![]() ![]() Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right ![]() Indeed, the westward expansion, following on the heels of the Louisiana Purchase, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and other territorial acquisitions, allowed the United States to control the natural resources and Pacific coast ports. The pioneering spirit of westward settlers was attributed to Manifest Destiny. In fact, it was almost blasphemous to disagree with this concept, for to denounce western expansion was to defy God’s will. ![]() It spoke of the romantic and passionate idea that God favored Americans and that He had a special plan for them. This belief was a strange mix of religious sentiment and colonialism, with a heaping scoop of American exceptionalism thrown in. ![]() Manifest Destiny was the belief that the United States was destined - and preordained by God - to control all of the North American continent. In fact, those two words altered the course of the nation’s history for the next several decades. When he penned the phrase, O’Sullivan may have given it little thought, but many of his readers grasped on to these two words fiercely. In an essay published in the July-August 1845 issue of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, John O’Sullivan wrote that it was America’s “manifest destiny” to expand across the entire continent and settle the land. ![]()
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