Manifest Destiny

According to William E. Weeks, manifest destiny contains three key features: that it is the virtue of the American people and their institutions, the mission to spread these institutions and remake the world in the image of America, and that all this was God’s destiny for America to fulfill this work. Today, this idea seems radical to many but almost all of our founding fathers and the key figures in shaping America supported this idea. Thomas Paine wrote about it in his Common Sense pamphlet, Abraham Lincoln even said that the U.S. was “the last, best hope of Earth.” The Whigs were opposed to this ideology but one of their major supporters, Thomas Jefferson, even believed that republics would be founded in North America to create an empire for liberty. Though many agreed on the idea of spreading freedom, the major split was on whether these new states would allow slavery or not. This issue made John Adams, an advocate for manifest destiny, switch sides due to the slavery policies of the new states. Manifest destiny required territory expansion, this happened westward rather than North or South. The United States established a border with Canada in the Treaty of 1818 and warned Europe in the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 that North America was no longer open for European colonization. These precautions were mostly geared towards the Mexicans and Indians but fear of British Expansion from Canada was ever growing. Canada began having small rebellions and the U.S. supported them and some people even volunteered to help liberate Canada from the British and establish a Republic in what was called the Patriot War. The U.S. arrested these volunteers in order to prevent war with Canada. Another heated topic was whether to split Oregon with the British or not but a majority of the American people would rather fight Britain for Oregon than divide it. Eventually this lead to the annexation of the Republic of Texas into the Union and sparked the Mexican American War in which America claimed a vast amount of territory around Mexico.