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THE AMERICAN YAWP

12. Manifest Destiny

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I. Introduction | II. Antebellum Western Migration and Indian Removal | III. Life and Culture in the West | IV. Texas, Mexico and Amer-

IX. Reference Material

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, 1862. Mural, United States Capitol.

*The American Yawp is an evolving, collaborative text. Please click here to improve this chapter.*

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I. Introduction

John Louis O’Sullivan, a popular editor and columnist, articulated the long-standing American belief in the God-given mission of the

United States to lead the world in the peaceful transition to democracy. In a little-read essay printed in The United States Magazine and

Democratic Review, O’Sullivan outlined the importance of annexing Texas to the United States:

Why, were other reasoning wanting, in favor of now elevating this question of the

reception of Texas into the Union, out of the lower region of our past party dissen-

sions, up to its proper level of a high and broad nationality, it surely is to be found,

found abundantly, in the manner in which other nations have undertaken to intrude

themselves into it, between us and the proper parties to the case, in a spirit of hostile

interference against us, for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering

our power, limiting our greatness and checking the ful�llment of our manifest des-

tiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of

our yearly multiplying millions.

O’Sullivan and many others viewed expansion as necessary to achieve America’s destiny and to protect American interests. The quasi-

religious call to spread democracy coupled with the reality of thousands of settlers pressing westward. Manifest destiny was grounded in

the belief that a democratic, agrarian republic would save the world.

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John O’Sullivan, shown here in a 1874 Harper’s Weekly sketch, coined the phrase “manifest des- tiny” in an 1845 newspaper article. Wikimedia.

Although called into name in 1845, manifest destiny was a widely held but vaguely de�ned belief that dated back to the founding of the

nation. First, many Americans believed that the strength of American values and institutions justi�ed moral claims to hemispheric lead-

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ership. Second, the lands on the North American continent west of the Mississippi River (and later into the Caribbean) were destined

for American-led political and agricultural improvement. Third, God and the Constitution ordained an irrepressible destiny to accom-

plish redemption and democratization throughout the world. All three of these claims pushed many Americans, whether they uttered

the words manifest destiny or not, to actively seek the expansion of democracy. These beliefs and the resulting actions were often disas-

trous to anyone in the way of American expansion. The new religion of American democracy spread on the feet and in the wagons of

those who moved west, imbued with the hope that their success would be the nation’s success.

The Young America movement, strongest among members of the Democratic Party but spanning the political spectrum, downplayed

divisions over slavery and ethnicity by embracing national unity and emphasizing American exceptionalism, territorial expansion, demo-

cratic participation, and economic interdependence. Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson captured the political outlook of this new generation

in a speech he delivered in 1844 titled “The Young American”:

In every age of the world, there has been a leading nation, one of a more generous

sentiment, whose eminent citizens were willing to stand for the interests of general

justice and humanity, at the risk of being called, by the men of the moment, chimeri-

cal and fantastic. Which should be that nation but these States? Which should lead

that movement, if not New England? Who should lead the leaders, but the Young

American?

However, many Americans, including Emerson, disapproved of aggressive expansion. For opponents of manifest destiny, the lofty

rhetoric of the Young Americans was nothing other than a kind of imperialism that the American Revolution was supposed to have re-

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pudiated. Many members of the Whig Party (and later the Republican Party) argued that the United States’ mission was to lead by ex-

ample, not by conquest. Abraham Lincoln summed up this criticism with a fair amount of sarcasm during a speech in 1859:

He (the Young American) owns a large part of the world, by right of possessing it;

and all the rest by right of wanting it, and intending to have it. . . . Young America

had “a pleasing hope—a fond desire—a longing after” territory. He has a great pas-

sion—a perfect rage—for the “new”; particularly new men for o�ce, and the new

earth mentioned in the revelations, in which, being no more sea, there must be

about three times as much land as in the present. He is a great friend of humanity;

and his desire for land is not sel�sh, but merely an impulse to extend the area of free-

dom. He is very anxious to �ght for the liberation of enslaved nations and colonies,

provided, always, they have land. . . . As to those who have no land, and would be

glad of help from any quarter, he considers they can a�ord to wait a few hundred

years longer. In knowledge he is particularly rich. He knows all that can possibly be

known; inclines to believe in spiritual trappings, and is the unquestioned inventor of

“Manifest Destiny.”

But Lincoln and other anti-expansionists would struggle to win popular opinion. The nation, fueled by the principles of manifest des-

tiny, would continue westward. Along the way, Americans battled both native peoples and foreign nations, claiming territory to the very

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edges of the continent. But westward expansion did not come without a cost. It exacerbated the slavery question, pushed Americans to-

ward civil war, and, ultimately, threatened the very mission of American democracy it was designed to aid.

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Artistic propaganda like this promoted the national project of manifest destiny. Columbia, the female �gure of America, leads Americans into the West and into the future by carrying the values of republicanism (as seen through her Roman garb) and progress (shown through the inclusion of technological innovations like the telegraph) and clearing native peoples and animals, seen being pushed into the darkness. John Gast, American Progress, 1872. Wikimedia.

II. Antebellum Western Migration and Indian Removal

After the War of 1812, Americans settled the Great Lakes region rapidly thanks in part to aggressive land sales by the federal govern-

ment. Missouri’s admission as a slave state presented the �rst major crisis over westward migration and American expansion in the ante-

bellum period. Farther north, lead and iron ore mining spurred development in Wisconsin. By the 1830s and 1840s, increasing num-

bers of German and Scandinavian immigrants joined easterners in settling the Upper Mississippi watershed. Little settlement occurred

west of Missouri as migrants viewed the Great Plains as a barrier to farming. Farther west, the Rocky Mountains loomed as undesirable

to all but fur traders, and all Native Americans west of the Mississippi appeared too powerful to allow for white expansion.

