The project of the League of Nations is yet another relevant example for pointing out the impact the "manifest destiny" idea had on the foreign policy of the United States. In this sense the basis for an organization that would prevent another war was the concept which emerged from the idealistic beliefs of the United States and especially of its president Wilson. However, the project failed to reach its actual power due to the absence of its initiator. Thus, the U.S. did not sign the Covenant and the role of the League of Nation was limited in its scope (Kissinger, 1995). Many consider this aspect to have been a great foreign policy mistake or at least hesitation. Therefore, for the first time in history, the U.S. did not stand behind its own political project (Kissinger, 1995). Still, the actual drafting of the organization represents a proof of the exceptional nature…...
mlaBibliography
Allard, Phil. "Manifest Destiny Noble Ideal or Excuse for Imperialist Expansion?" Issues and controversies of the American History. April 10, 2006. 23 April 2008 http://www.philwrites.com/H_manifest_destiny.htm#h2
Calvocoressi, Peter. World politics since 1945. Budapest: Open Society Institute, 1996.
Gort, Thomas. "Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points. January 8, 1918." American History Page. N.d. 23 April 2008. http://www.hbci.com/~tgort/14points.htm
Haynes, Sam W., and Christopher Morris, eds. Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansionism. College Station: Texas a&M University Press, 1997.
Mahan, who advocated creating a colossal navy and building bases, taking more land under MD. Growth is "a vital necessity to a nation," Mahan wrote, in justifying the position that the U.S. should annex the Hawaiian Islands. Lodge was a respected writer and historian, and he put forth the notion (Merk, 237) in articles that Cuba, the Hawaiian Islands, Canada and other territories should be conquered - but not Mexico, Central America, and South America. After all, the people and land there "were not of a desirable kind."
These ideas were well received, and Lodge was rewarded with an appointment in the McKinley administration as "Assistant Secretary of the Navy" - where he used his position to push for a bigger and better navy. In the end of his book, Merk (261) argues that those who were in positions of power and who could sway public opinion were "amoral" and…...
mlaWorks Cited
Merk, Frederick. (1963). Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation.
New York: Alfred a. Knopf.
Austin ("estward Expansion: Manifest Destiny," Digital History, 2007). "Aggressive nationalists invoked the idea [of Manifest Destiny] to justify Indian removal, war with Mexico, and American expansion into Cuba and Central America" ("estward Expansion: Manifest Destiny," Digital History, 2007).
On one hand, Manifest Destiny did allow poorer persons to migrate est, farm land, and make their fortunes with hard work -- but it also marked the end of a vital and unique culture, that of the Native American tribes and it also justified the United States flagrantly violating international laws and borders. Although some Americans called Manifest Destiny 'progress' at the time, in retrospect the American leadership's inability to locate America as one great nation part of a community of great nations, rather than a nation that can do as it please, seems jingoistic, illegal and cruel.
orks Cited
O'Sullivan, John L. "Manifest Destiny." 1839. Excerpted from "The Great Nation of Futurity," the…...
mlaWorks Cited
O'Sullivan, John L. "Manifest Destiny." 1839. Excerpted from "The Great Nation of Futurity," the United States Democratic Review, Volume 6, Issue 23, pp. 426-430. [18 Feb 2007] Excerpt at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/osulliva.htm
Westward Expansion: Manifest Destiny." Digital History. Updated 18 Feb 2007. [18 Feb 2007]
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=311
We are entering on its
untrodden space, with the truths of God in our minds, beneficent objects in our hearts, and with clear conscience unsullied by the past. We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can. ('Sullivan 1)
Not all Americans believed in the concept of manifest destination. Many settlers from different countries actually got along with the Native Americans and did not adapt to the concept of slavery of any kind. Many German immigrants belonged to this group. The Germans and Native Americans actually got along quite well. ne would assume that the Germans treated that Native Americans much like others that came here. They did not treat them poorly, though. The Native Americans were considered indigenous and so too were the Germans when they first settled in the United States.…...
mlaO'Sullivan was not alone in his belief that the whites were superior over other races. Before the abolishment of slavery in 1865, many whites wanted to expand it over the entire American continent. This is a testament to the fact that they believed in their superiority and felt that they could expand across the country and possess the land and the people who were already inhabitants. Since the northern states rejected the notion of slavery, it made sense for those clinging to the doctrine of manifest destiny to extend slavery westward. The southerners who believed in slavery felt that the warm climates of the western states and Mexico would be the perfect reason to expand slavery to this area (Dunning 113).
