Manifest Destiny is a term that refers to the desire of United States to expand from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean that began in the mid-nineteenth century, used to justify the U.S. annexation of Oregon, New Mexico, and California and later U.S. involvement in Alaska, Hawaii, and the Philippines. This notion had both its supporters, claiming that it was America’s right to do so, and its dissidents, who argued that it was just an example of American imperialism.
The phrase Manifest Destiny was first introduced into the American vocabulary in 1894 by John O’Sullivan in an article entitled “Our Manifest Destiny,” which was written to justify the annexation of Texas. He stated that opponents to Texas’s annexation were seeking to limit the power of the United States, thereby “limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny, allotted by Providence.” O’Sullivan then went on to further explicate his theory in an article published in the New York Morning News, Dec. 1845 edition, to prove that the United States had a right to the Oregon territory, after which the phrase gained popularity in use by first Congress and then the general press.
Divine preordination was the main argument of those who supported Manifest Destiny, meaning that it was the will of God for the United States to spread westwards and over the entire continent, an argument that appealed to the basic values and ideals of a majority of the American people, since many were religious.
This was related to the idea of the “white man’s burden,” which was extremely pervasive at the time. Christians thought that it was their religious duty to propagate the ideals of democracy throughout the continent and convert to the so-called heathens to Christianity, so that they could be saved. Missionaries were being sent westward in order to convert the Native Americans to Christianity. Therefore, since it was the will of God ...