“Do not lounge in the cities!” commanded publisher Horace Greeley in 1841, “There is room and health in the country, away from the

crowds of idlers and imbeciles. Go west, before you are �tted for no life but that of the factory.” The New York Tribune often argued

that American exceptionalism required the United States to benevolently conquer the continent as the prime means of spreading Amer-

ican capitalism and American democracy. However, the vast West was not empty. Native Americans controlled much of the land east of

the Mississippi River and almost all of the West. Expansion hinged on a federal policy of Indian removal.

The harassment and dispossession of Native Americans—whether driven by o�cial U.S. government policy or the actions of individual

Americans and their communities—depended on the belief in manifest destiny. Of course, a fair bit of racism was part of the equation

as well. The political and legal processes of expansion always hinged on the belief that white Americans could best use new lands and op-

portunities. This belief rested on the idea that only Americans embodied the democratic ideals of yeoman agriculturalism extolled by

Thomas Je�erson and expanded under Jacksonian democracy.

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Florida was an early test case for the Americanization of new lands. The territory held strategic value for the young nation’s growing eco-

nomic and military interests in the Caribbean. The most important factors that led to the annexation of Florida included anxieties over

runaway enslaved people, Spanish neglect of the region, and the desired defeat of Native American tribes who controlled large portions

of lucrative farm territory.

During the early nineteenth century, Spain wanted to increase productivity in Florida and encouraged migration of mostly southern en-

slavers. By the second decade of the 1800s, Anglo settlers occupied plantations along the St. Johns River, from the border with Georgia

to Lake George a hundred miles upstream. Spain began to lose control as the area quickly became a haven for slave smugglers bringing

illicit human cargo into the United States for lucrative sale to Georgia planters. Plantation owners grew apprehensive about the growing

numbers of enslaved laborers running to the swamps and Native American-controlled areas of Florida. American enslavers pressured the

U.S. government to confront the Spanish authorities. Southern enslavers refused to quietly accept the continued presence of armed

Black men in Florida. During the War of 1812, a ragtag assortment of Georgia enslavers joined by a plethora of armed opportunists raid-

ed Spanish and British-owned plantations along the St. Johns River. These private citizens received U.S. government help on July 27,

1816, when U.S. army regulars attacked the Negro Fort (established as an armed outpost during the war by the British and located about

sixty miles south of the Georgia border). The raid killed 270 of the fort’s inhabitants as a result of a direct hit on the fort’s gunpowder

stores. This con�ict set the stage for General Andrew Jackson’s invasion of Florida in 1817 and the beginning of the First Seminole

War.

Americans also held that Creek and Seminole people, occupying the area from the Apalachicola River to the wet prairies and hammock

islands of central Florida, were dangers in their own right. These tribes, known to the Americans collectively as Seminoles, migrated into

the region over the course of the eighteenth century and established settlements, tilled �elds, and tended herds of cattle in the rich �ood-

plains and grasslands that dominated the northern third of the Florida peninsula. Envious eyes looked upon these lands. After bitter

con�ict that often pitted Americans against a collection of Native Americans and formerly enslaved people, Spain eventually agreed to

transfer the territory to the United States. The resulting Adams-Onís Treaty exchanged Florida for $5 million and other territorial con-

cessions elsewhere.

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After the purchase, planters from the Carolinas, Georgia, and Virginia entered Florida. However, the in�ux of settlers into the Florida

territory was temporarily halted in the mid-1830s by the outbreak of the Second Seminole War (1835–1842). Free Black men and

women and escaped enslaved laborers also occupied the Seminole district, a situation that deeply troubled enslavers. Indeed, General

Thomas Sidney Jesup, U.S. commander during the early stages of the Second Seminole War, labeled that con�ict “a negro, not an Indian

War,” fearful as he was that if the revolt “was not speedily put down, the South will feel the e�ect of it on their slave population before

the end of the next season.” Florida became a state in 1845 and white settlement expanded.

American action in Florida seized Indigenous people’s eastern lands, reduced lands available for freedom-seeking enslaved people, and

killed entirely or removed Native American peoples farther west. This became the template for future action. Presidents, since at least

Thomas Je�erson, had long discussed removal, but President Andrew Jackson took the most dramatic action. Jackson believed, “It

[speedy removal] will place a dense and civilized population in large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage hunters.” Desires

to remove Native Americans from valuable farmland motivated state and federal governments to cease trying to assimilate Native Amer-

icans and instead plan for forced removal.

Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, thereby granting the president authority to begin treaty negotiations that would give

Native Americans land in the West in exchange for their lands east of the Mississippi. Many advocates of removal, including President

Jackson, paternalistically claimed that it would protect Native American communities from outside in�uences that jeopardized their

chances of becoming “civilized” farmers. Jackson emphasized this paternalism—the belief that the government was acting in the best in-

terest of Native peoples—in his 1830 State of the Union Address. “It [removal] will separate the Indians from immediate contact with

settlements of whites . . . and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the in�uence of good

counsels, to cast o� their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community.”

The experience of the Cherokee was particularly brutal. Despite many tribal members adopting some Euro-American ways, including

intensi�ed agriculture, slaving, and Christianity, state and federal governments pressured the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Cherokee

Nations to sign treaties and surrender land. Many of these tribal nations used the law in hopes of protecting their lands. Most notable

among these e�orts was the Cherokee Nation’s attempt to sue the state of Georgia.

