Westward expansion became a major political issue in the United States during the 1840s, primarily owing to the consequences of expanding farther west with regard to the ongoing debate over slavery. In addition to this debate and other questions concerning westward expansion, there was a cultural undercurrent shaping the new nation’s perceptions of itself and its purposes, perceptions drawn from an understanding of the American republic as more than a nation-state among all others—as somehow the work of an unseen, irresistible Divine Providence. In the summer of 1845, prior to the election of President James K. Polk the following year and the subsequent war with Mexico, an article appeared in United States Magazine and Democratic Review, likely penned by the periodical’s editor, John L. O’Sullivan, coined a new phrase in asserting that it was America’s “manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our multiplying millions.” The phrase “manifest destiny” would come to symbolize the belief that America’s expansion from the Atlantic to the Pacific was divinely ordained, that American success in winning new territory was a manifestation of this divine destiny, and that the American people are therefore, because of their virtues, the natural leaders of all freedom-loving peoples. Advocates of manifest destiny therefore would argue that it was the rightful fate of the United States to expand the nation’s territory to fill the natural boundaries marking the continent. Concomitant with this doctrine, the vast territory acquired as a result of victory in the Mexican-American War helped, along with the purchase of the Louisiana Territory four decades earlier, to transform the United States into a bicoastal power. Naturally, this expansionist pressure greatly exacerbated the slavery issue. New territory meant new states, and new states meant that old compromises between free and slave states were to be reexamined, and reexamined compromises meant renewed, and more intense, debates over slavery itself, debates that would only be solved by civil war.
Manifest destiny, while coined as a term to describe a doctrine in 1845, was already well in play as an attitude a good decade earlier. After Texas broke from Mexico in 1836, it sought annexation to the United States. To the great disappointment of Texas, President Martin Van Buren declined to actively support annexation, fearing that admission of Texas as a slave state would reignite the slavery controversy. In 1844, President John Tyler negotiated an annexation treaty with Texas, sending it to the Senate for ratification, where it met with opposition. The Senate’s decision not to ratify the treaty sent the issue to the voters and to the campaign for president in 1844.
As the front-runner for the 1844 Democratic presidential nomination, Van Buren made a strategic decision to oppose the annexation of Texas. The decision turned out to be a major mistake, as Democrats strongly supported the annexation of Texas. When the Democratic National Convention met at Baltimore in May 1844, Van Buren no longer had a lock on the presidential nomination. After the convention deadlocked, the party turned to dark-horse candidate James K. Polk, whose proclivities were toward territorial expansion. Rejecting Van Buren’s anti-annexation position, the Democratic platform expressed support for the reoccupation of Oregon and the annexation of Texas.
The election of Polk significantly strengthened the hands of the supporters of westward expansion. After Polk’s election, supporters of expansion made effective use of the “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight” slogan. The slogan referred to the efforts to set the northwestern border of the United States at the 54th parallel. Subsequent negotiations with Britain concluded with a border drawn between Canada and the Oregon Territory at the 48th parallel. Of much greater importance, between 1846 and 1848, Polk conducted the war with Mexico that resulted in adding the territories of the Mexican Cession: Texas, California, the whole of what would become Arizona (with the Gadsden Purchase added later), New Mexico (part of which was once considered western Texas), Nevada, and Utah, as well as the westernmost portion of Colorado and southwestern Wyoming. Manifest destiny, imagined as Liberty’s march across the continent, entered the lexicon of American political culture. But Van Buren’s fears were soon realized; slavery’s fate again was debated without resolution, with war following.
Manifest destiny is an important doctrinal position within the larger context of American history. And while most Americans would view such a doctrine today primarily as something that shaped the American past (for good or ill), in some ways the rhetoric of an American destiny continues to resonate. American politicians and American voters no longer seek or support territorial expansion, but political rhetoric may often reveal a strong residue of manifest destiny in the notion that America is an “exceptional” nation. This in itself is not a new idea, and in some ways it even precedes manifest destiny, with which it is not to be confused but only compared. No less a personage than the great student of democracy and American political culture Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of the unique qualities of the United States vis-à-vis older, tradition-bound European states. Today political rhetoric in general speaks with pride of American achievement past and present, but less triumphantly when compared to the doctrinal attitudes springing from manifest destiny, and it is not uncommon to hear candidates from both major parties speak with sincerity of the special role that America has played, and continues to play, in the progress of democracy and the advance of human rights. The older image of Lady Liberty leading a westward movement for the advance of democracy across an entire continent is no longer in currency, but it is a recognized part of the American legacy, and in some ways the idea of America as the dynamic engine of progress in the world continues to resonate, albeit in ways decidedly different than what was familiar to men such as John L. O’Sullivan and President Polk.
It is not a stretch to connect the current immigration debate to the related ideas of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism. In the case of the latter, the notion that the United States is somehow unique influences immigration policy in two conflicted aspects. In the first place, part of what defines the singular qualities of America is its history as a refuge and a place to start anew—a nation of immigrants and a hybrid culture. However, this exceptionalism also influences a second, conflicting notion that fuels an attitude of exclusion, inhibiting access to the American bounty, especially for groups considered to be racially, ethnically, or religiously foreign to the substance of that exceptionalism. In the case of the legacy of manifest destiny, it must be admitted that the concerns regarding undocumented immigrants from south of the border are in part the long-term and ongoing consequence of the Mexican Cession; that is, land gained by the United States as a result of the Mexican-American War. Prior to that war, what we now call the American Southwest was a part of the nation of Mexico, with a history linking its residents to the older Spanish Empire’s presence in North America. What was at one time considered to belong to, at first, the numerous Native American tribes of the region, then the Spanish who genetically mixed with those tribes, and then Mexico, was ceded to the United States as a result of American military victory. Rightly or wrongly, these historical facts provide needed context to the problem of transgressions across the southern border. While the history of the region is not at issue in presidential campaigns, it is important to bear in mind as presidential candidates provide their criticisms and offer their solutions.
See also American Exceptionalism; Campaign of 1844
Greenberg, Amy. Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011.
Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Johannsen, Robert Walter, Sam W. Haynes, and Christopher Morris. Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansion. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997.
Stephanson, Andres. Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.