The persistent push towards the west and the need for continuous expansion gradually increased the conflict between the early inhabitants of the land and the colonists, leading to aggression. Upon their arrival in Massachusetts Bay, after their first encounter with the Native Americans, the colonists were quick to resort to violence, as an attempt to please their God. After confronting the natives, many believed that "…it pleased God to vanquish their enemies and give them deliverance…" (Bradford 85), indicating the fact that God was used to justify every action taken on behalf of the American population. Conflict with the Native Americans continued with the rise of Native American Removal Act, which drove the Natives who remained in the East to move to reservations. Of the many incidents that occurred during the process of enforcing the removal act, the most well-known is the "Trail of Tears," when President Martin Van Buren (President Jackson's successor) ordered the removal of about twenty thousand Cherokee that remained in the East as a sign of rebellion against the government.
The U.S. troops rounded off the Cherokee, who were then sent off in groups of about a thousand each, on an eight hundred mile journey in which many died along on the path that is now commonly referred to as the Trail of Tears, the route in which the Native Americans followed from Georgia to the Indian Territory (Danzer 130). As reflected in the apathy portrayed towards the Cherokee, under the leadership of the American government, the United States Army did not tolerate any resistance to the removal, and with the clearing of the Native Americans, Americans concentrated on the development of transportation which was used to facilitate the volume of trade and manufacturing, as well as infrastructure. As the prospects of statehood over the majority of the western territories became more transparent, the nation tackled the issue of slavery in the West, contributing to the causes of the Civil War, which inhibited the rate of expansion. Nonetheless, expansion accelerated over the last several decades of the nineteenth century, after the completion of the rural and urban infrastructure, as well as the transcontinental railroad, and, the complete removal
spiritualsproject.org).
Most scholars believe that the Negro Spirituals "proliferated near the end of the 18th century and during the last few decades leading up to the end of legalized slavery in the 1860s," the Spirituals Project explains on their eb site. In Africa, "music was called on to mark and celebrate virtually every event in tribal life, no matter how significant."
Those traditions and values were brought over to the North American continent on the slave ships, and became the foundations for Negro Spirituals song on the plantations. Yes, Africans from many diverse religious backgrounds were impressed with Christianity, albeit they reluctantly got involved with Christianity, the Spirituals Project reports, because they (rightly) viewed it as "hypocritical" when a slaveholder "espoused love and brotherhood." And yet many slaves were "fascinated with the Biblical stories, which seemed to parallel many of their own experiences."
So, they created songs, and though they sometimes had to…...
mlaWorks Cited
Douglass, Frederick. (1852). What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Retrieved Feb. 6, 2007, at http://douglassarchives.org/doug_a10.htm.
Eisenhower, John S.D. 1989. So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846-1848.
New York: Random House.
Public Broadcasting System. "American Experience: Bataan Rescue / Philippines." Retrieved Feb. 6, 2007, at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bataan/sfeature/sf_philippines.html#ql .
Louisiana Purchase and Manifest Destiny
The United States has a number of defining moments or eras in history, epochs that serve as a milestone for American greatness. Two of these important moments are the Louisiana Purchase and Manifest Destiny. The Louisiana Purchase marks the beginning of America's expansion westward, the origin of the belief that the United States future is linked with its territorial expansion. It is analogous to Manifest Destiny in the belief that the United States needed to expand its borders and with expansion comes national greatness. This paper will examine the historical aspects of both events and compare and contrast them. It will argue that while the basic motivation for the Louisiana Purchase and Manifest Destiny are similar and that the Louisiana Purchase is the precursor to Manifest Destiny. The paper will explore their enduring legacy in the modern era.
Louisiana before its acquisition by the United States was…...
mlaReferences
Howe, D.W. (2009). What hath god wrought: the transformation of America, 1815-1848. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kennedy, D.M., & Cohen, L. (2013). The American pageant: a history of the American people (15th ed.). Australia: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Miller, R.J. (2008). Native America, discovered and conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and Manifest Destiny. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Nugent, W.T. (2008). Habits of empire: a history of American expansion. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Young American Males and Manifest Destiny: The United States Army as a Cultural Mirror," author Robert May examines the role filibustering has played in the United States nation-building activities prior to the Civil ar. May contends that filibustering was a natural offshoot of the country's policy of expansion, based on the doctrine of Manifest Destiny.
In fact, May further argues, the general political and social climate of the pre-Civil ar contributed to the proliferation of filibustering among the nation's young men. This gave rise to a "national filibuster culture," with an implicit goal of expanding United States territory further into Central and South America.
The author points out, for example, that filibuster expeditions continued, even though the practice was illegal. They were helped in large part by an adulating public, many of whom expressed support or even aided the filibusters directly by providing them with food and shelter as they hid…...
mlaWorks Cited
May, Robert. "Young American Males and Manifest Destiny: The United States Army as a Cultural Mirror." The Journal of American History, 78(3): December 1991. JSTOR Database.