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Beginning in 1826, Georgian o�cials asked the federal government to negotiate with the Cherokee to secure lucrative lands. The Adams

administration resisted the state’s request, but harassment from local settlers against the Cherokee forced the Adams and Jackson ad-

ministrations to begin serious negotiations with the Cherokee. Georgia grew impatient with the process of negotiation and abolished

existing state agreements with the Cherokee that had guaranteed rights of movement and jurisdiction of tribal law. Andrew Jackson

penned a letter soon after taking o�ce that encouraged the Cherokee, among others, to voluntarily relocate to the West. The discovery

of gold in Georgia in the fall of 1829 further antagonized the situation.

The Cherokee defended themselves against Georgia’s laws by citing treaties signed with the United States that guaranteed the Cherokee

Nation both their land and independence. The Cherokee appealed to the Supreme Court against Georgia to prevent dispossession. The

Court, while sympathizing with the Cherokee’s plight, ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to hear the case (Cherokee Nation v. Georgia

[1831]). In an associated case, Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the Supreme Court ruled that Georgia laws did not apply within Cherokee

territory. Regardless of these rulings, the state government ignored the Supreme Court and did little to prevent con�ict between set-

tlers and the Cherokee.

Jackson wanted a solution that might preserve peace and his reputation. He sent secretary of war Lewis Cass to o�er title to western

lands and the promise of tribal governance in exchange for relinquishing of the Cherokee’s eastern lands. These negotiations opened a

rift within the Cherokee Nation. Cherokee leader John Ridge believed removal was inevitable and pushed for a treaty that would give

the best terms. Others, called nationalists and led by John Ross, refused to consider removal in negotiations. The Jackson administration

refused any deal that fell short of large-scale removal of the Cherokee from Georgia, thereby fueling a devastating and violent intratribal

battle between the two factions. Eventually tensions grew to the point that several treaty advocates were assassinated by members of the

national faction.

In 1835, a portion of the Cherokee Nation led by John Ridge, hoping to prevent further tribal bloodshed, signed the Treaty of New

Echota. This treaty ceded lands in Georgia for $5 million and, the signatories hoped, limiting future con�icts between the Cherokee and

white settlers. However, most of the tribe refused to adhere to the terms, viewing the treaty as illegitimately negotiated. In response,

John Ross pointed out the U.S. government’s hypocrisy. “You asked us to throw o� the hunter and warrior state: We did so—you asked

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us to form a republican government: We did so. Adopting your own as our model. You asked us to cultivate the earth, and learn the me-

chanic arts. We did so. You asked us to learn to read. We did so. You asked us to cast away our idols and worship your god. We did so.

Now you demand we cede to you our lands. That we will not do.”

President Martin van Buren, in 1838, decided to press the issue beyond negotiation and court rulings and used the New Echota Treaty

provisions to order the army to forcibly remove those Cherokee not obeying the treaty’s cession of territory. Harsh weather, poor plan-

ning, and di�cult travel compounded the tragedy of what became known as the Trail of Tears. Sixteen thousand Cherokee embarked on

the journey; only ten thousand completed it. Not every instance was of removal was as treacherous or demographically disastrous as

the Cherokee example, while, on the other hand, some tribes violently resisted removal. Regardless, over sixty thousand Native Ameri-

cans were forced west prior to the Civil War.

The allure of manifest destiny encouraged expansion regardless of terrain or locale, and Indian removal also took place, to a lesser degree,

in northern lands. In the Old Northwest, Odawa and Ojibwe communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota resisted removal as

many lived on land north of desirable farming land. Moreover, some Ojibwe and Odawa individuals purchased land independently.

They formed successful alliances with missionaries to help advocate against removal, as well as with some traders and merchants who

depended on trade with Native peoples. Yet Indian removal occurred in the North as well—the Black Hawk War in 1832, for instance,

led to the removal of many Sauk to Kansas.

Despite the disaster of removal, tribal nations slowly rebuilt their cultures and in some cases even achieved prosperity in new territories.

Tribal nations blended traditional cultural practices, including common land systems, with western practices including constitutional

governments, common school systems, and creating an elite enslaving class.

Some Native American groups remained too powerful to remove. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, the Comanche rose to pow-

er in the Southern Plains region of what is now the southwestern United States. By quickly adapting to the horse culture �rst intro-

duced by the Spanish, the Comanche transitioned from a foraging economy into a mixed hunting and pastoral society. After 1821, the

new Mexican nation-state claimed the region as part of the northern Mexican frontier, but they had little control. Instead, the Co-

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manche remained in power and controlled the economy of the Southern Plains. A �exible political structure allowed the Comanche to

dominate other Native American groups as well as Mexican and American settlers.

In the 1830s, the Comanche launched raids into northern Mexico, ending what had been an unpro�table but peaceful diplomatic rela-

tionship with Mexico. At the same time, they forged new trading relationships with Anglo-American traders in Texas. Throughout this

period, the Comanche and several other independent Native groups, particularly the Kiowa, Apache, and Navajo, engaged in thousands

of violent encounters with northern Mexicans. Collectively, these encounters comprised an ongoing war during the 1830s and 1840s as

tribal nations vied for power and wealth. By the 1840s, Comanche power peaked with an empire that controlled a vast territory in the

trans-Mississippi west known as Comancheria. By trading in Texas and raiding in northern Mexico, the Comanche controlled the �ow

of commodities, including captives, livestock, and trade goods. They practiced a �uid system of captivity and captive trading, rather

than a rigid chattel system. The Comanche used captives for economic exploitation but also adopted captives into kinship networks.

