Manifest Destiny College Essays Samples For Students

The words “Manifest Destiny” is perhaps one of the most politically-intriguing and morally-infused phrases in the history of the American nation. It has ingrained itself in the hallowed halls of American political discourse, and has been debated – time and again – regarding its morality, political philosophy, and ethical value. It is also a prime source for reasoning behind the current turmoil within the United States regarding race and racial inequality, founded upon the notion that individuals born out of a certain stock are better human beings than others. It has thus shaped and transfigured the identity of the American nation – for better ...

Northern America had long been populated by many tribes and peoples before the Europeans settled in its eastern parts. This short paper will compare the expansion into the American West made by the American Indians, the Spaniards and finally the European-Americans via the ideology of Manifest Destiny. The strategies, motives and experiences of these groups, along with their encounters with the various actors involved, will all be explored in this paper.

Spanish Expansion into the American West

It is said that the Spanish expansion into the American West was borne out of a need for the Spaniards to find a way to move or travel to Asia. ...

The period from the Mexican-American War to World War I saw the rise of American imperialism. The country slowly was making its name known across the globe, and was in the throes of an Industrial Revolution of its own. Its territory now stretched “from sea to shining sea”, and thus it looked across the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean in search of territories it could call as its own and from which vast natural resources could be extracted to aid in the Industrial Revolution thereat. Perhaps the first theoretical underpinning which eventually led to US imperialism is the ...

Many historians argue that the manifest destiny was a concept that was coined in the late 19th century in the United States. The concept of the manifest destiny was based on the idea that America was an exceptional territory that was composed of unique people in comparison to other parts and peoples of the world. According the architect of this term, the American people had a divine responsibility to expand their territory and change both the structure and the governance of the conquered territories. Many scholars have also referred to this attitude as the west-ward expansion (Garfield 47).
The expansionists ...

Manifest destiny is a term coined by newspaper editor John O’Sullivan in 1845 to describe the moral, ethical, religious, patriotic, and financial reasoning behind the United State’s expansion of territory from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans (“Manifest”). Many Americans believed that it was God’s intent for them to do this; their Christian faith was seen as superior to that of the “heathen” native Americans who already occupied the land. The rapid expansion westward was driven in part by the feeling that the American people were special and in some ways remains a part of today’s foreign policy.
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Manifest Destiny: US Ideology of Expansion and the US Foreign Policy

Terms Used: Manifest Destiny, Polk, Texas, Mexico, Louisiana
Introduction
The term ‘Manifest destiny’ is coined by an American writer John L. O'Sullivan in 1845. It signifies the ideas and beliefs of American nation (in 19th century) that they have the rights of expansion; rights to expand towards westward in order to extend the continent of United States. O'Sullivan used this term in the support of President James Polk plan of expansion towards westward. President Polk assumed the office of President in 1845 and he immediately expressed his vision to expand the US boundary towards southwest and taking ...

Introduction

In the film Monsters to Destroy: Manifest Destiny, United States of America's (USA) policy has been discussed after the end of the Cold War in 1991 and disintegration of the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Union had broken, USA was the only super power in the world, with no major enemy.
The film discusses the Manifest Destiny and its major influence on the decision of the USA. Manifest Destiny refers to a popular American belief, coined by John O’Sullivan in 1845, which implies that the Americans have a God-given right to expand across land and regions in order to ...

Discussion 2

Californios?
Manifest destiny was a concept used by the Americans as a vision to enhance the expansion of their country regarding its exceptional behaviour, its size and regarding the general importance of the country globally. California began growing rapidly when deposits of gold were found in it. Many people came to California to trade for gold in the gold rush, and in the process, California turned from a remote, deserted land to a busy growing place. For example, San Francisco substantially grew from a small settlement of about 800 people to a big city of about hundred thousand people ...

The concept of Manifest Destiny is a belief dated back in the 19th century. It was a belief that the United States mission was to expand its western side across the North American continent. The expansion spreads its form of freedom, culture and democracy (Jones & Rakestraw, 2007). Manifest destiny came as a result in 1828 when Andrew Jackson was elected the president. He promised to expand the territories of the United States westward sides. This idea of manifest destiny holds that America had the right and duty to develop its civilization that fueled its boundaries move into Mexico and ...

1. Established at the outset of the nineteenth century was Manifest Destiny, which emerged as the guiding tenet and ideology for American foreign policy. Manifest Destiny of the 1840s has been argued to be a product of American nationalism and the impulse to expand its frontier to the west coast of North America. Ultimately, the ideology of Manifest Destiny drove the territorial expansion that resulted in the outbreak of the Civil War. The history of American expansionism during the nineteenth century indeed retained a racial paradox at its core: while American conquests across the Pacific Ocean and the North American continent ...