" In other words, republicanism in an expanding state would inevitably lead to more despotic, aristocratic, and monarchical regimes. Hence, if the U.S. were to follow a policy of expansion, it would, at least, theoretically conflict with its republican origins.
Interestingly, one of the leading proponents of republicanism, Thomas Jefferson had become the third U.S. President after an unexpected electoral crisis in the elections of 1800. He was a great champion of the rights of the individuals and the states rather than a strong central government. At the same time, the international political situation at the time -- with several European powers vying to consolidate their colonial presence in the Americas -- dictated an opposite direction for the U.S. foreign policy to safe-guard its national interests, i.e., a policy of Westward Expansion and the fulfillment of the Manifest Destiny to make the U.S. A dominant power in North America. The way…...
mlaBibliography
Bakeless, John. Daniel Boone, Master of the Wilderness. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
Decebal. (n.d.) "The Mexican-American War." All Empires Online History Community. Available at [Accessed June 16, 2008]http://www.allempires.com/article/index.php?q=war_mexican
Fleming, Thomas. The Louisiana Purchase. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003.
Greene, Jack P. And J.R. Pole, eds., a Companion to the American Revolution, Malden: MA, Blackwell Publishing, 2003
Westopia: An Epic Narrative Describing the History of the West post-Reformation and the Rise of New Peoples and Places in Conflict with the Old
In anno domini 1650, the God of the West -- of the World -- was banned in Maryland. The Pure had come, had been given land, had found shelter under the Toleration Act -- yet acted with intolerance towards those who went to God with hearts much different from their own. The Pure were proud and firm -- like the Chosen People of the Old Testament -- the children of Abraham.
Millennia had passed and the children were grown -- enveloping within them some sense of the God of the West -- Christ Who redeemed them -- yet their sense was separate from that of the past: their doctrine was steeped in the predestinated forms of the Protestors -- of Luther and Zwingli and Knox and Calvin: these…...
Defined as “an aggressive program of expansion,” Manifest Destiny characterizes American national identity (Haynes, 2006, p. 1). Manifest Destiny refers to both a philosophy and a strategy: a means of crafting the notion of American exceptionalism as well as the methods used to construct American geo-political power. The geographic shape of the United States today owes itself to the principles and widespread embrace of Manifest Destiny, in which Washington laid claim to lands that had to be taken by force, from the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 through to the acquisition of Texas and northern Mexico, to the takeover of Hawaii. The consequences of Manifest Destiny continue to reverberate more than two centuries after the initial rise of territorial expansion programs. Manifest Destiny emboldened the American experiment, fueling its economy, bolstering its military and political power, and exacerbating social unrest and disparity.
The relative ease with which the United States acquisitioned new…...
Mexi War
The term "manifest destiny" was coined by John L. O'Sullivan during the administration of President James Knox Polk in the middle of the 19th century. However, the concept of manifest destiny seemed to have guided the original settling of the European colonies in North America, with the accompanying sense of entitlement to the lands and people therein. Manifest destiny suggested that God ordained America to be special, and wanted Americans to conquer and amass as much land as possible. Territorial acquisition became the cornerstone of American politics in the 19th century. Under President Polk, the boundaries of the United States stretched as far as they could possibly go, warranting war with a neighboring state: Mexico. Therefore, the events leading up to the Mexican War were directly linked to the overall concept of Manifest Destiny.
However, there were other precursors to the Mexican War. ebellions in California led to the American…...
mlaReferences
University of Virginia (2013). American president. Retrieved online: http://millercenter.org/president/polk/essays/biography/1
"War Fever and Antiwar Protests." Digital History. Retrieved online: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3266
American Way of War
The history of the American Way of War is a transitional one, as Weigley shows in his landmark work of the same name. The strategy of war went from, under Washington, a small scale, elude and survive set of tactics practiced by what seem today to be relatively "quaint" militias, to -- in the 20th century -- a full-scale operation known as "total war." True, "total war" was not a concept invented by the Americans in the 20th century. The North eventually practiced "total war" against the Confederates when Sherman's campaign left utter destruction of civilian territory in its wake. The ancient Romans practiced it when, under the direction of Cato, they destroyed Carthage because its mere existence, they felt, posed a threat to their prosperity. In the 20th century, however, "total war" received an enormous boost of technical support when the inventors of the atom bomb…...
mlaBibliography
Butler, Smedley. War is a Racket. LA: Feral House, 2003.
Chollet, Derek and James Goldgeier. America Between the Wars. NY: Public Affairs,
2009.
Debs, Eugene. "Anti-War Speech," 16 June 1918. Web.
What were the primary motivations and factors that led to the U.S. shift from isolationism and continental expansion to imperialism by the late 19th and early 20th centuries?