This allowed for the assimilation of diverse peoples in the region into the empire. The ongoing con�ict in the region had sweeping con-

sequences on both Mexican and American politics. The U.S.-Mexican War, beginning in 1846, can be seen as a culmination of this vio-

lence.21

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“Map of the Plains Indians,” undated. Smithsonian Institute.

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In the Great Basin region, Mexican independence also escalated patterns of violence. This region, on the periphery of the Spanish em-

pire, was nonetheless integrated in the vast commercial trading network of the West. Mexican o�cials and Anglo-American traders en-

tered the region with their own imperial designs. New forms of violence spread into the homelands of the Paiute and Western Shoshone.

Traders, settlers, and Mormon religious refugees, aided by U.S. o�cials and soldiers, committed daily acts of violence and laid the

groundwork for violent conquest. This expansion of the American state into the Great Basin meant groups such as the Ute, Cheyenne,

and Arapahoe had to compete over land, resources, captives, and trade relations with Anglo-Americans. Eventually, white incursion and

ongoing wars against Native Americans resulted in traumatic dispossession of land and the struggle for subsistence.

The federal government attempted more than relocation of Native Americans. Policies to “civilize” Native Americans coexisted along

with forced removal and served an important “Americanizing” vision of expansion that brought an ever-increasing population under the

American �ag and sought to balance aggression with the uplift of paternal care. Thomas L. McKenney, superintendent of Indian trade

from 1816 to 1822 and the Superintendent of Indian A�airs from 1824 to 1830, served as the main architect of the civilization policy.

He asserted that Native Americans were morally and intellectually equal to whites. He sought to establish a national Indian school

system.

Congress rejected McKenney’s plan but instead passed the Civilization Fund Act in 1819. This act o�ered $10,000 annually to be allo-

cated toward societies that funded missionaries to establish schools among Native American tribes. However, providing schooling for

Native Americans under the auspices of the civilization program also allowed the federal government to justify taking more land.

Treaties, such as the 1820 Treaty of Doak’s Stand made with the Choctaw nation, often included land cessions as requirements for edu-

cation provisions. Removal and Americanization reinforced Americans’ sense of cultural dominance.

After removal in the 1830s, the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw began to collaborate with missionaries to build school systems of

their own. Leaders hoped education would help ensuing generations to protect political sovereignty. In 1841, the Cherokee Nation

opened a public school system that within two years included eighteen schools. By 1852, the system expanded to twenty-one schools

with a national enrollment of 1,100 pupils. Many of the students educated in these tribally controlled schools later served their nations

as teachers, lawyers, physicians, bureaucrats, and politicians.

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III. Life and Culture in the West

The dream of creating a democratic utopia in the West ultimately rested on those who picked up their possessions and their families and

moved west. Western settlers usually migrated as families and settled along navigable and potable rivers. Settlements often coalesced

around local traditions, especially religion, carried from eastern settlements. These shared understandings encouraged a strong sense of

cooperation among western settlers that forged communities on the frontier.

Before the Mexican War, the West for most Americans still referred to the fertile area between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mis-

sissippi River with a slight amount of overspill beyond its banks. With soil exhaustion and land competition increasing in the East, most

early western migrants sought a greater measure of stability and self-su�ciency by engaging in small-scale farming. Boosters of these new

agricultural areas along with the U.S. government encouraged perceptions of the West as a land of hard-built opportunity that promised

personal and national bounty.

Women migrants bore the unique double burden of travel while also being expected to conform to restrictive gender norms. The key

virtues of femininity, according to the “cult of true womanhood,” included piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. The concept

of “separate spheres” expected women to remain in the home. These values accompanied men and women as they traveled west to begin

their new lives.

While many of these societal standards endured, there often existed an openness of frontier society that resulted in modestly more op-

portunities for women. Husbands needed partners in setting up a homestead and working in the �eld to provide food for the family.

Suitable wives were often in short supply, enabling some to informally negotiate more power in their households.

Americans debated the role of government in westward expansion. This debate centered on the proper role of the U.S. government in

paying for the internal improvements that soon became necessary to encourage and support economic development. Some saw frontier

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development as a self-driven undertaking that necessitated private risk and investment devoid of government interference. Others saw

the federal government’s role as providing the infrastructural development needed to give migrants the push toward engagement with

the larger national economy. In the end, federal aid proved essential for the conquest and settlement of the region.

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American artist George Catlin traveled west to paint Native Americans. In 1832 he painted Eeh-nís-kim, Crystal Stone, wife of a Blackfoot leader. Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Economic busts constantly threatened western farmers and communities. The economy worsened after the Panic of 1819. Falling prices

and depleted soil meant farmers were unable to make their loan payments. The dream of subsistence and stability abruptly ended as

many migrants lost their land and felt the hand of the distant market economy forcing them even farther west to escape debt. As a result,

the federal government consistently sought to increase access to land in the West, including e�orts to lower the amount of land required

for purchase. Smaller lots made it easier for more farmers to clear land and begin farming faster.25

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More than anything else, new roads and canals provided conduits for migration and settlement. Improvements in travel and exchange

fueled economic growth in the 1820s and 1830s. Canal improvements expanded in the East, while road building prevailed in the West.

Congress continued to allocate funds for internal improvements. Federal money pushed the National Road, begun in 1811, farther west

every year. Laborers needed to construct these improvements increased employment opportunities and encouraged nonfarmers to move

to the West. Wealth promised by engagement with the new economy was hard to reject. However, roads were expensive to build and

maintain, and some Americans strongly opposed spending money on these improvements.

The use of steamboats grew quickly throughout the 1810s and into the 1820s. As water trade and travel grew in popularity, local, state,

and federal funds helped connect rivers and streams. Hundreds of miles of new canals cut through the eastern landscape. The most no-

table of these early projects was the Erie Canal. That project, completed in 1825, linked the Great Lakes to New York City. The prof-

itability of the canal helped New York outpace its East Coast rivals to become the center for commercial import and export in the Unit-

ed States.