John Gast “American Progress” (1872)

Essay

Every nation is characterized by its own unique culture that is created according to the background of knowledge, religious ideas, beliefs, ethnical peculiarities. Certainly, every culture is unique in its own artifacts that help to understand this culture in the better way. These are literature works, architectural monuments and sculptures, pieces of music, etc. All artifacts of the past centuries have deep roots in the given culture, so deep that sometimes it is not really possible to understand their origin.
The example of such artifacts is the painting “American Progress” by John Gast ...

The US revolution and absolute independence did not come cheap. It came as a result of the immense sacrifices, determination and war waged by Americans with the colonial masters. Of course, there were oppositions, several factors set the pace for the revolution and the creation of the United States of America. A number of documents and early thinkers had influential effects in the drafting of the American Declaration of Independence. The writings of Thomas Hobbes can be classified among these early literatures that helped shaped the revolution, although with some exceptions. In the book, Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes argued that people ...

1. An American who have made a difference in America and the world in the 2000s includes President Barack Obama, who has managed to change the condition of the American economy after the 2008 financial crisis, brokered Iran Nuclear deal, passed Obamacare, facilitated jobs, and brought back the confidence of investors in the American economy.
2. The positives of the reconstruction era were the reunification of the South and North, expansion of the economy, blacks started to become politically active, Freedmen's Bureau, states could not restrict the rights of citizens (Amendment 14), all men had right to vote (Amendment ...

(Teacher)

In the years 1807 -1912 people settled in the western areas of the United States, and all points in between the east coast and the Pacific Ocean. This period is known as the Westward Expansion. The expansion began on the east coast and continued to the Pacific Ocean, where the pioneers settled and began to colonize the areas in between. It seemed that the land was available to be claimed and thousands of natives were pushed off their ancestral lands to make way for the white settlers. Although white civilization had been established in the Eastern United States ...

After the Mexican War of Independence, Spanish forces retreated from Mexico and left behind a vulnerable territory without any protection in its political and economic spheres. Apparently, while Mexicans had previously relied on the Spanish army for protection, all forms of trade were subject to the Spaniards. As a result, when the conflict ended in 1821, Mexico was independent but was in need of a rapid development plan and allies that would sustain the government and its people. To that end, the North provided possible solutions as the territory was not only bordering the United States but also included ...

Question 1

The U.S. policy toward Mexico over Texas and the Southwest during the 1840s was primarily motivated by the need to fulfill Manifest destiny and the nationalistic ambition to expand the boundaries of the United States. The Manifest destiny was a strongly held belief that the entire American continent was pre-ordained for the Americans and hence, had the obligation to fulfill this destiny. At this time, James K. Polk was the US president, and he had primarily intended to negotiate with Mexico over territorial expansion without necessarily going to war. His decision to wage war against Mexico was thus driven by ...

Introduction

The Mexican-American war of 1846-1848 was a continuous bloody conflict that was the result of Mexican resentment to the USA, and is still considered to be one of the most essential moments in the US history, being the first war to be fought on an international soil. The importance of this military act for the America is impossible to be overestimated, the country’s territory being stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific as the result.

Causes of war

The act of annexation created uproar in Mexico, who had not accepted the independence. Multiple efforts to avoid war were made by the Mexican ...

Section one:

Question one
Anne Hutchinson claimed that if God had predetermined the salvation or damnation of a person, their behavior on earth would then not change their fate. This line of thought was triggered by the conflicting behavior of the church members with the doctrine of predestination. In accordance to her understanding of the Biblical law, she viewed the Massachusetts ministers as having lost their way. The claim threatened to reduce the powers of the ministers as the members would ignore the church authority.

Question two:

After Andrew Jackson was elected as the seventh president of the United States, many of the ...

The name manifest destiny was coined by a newspaper editor John O’ Sullivan in 1845. This was a term used to explain how United States should stretch from coast to coast. For the Americans expansion seems like it was natural cause for them. They had the intent of spreading all the way to the Pacific Ocean and they had achieved independence from the revolution.
Many Settlers believed that God himself had blessed the growth of the American Nation. They considered Americans natives’ heathens so turning tribes into Christians would save souls and they crossed Mississippi river.
At the same ...

The Mexican American War began in the area known today as the state of Texas. Mexico had recently received its independence from the nation of Spain and was having difficulty controlling its new vast area of land. Americans kept moving into the Territory known today as Texas. The United States government supported and defended these settlers due to the concept known as Manifest Destiny. The desire to expand progress and increase patriotism among the members of the nation was expressed through gaining more land. This had recently occurred with the purchase of the Louisiana Purchase and just to the ...

Arguably, in the early 1900s and late 1800s numerous changes and events took place that helped United States to rise to global power. United States was once primarily an isolationist’s nation it later became one of the strongest nations in the entire world. Isolationism policy did not mean disengagement from the globe; it was reluctance of America in going to war and forming European alliance. The economy of United States largely depended on agriculture, but during this period it rapidly developed to be an industrial superpower. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, lots of reforms and development ...