Introduction
America’s so-called “shift” from isolationism and continental expansion to imperialism by the late 19th and early 20th centuries was really nothing more than a natural evolution of America’s “Manifest Destiny.” Before the US could enter its imperial phase beginning with the Spanish-American War at the turn of the century, it had first to square accounts on the continent by pushing its borders as far as they could be pushed. Once the West had been thoroughly settled and the Union held together (the major conflict of the 19th century), the US could turn its attention to foreign lands and global plans to facilitate the spread of the American Empire. It would have been impossible for the US to achieve imperial objectives any earlier, for…...
mlaBibliography
Lease, Mary Elizabeth. Women in the Farmers’ Alliance. (1891). In Reading the American Past, Vol. 2. Ed. By Michael P. Johnson. Bedford/St. Martins, 2012.O’Sullivan, John. "Manifest destiny." Sanford, Manifest Destiny (1845): 26-32.Peck, Mary Gray. Carrie Chapman Catt: A Biography. New York: HW Wilson Company, 1944.Smith, Adam. The wealth of nations. Aegitas, 2016.Roark, James L., Michael P. Johnson, Patricia Cline Cohen, Sarah Stage, and Alan Lawson. Understanding the American promise, volume 2: from 1865: a brief history of the United States. Vol. 2. Macmillan, 2011.
It was also the driving force behind the annexation of vast territories by the United States in the West, including Texas, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona, which were conquered from Mexico, and Louisiana, which was purchased from France (Lubbrage, 2003).
The newly acquired territories became a bone of contention between the Southern and Northern states as the slave-holding South wanted to create more slave-holding states in order to restore the balance of power with the North, while the North resisted the expansion of slavery mainly because of a fear of "Slave Power." Hence, Manifest Destiny, at least indirectly contributed to the start of the Civil War.
The Fugitive Slave Law
During the drafting of the U.S. Constitution in 1787, the delegates from the Southern slave states refused to join the Union unless certain specific provisions on slavery were agreed. One of the provisions relating to slavery introduced in the Constitution…...
mlaReferences
The Free Soil Party Platform." (1848). Professor Mark Lause's Links. Retrieved on December 13, 2007 at http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Quad/6460/doct/848frsl.html
Hawes, R.F. Jr. (2007). "Nullification Re-visited." The Libertarian Enterprise. Number 411, April 1, 2007. Retrieved on December 13, 2007 at http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2007/tle411-20070401-03.html
Lubragge, M.T. (2003). "Manifest Destiny: The Philosophy That Created a Nation." From Revolution to Reconstruction. http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/E/manifest/manif1.htm
Swogger, M.J. (1997). "Causes of the Civil War: The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law." Suite 101. Retrieved on December 13, 2007 at http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/american_civil_war_retired/4390
In other case the motive was rooted first in ideological assumption -- and that assumption was that ASP superiority was a given.
The issue of race and class finally came to a head as America continued its expansion westward. But the issue was political as well: hat right did the Federal Government have over State Government to say whether slavery should be abolished? ho was really in power in America -- the States and local government -- or federal national government? The Civil ar, of course, answered the question brutally and bloodily in 1865. But racism and classism did not end. In fact, the problems of race and class would continue even after the war for as long as American policy was determined by ASP elitism. That policy has not changed to this day.
In conclusion, issues of race and class were ingrained into the American fabric from the very beginning…...
mlaWorks Cited
Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Destiny: the Origins of American Racial Anglo-
Saxonism. Harvard University Press, 1981. Print.
1. The Struggle for Autonomy: The Impact of British Colonial Policies on Colonial Identity
Discuss the British policies that restricted colonial autonomy, such as the Navigation Acts and the Stamp Act.
Analyze how these policies fostered a sense of collective grievance and the desire for independence.
Examine the ways in which colonists resisted British control through boycotts, protests, and the formation of political organizations.
2. The Economic Foundations of the American Colonies: Agriculture, Trade, and Manufacturing
Describe the various agricultural practices and products that formed the backbone of the colonial economy.
Trace the development of trade networks between the colonies and....
Women in Western Expansion Literature: Opposing Viewpoints
Topic 1: The Role of Women in Settling the Frontier
Opposing Viewpoint 1: Women played a crucial role in establishing and sustaining frontier communities. They provided labor, support, and cultural stability, overcoming significant challenges and adversity.
Opposing Viewpoint 2: Women's contributions to frontier expansion were limited and often marginalized. They were relegated to traditional domestic roles and faced severe restrictions on their autonomy and agency.
Topic 2: Women's Agency and Self-Determination
Opposing Viewpoint 1: Western expansion literature portrays women as strong and resourceful individuals who exercised agency and made their own choices. They navigated a....
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