Early railroads like the Baltimore and Ohio line hoped to link mid-Atlantic cities with lucrative western trade routes. Railroad boosters

encouraged the rapid growth of towns and cities along their routes. Not only did rail lines promise to move commerce faster, but the

rails also encouraged the spreading of towns farther away from traditional waterway locations. Technological limitations, constant re-

pairs, con�icts with Native Americans, and political disagreements all hampered railroading and kept canals and steamboats as integral

parts of the transportation system. Nonetheless, this early establishment of railroads enabled a rapid expansion after the Civil War.

Economic chains of interdependence stretched over hundreds of miles of land and through thousands of contracts and remittances.

America’s manifest destiny became wedded not only to territorial expansion but also to economic development.

IV. Texas, Mexico and America

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The debate over slavery became one of the prime forces behind the Texas Revolution and the resulting republic’s annexation to the

United States. After gaining its independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico hoped to attract new settlers to its northern areas to create a

bu�er between it and the powerful Comanche. New immigrants, mostly from the southern United States, poured into Mexican Texas.

Over the next twenty-�ve years, concerns over growing Anglo in�uence and possible American designs on the area produced great fric-

tion between Mexicans and the former Americans in the area. In 1829, Mexico, hoping to quell both anger and immigration, outlawed

slavery and required all new immigrants to convert to Catholicism. American immigrants, eager to expand their agricultural fortunes,

largely ignored these requirements. In response, Mexican authorities closed their territory to any new immigration in 1830—a prohibi-

tion ignored by Americans who often squatted on public lands.

In 1834, an internal con�ict between federalists and centralists in the Mexican government led to the political ascendency of General

Antonio López de Santa Anna. Santa Anna, governing as a dictator, repudiated the federalist Constitution of 1824, pursued a policy of

authoritarian central control, and crushed several revolts throughout Mexico. Anglo settlers in Mexican Texas, or Texians as they called

themselves, opposed Santa Anna’s centralizing policies and met in November. They issued a statement of purpose that emphasized their

commitment to the Constitution of 1824 and declared Texas to be a separate state within Mexico. After the Mexican government angri-

ly rejected the o�er, Texian leaders soon abandoned their �ght for the Constitution of 1824 and declared independence on March 2,

1836. The Texas Revolution of 1835–1836 was a successful secessionist movement in the northern district of the Mexican state of

Coahuila y Tejas that resulted in an independent Republic of Texas.

At the Alamo and Goliad, Santa Anna crushed smaller rebel forces and massacred hundreds of Texian prisoners. The Mexican army pur-

sued the retreating Texian army deep into East Texas, spurring a mass panic and evacuation by American civilians known as the Run-

away Scrape. The con�dent Santa Anna consistently failed to make adequate defensive preparations, an oversight that eventually led to a

surprise attack from the outnumbered Texian army led by Sam Houston on April 21, 1836. The battle of San Jacinto lasted only eigh-

teen minutes and resulted in a decisive victory for the Texians, who retaliated for previous Mexican atrocities by killing �eeing and sur-

rendering Mexican soldiers for hours after the initial assault. Santa Anna was captured in the aftermath and compelled to sign the Treaty

of Velasco on May 14, 1836, by which he agreed to withdraw his army from Texas and acknowledged Texas independence. Although a

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new Mexican government never recognized the Republic of Texas, the United States and several other nations gave the new country

diplomatic recognition.

Texas annexation had remained a political landmine since the Republic declared independence from Mexico in 1836. American politi-

cians feared that adding Texas to the Union would provoke a war with Mexico and reignite sectional tensions by throwing o� the bal-

ance between free and slave states. However, after his expulsion from the Whig party, President John Tyler saw Texas statehood as the

key to saving his political career. In 1842, he began work on opening annexation to national debate. Harnessing public outcry over the

issue, Democrat James K. Polk rose from virtual obscurity to win the presidential election of 1844. Polk and his party campaigned on

promises of westward expansion, with eyes toward Texas, Oregon, and California. In the �nal days of his presidency, Tyler at last extend-

ed an o�cial o�er to Texas on March 3, 1845. The republic accepted on July 4, becoming the twenty-eighth state.

Mexico denounced annexation as “an act of aggression, the most unjust which can be found recorded in the annals of modern

history.” Beyond the anger produced by annexation, the two nations both laid claim over a narrow strip of land between two rivers.

Mexico drew the southwestern border of Texas at the Nueces River, but Texans claimed that the border lay roughly 150 miles farther

west at the Rio Grande. Neither claim was realistic since the sparsely populated area, known as the Nueces strip, was in fact controlled

by Native Americans.

In November 1845, President Polk secretly dispatched John Slidell to Mexico City to purchase the Nueces strip along with large sections

of New Mexico and California. The mission was an empty gesture, designed largely to pacify those in Washington who insisted on

diplomacy before war. Predictably, o�cials in Mexico City refused to receive Slidell. In preparation for the assumed failure of the negoti-

ations, Polk preemptively sent a four-thousand-man army under General Zachary Taylor to Corpus Christi, Texas, just northeast of the

Nueces River. Upon word of Slidell’s rebu� in January 1846, Polk ordered Taylor to cross into the disputed territory. The president

hoped that this show of force would push the lands of California onto the bargaining table as well. Unfortunately, he badly misread the

situation. After losing Texas, the Mexican public strongly opposed surrendering any more ground to the United States. Popular opinion

left the shaky government in Mexico City without room to negotiate. On April 24, Mexican cavalrymen attacked a detachment of Tay-

lor’s troops in the disputed territory just north of the Rio Grande, killing eleven U.S. soldiers.

