the Old World and its failures and corruptions .

While many nations throughout history have had similar divine providence myths, equally important to O'Sullivan's notion of Manifest Destiny was the growing technological and industrial power of the United States in the middle of the 19th century. America's role as an emerging world power, premised upon industrial growth and the belief of America as a “stage” for the rights and liberties of man, was the secular counterpart to the religious underpinnings of Manifest Destiny . This divine imperative of Manifest Destiny was thus coupled with industrial strength and Enlightenment ideals prevalent at the time to argue for the imperative of mass land acquisition, not only from indigenous people who left the land “fallow” but also from European nations and especially Britain, which (it was argued) sought to counter the ideals of Jeffersonian democracy and the providence of American power .

Continental Expansion

In terms of continental expansion, Manifest Destiny was perhaps most visible as a political doctrine in the mid-18th century annexations of Texas, Oregon, and ...