Manifest Destiny

What is Manifest Destiny? Information about 19th-century belief that the United States had a mission to expand, spreading its form of democracy and freedom.

Manifest Destiny is nothing but 19th-century belief that the United States had a mission to expand, spreading its form of democracy and freedom. The supporters of Manifest Destiny claimed or believed expansion some sort of good destiny.

William Gilpin, address to the U.S. Senate (2 March 1846); as quoted in Mission of the North American People, Geographical, Social, and Political (1873), by William Gilpin, p. 124:

The untransacted destiny of the American people is to subdue the continent — to rush over this vast field to the Pacific Ocean — to animate the many hundred millions of its people, and to cheer them upward — to set the principle of self-government at work — to agitate these herculean masses — to establish a new order in human affairs — to set free the enslaved — to regenerate superannuated nations — to change darkness into light — to stir up the sleep of a hundred centuries — to teach old nations a new civilization — to confirm the destiny of the human race — to carry the career of mankind to its culminating point — to cause stagnant people to be re-born — to perfect science — to emblazon history with the conquest of peace — to shed a new and resplendent glory upon mankind — to unite the world in one social family — to dissolve the spell of tyranny and exalt charity — to absolve the curse that weighs down humanity, and to shed blessings round the world!
Divine task! immortal mission! Let us tread fast and joyfully the open trail before us! Let every American heart open wide for patriotism to glow undimmed, and confide with religious faith in the sublime and prodigious destiny of his well-loved country.

Few facts…

  1. The term, which first appeared in print in 1839, was used in 1845 by a New York journalist, John L. O’Sullivan, to call for the annexation of Texas.
  2. The term fell out of usage by U.S. policy makers early in the 20th century.
  3. However, some people believe that an American “mission” to promote and defend democracy throughout the world, continues to have an influence on American political ideology.

Further readings:

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