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It took two weeks for the news to reach Washington. Polk sent a message to Congress on May 11 that summed up the assumptions and

intentions of the United States.

Instead of this, however, we have been exerting our best e�orts to propitiate her

good will. Upon the pretext that Texas, a nation as independent as herself, thought

proper to unite its destinies with our own, she has a�ected to believe that we have

severed her rightful territory, and in o�cial proclamations and manifestoes has re-

peatedly threatened to make war upon us for the purpose of reconquering Texas. In

the meantime we have tried every e�ort at reconciliation. The cup of forbearance

had been exhausted even before the recent information from the frontier of the Del

Norte. But now, after reiterated menaces, Mexico has passed the boundary of the

United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the Ameri-

can soil. She has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced, and that the two na-

tions are now at war.

The cagey Polk knew that since hostilities already existed, political dissent would be dangerous—a vote against war became a vote against

supporting American soldiers under �re. Congress passed a declaration of war on May 13. Only a few members of both parties, notably

John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun, opposed the measure. Upon declaring war in 1846, Congress issued a call for �fty thousand

volunteer soldiers. Spurred by promises of adventure and conquest abroad, thousands of eager men �ocked to assembly points across

the country. However, opposition to “Mr. Polk’s War” soon grew.

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In the early fall of 1846, the U.S. Army invaded Mexico on multiple fronts and within a year’s time General Win�eld Scott’s men took

control of Mexico City. However, the city’s fall did not bring an end to the war. Scott’s men occupied Mexico’s capital for over four

months while the two countries negotiated. In the United States, the war had been controversial from the beginning. Embedded jour-

nalists sent back detailed reports from the front lines, and a divided press viciously debated the news. Volunteers found that war was not

as they expected. Disease killed seven times as many American soldiers as combat. Harsh discipline, con�ict within the ranks, and vio-

lent clashes with civilians led soldiers to desert in huge numbers. Peace �nally came on February 2, 1848 with the signing of the Treaty of

Guadalupe Hidalgo.

The United States gained lands that would become the future states of California, Utah, and Nevada; most of Arizona; and parts of

New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. Mexican o�cials would also have to surrender their claims to Texas and recognize the Rio

Grande as its southern boundary. The United States o�ered $15 million for all of it. With American soldiers occupying their capital,

Mexican leaders had no choice but to sign.

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“General Scott’s entrance into Mexico.” Lithograph. 1851. Originally published in George Wilkins Kendall & Carl Nebel, The War between the United States and Mexico Il- lustrated, Embracing Pictorial Drawings of all the Principal Con�icts (New York: D. Appleton), 1851. Wikimedia Commons

The new American Southwest attracted a diverse group of entrepreneurs and settlers to the commercial towns of New Mexico, the fer-

tile lands of eastern Texas, the famed gold deposits of California, and the Rocky Mountains. This postwar migration built earlier paths

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dating back to the 1820s, when the lucrative Santa Fe trade enticed merchants to New Mexico and generous land grants brought numer-

ous settlers to Texas. The Gadsden Purchase of 1854 further added to American gains north of Mexico.

The U.S.-Mexican War had an enormous impact on both countries. The American victory helped set the United States on the path to

becoming a world power. It elevated Zachary Taylor to the presidency and served as a training ground for many of the Civil War’s future

commanders. Most signi�cantly, however, Mexico lost roughly half of its territory. Yet the United States’ victory was not without dan-

ger. Ralph Waldo Emerson, an outspoken critic, predicted ominously at the beginning of the con�ict, “We will conquer Mexico, but it

will be as the man who swallows the arsenic which will bring him down in turn. Mexico will poison us.” Indeed, the con�ict over

whether to extend slavery into the newly won territory pushed the nation ever closer to disunion and civil war.

V. Manifest Destiny and the Gold Rush

California, belonging to Mexico prior to the war, was at least three arduous months’ travel from the nearest American settlements.

There was some sparse settlement in the Sacramento Valley, and missionaries made the trip occasionally. The fertile farmland of Oregon,

like the black dirt lands of the Mississippi Valley, attracted more settlers than California. Dramatized stories of Native American attacks

�lled migrants with a sense of foreboding, although most settlers encountered no violence and often no Native Americans at all. The

slow progress, disease, human and oxen starvation, poor trails, terrible geographic preparations, lack of guidebooks, threatening wildlife,

vagaries of weather, and general confusion were all more formidable and frequent than attacks from Native Americans. Despite the

harshness of the journey, by 1848 approximately twenty thousand Americans were living west of the Rockies, with about three fourths

of that number in Oregon.

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The great environmental and economic potential of the Oregon Territory led many to pack up their families and head west along the Oregon Trail. The Trail represented the hopes of many for a better life, represented and reinforced by images like Bierstadt’s idealistic Oregon Trail. Albert Bierstadt, Oregon Trail (Camp�re), 1863. Wikimedia.

Many who moved nurtured a romantic vision of life, attracting more Americans who sought more than agricultural life and familial re-

sponsibilities. The rugged individualism and military prowess of the West, encapsulated for some by service in the Mexican war, drew a

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growing new breed west of the Sierra Nevada to meet with the Californians already there: a breed of migrants di�erent from the modest

agricultural communities of the near West.

