Why Was Manifest Destiny a Significant Component in the Making of America?
During the 1830s and 1840s, American nationalism and westward expansion had merged into the widespread belief in manifest destiny. Proud of their victories and independence, many Americans thought of themselves as the forbearers of freedom. Americans took this idea and ran with it, making it their new profound slogan. Manifest Destiny asserted that expansion of the United States throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable; it not only influenced the idea of expanding land but also the expansion of democratic institutions and Protestantism, and became a philosophy which can be compared to the idea of imperialism. The term “Manifest Destiny” was the belief that the expansion of the U.S. was ordained by God to spread over the entire continent, but also many just saw it as a slogan to promote expansion. The term first came about by a man named John L. O’Sullivan in 1845, who expressed the idea that Americans had the God-given right to settle all of North America. This term was used widely by the people who supported the campaign of annexing western territory but also the people who wanted to expand to the Pacific. In John L. O’Sullivan’s article, “Annexation” he exclaims, ".... the right of our manifest destiny to over spread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federative development of self government entrusted to us. It is right such as that of the tree to the space of air and the earth suitable for the full expansion of its principle and destiny of growth."(1) Once the concept had been given the name 'Manifest Destiny' it became widely used, appearing in newspapers, debates, paintings and advertisements. O’Sullivan’s original conception of Manifest Destiny was not a call for territorial expansion by force. He believed that the expansion of the United States would happen without the direction of the U.S. government or the