If the great draw of the West served as manifest destiny’s kindling, then the discovery of gold in California was the spark that set the �re

ablaze. Most western settlers sought land ownership, but the lure of getting rich quick drew younger single men (with some women) to

gold towns throughout the West. These adventurers and fortune-seekers then served as magnets for the arrival of others providing ser-

vices associated with the gold rush. Towns and cities grew rapidly throughout the West, notably San Francisco, whose population grew

from about �ve hundred in 1848 to almost �fty thousand by 1853. Lawlessness, predictable failure of most fortune seekers, racial con-

�icts, and the slavery question all threatened manifest destiny’s promises.

On January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall, a contractor hired by John Sutter, discovered gold on Sutter’s sawmill land in the Sacramento

Valley area of the California Territory. Throughout the 1850s, Californians beseeched Congress for a transcontinental railroad to pro-

vide service for both passengers and goods from the Midwest and the East Coast. The potential economic bene�ts for communities

along proposed railroads made the debate over the route rancorous. Growing dissent over the slavery issue also heightened tensions.

The great in�ux of diverse people clashed in a combative and aggrandizing atmosphere of individualistic pursuit of fortune. Linguis-

tic, cultural, economic, and racial con�ict roiled both urban and rural areas. By the end of the 1850s, Chinese and Mexican immigrants

made up one �fth of the mining population in California. The ethnic patchwork of these frontier towns belied a clearly de�ned socioe-

conomic arrangement that saw whites on top as landowners and managers, with poor whites and ethnic minorities working the mines

and assorted jobs. The competition for land, resources, and riches furthered individual and collective abuses, particularly against Native

Americans and older Mexican communities. California’s towns, as well as those dotting the landscape throughout the West, such as

Coeur D’Alene in Idaho and Tombstone in Arizona, struggled to balance security with economic development and the protection of

civil rights and liberties.

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This cartoon depicts a highly racialized image of a Chinese immigrant and Irish immigrant “swallowing” the United States–in the form of Uncle Sam. Networks of railroads and the promise of American expansion can be seen in the background. “The great fear of the period That Uncle Sam may be swallowed by foreigners : The problem solved,” 1860-1869. Library of Congress.

VI. The Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny.

The expansion of in�uence and territory o� the continent became an important corollary to westward expansion. The U.S. government

sought to keep European countries out of the Western Hemisphere and applied the principles of manifest destiny to the rest of the

hemisphere. As secretary of state for President James Monroe, John Quincy Adams held the responsibility for the satisfactory resolution

of ongoing border disputes between the United States, England, Spain, and Russia. Adams’s view of American foreign policy was put

into clearest practice in the Monroe Doctrine, which he had great in�uence in crafting.

Increasingly aggressive incursions from Russians in the Northwest, ongoing border disputes with the British in Canada, the remote pos-

sibility of Spanish reconquest of South America, and British abolitionism in the Caribbean all triggered an American response. In a

speech before the U.S. House of Representatives on July 4, 1821, Secretary of State Adams acknowledged the American need for a ro-

bust foreign policy that simultaneously protected and encouraged the nation’s growing and increasingly dynamic economy.

America . . . in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respect-

ed the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. . . .

She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. . . . She well knows

that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners

of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication,

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in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition,

which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental max-

ims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet on her

brows would no longer beam with the ine�able splendor of freedom and indepen-

dence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, �ashing in

false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might be-

come the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit. .

. . Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She

has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence,

Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse

with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.

Adams’s great fear was not territorial loss. He had no doubt that Russian and British interests in North America could be arrested.

Adams held no reason to antagonize the Russians with grand pronouncements, nor was he generally called upon to do so. He enjoyed a

good relationship with the Russian ambassador and stewarded through Congress most-favored trade status for the Russians in 1824.

Rather, Adams worried gravely about the ability of the United States to compete commercially with the British in Latin America and

the Caribbean. This concern deepened with the valid concern that America’s chief Latin American trading partner, Cuba, dangled per-

ilously close to outstretched British claws. Cabinet debates surrounding establishment of the Monroe Doctrine and geopolitical events

in the Caribbean focused attention on that part of the world as key to the future defense of U.S. military and commercial interests, the

main threat to those interests being the British. Expansion of economic opportunity and protection from foreign pressures became the

overriding goals of U.S. foreign policy. But despite the philosophical con�dence present in the Monroe administration’s decree, the

reality of limited military power kept the Monroe Doctrine as an aspirational assertion.

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Bitter disagreements over the expansion of slavery into the new lands won from Mexico began even before the war ended. Many north-

ern businessmen and southern enslavers supported the idea of expanding slavery into the Caribbean as a useful alternative to continental

expansion, since slavery already existed in these areas. Some were critical of these attempts, seeing them as evidence of a growing slave-

power conspiracy. Many others supported attempts at expansion, like those previously seen in eastern Florida, even if these attempts

were not exactly legal. Filibustering, as it was called, involved privately �nanced schemes directed at capturing and occupying foreign ter-

ritory without the approval of the U.S. government.

Filibustering took greatest hold in the imagination of Americans as they looked toward Cuba. Fears of racialized revolution in Cuba (as

in Haiti and Florida before it) as well as the presence of an aggressive British abolitionist in�uence in the Caribbean energized the move-

ment to annex Cuba and encouraged �libustering as expedient alternatives to lethargic o�cial negotiations. Despite �libustering’s seem-

ingly chaotic planning and destabilizing repercussions, those intellectually and economically guiding the e�ort imagined a willing and

receptive Cuban population and expected an agreeable American business class. In Cuba, manifest destiny for the �rst time sought terri-

tory o� the continent and hoped to put a unique spin on the story of success in Mexico. Yet the annexation of Cuba, despite great popu-

larity and some military attempts led by Narciso López, a Cuban dissident, never succeeded.

Other �libustering expeditions were launched elsewhere, including two by William Walker, a former American soldier. Walker seized

portions of the Baja peninsula in Mexico and then later took power and established a slaving regime in Nicaragua. Eventually Walker was

executed in Honduras. These missions violated the laws of the United States, but wealthy Americans �nanced various �libusters, and

less-wealthy adventurers were all too happy to sign up. Filibustering enjoyed its brief popularity into the late 1850s, at which point slav-

ery and concerns over secession came to the fore. By the opening of the Civil War, most saw these attempts as simply territorial theft.

VII. Conclusion

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Debates over expansion, economics, diplomacy, and manifest destiny exposed some of the weaknesses of the American system. The

chauvinism of policies like Native American removal, the Mexican War, and �libustering existed alongside growing anxiety. Manifest

destiny attempted to make a virtue of America’s lack of history and turn it into the very basis of nationhood. To locate such origins,

John O’Sullivan and other champions of manifest destiny grafted biological and territorial imperatives—common among European de-

�nitions of nationalism—onto American political culture. The United States was the embodiment of the democratic ideal, they said.

Democracy had to be timeless, boundless, and portable. New methods of transportation and communication, the rapidity of the rail-

road and the telegraph, the rise of the international market economy, and the growth of the American frontier provided shared plat-

forms to help Americans think across local identities and rea�rm a national character.

VIII. Primary Sources

1. Cherokee petition protesting removal, 1836

Native Americans responded di�erently to the constant encroachments and attacks of American settlers. Some resisted violently.

Others worked to adapt to American culture and defend themselves using particularly American weapons like lawsuits and peti-

tions. The Cherokee did more to adapt than perhaps any other Native American group, creating a written constitution modeled o�

the American constitution and adopting American culture in dress, speech, religion and economic activity. In this document,

Cherokee leaders protested the loss of their territory using a very American tactic: petitioning.

2. John O’Sullivan declares America’s manifest destiny, 1845

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John Louis O’Sullivan, a popular editor and columnist, articulated the long-standing American belief in the God-given mission of

the United States to lead the world in the transition to democracy. He called this America’s “manifest destiny.” This idea motivated

wars of American expansion. He explained this idea in the following essay where he advocated adding Texas to the United States.

3. Diary of a woman migrating to Oregon, 1853

The experience of migrating west into territory still controlled by Native Americans was di�cult and dangerous. In these diary ex-

cerpts we �nd the experience of Amelia Stewart Knight who traveled with her husband and seven children from Iowa to Oregon.

She was pregnant the entire trip and gave birth to her eighth child on the side of the road near the journey’s end.

4. Pun Chi Complains of racist abuse, 1860

The California Gold Rush of 1849 brought a major in�ux of Asian immigrants to the new state. This number only grew after rail-

road companies turned to Chinese laborers to build western railroads. Life for these immigrants was particularly di�cult, as even

�nancially successful Chinese immigrants faced considerable discrimination. In 1860, the Chinese merchant Pun Chi drafted this

petition to congress, calling on the legislature to do more to protect Chinese immigrants.

5. Wyandotte woman describes tensions over slavery, 1849

In 1843, the Wyandotte nation was forcefully removed from their homeland in Ohio and brought to the Kansas Territory. They

found themselves on a borderland between Native American territory and Missouri’s slave society, and when the national Me-

thodist church split, debates over slavery threatened the Christianity of the Wyandotte. This letter depicts the complex relationship

between recently removed Native peoples, Christianity, and slavery.

6. Letters from Venezuelan General Francisco de Miranda regarding Latin American Revolution, 1805-1806

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During a trip to the United States, Venezuelan General Francisco de Miranda worked to launch a revolution in Venezuela that he

expected would spread throughout South America. He made a series of high-level contacts, as indicated in the letters below. The

American public saw South American revolutionaries as “fellow republicans.” At least three American ships, numerous American

guns, and about 200 recruits participated in Miranda’s failed attempt at Revolution.

7. President Monroe outlines the Monroe Doctrine, 1823

The spirit of Manifest Destiny had its corollary in an earlier piece of American foreign policy. Americans sought to remove coloniz-

ing Europeans from the western hemisphere. As Secretary of State for President James Monroe, John Quincy Adams crafted what

came to be called the Monroe Doctrine. President Monroe outlined the principles of this policy in his seventh annual message to

Congress, excerpted here.

8. Manifest destiny painting, 1872

Columbia, the female �gure of America, leads Americans into the West and into the future by carrying the values of republicanism

(as seen through her Roman garb) and progress (shown through the inclusion of technological innovations like the telegraph) and

clearing native peoples and animals, seen being pushed into the darkness.

9. Anti-immigrant cartoon, 1860

Many white Americans responded to increasing numbers of immigrants in the 1800s with great fear and xenophobic hatred, seeing

immigrants as threats to their vision of manifest destiny. This cartoon depicts a highly racialized image of a Chinese immigrant and

Irish immigrant “swallowing” the United States–in the form of Uncle Sam. In the second image, the Chinese immigrant swallows

the Irish immigrant. Networks of railroads and the promise of American expansion can be seen in the background.

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IX. Reference Material

This chapter was edited by Joshua Beatty and Gregg Lightfoot, with content contributions by Ethan Bennett, Michelle Cassidy,

Jonathan Grandage, Gregg Lightfoot, Jose Juan Perez Melendez, Jessica Moore, Nick Roland, Matthew K. Saionz, Rowan Steinecker,

Patrick Troester, and Ben Wright.

Recommended citation: Ethan Bennett et al., “Manifest Destiny,” Joshua Beatty and Gregg Lightfoot, eds., in The American Yawp, eds.

Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).