Manifest Destiny United States: Manifest

Manifest Destiny

United States: Manifest Destiny

Comment on the relationship seen in the growth of U.S. borders against the backdrop of the siege of native people's land. Was this siege of native land at the expense of native people survival and identity? Is this a justified price for progress?

Although the United States never had a formal empire, like England or Rome, it could be argued that the doctrine of Manifest Destiny was a kind of imperialism, as the native people living in what became the U.S. Western and Southwestern states saw their culture systematically eradicated by the military and political power of the U.S. federal government. Ironically, the faith in the right of the United States to acquire new territory, regardless of who was living it on before, was expressed in the language of freedom and the U.S.'s special quality, in contrast to past, European systems of government: "our national birth was the beginning of a new history...we are the nation of progress, of individual freedom, of universal enfranchisement (O'Sullivan, 1839)

But this belief that America's unique democratic spirit was used to justify colonizing the Mexican province of Texas with North American populations, because of American "enterprise and intelligence," in the words of Stephen F. Austin ("Westward Expansion: Manifest Destiny," Digital History, 2007). "Aggressive nationalists invoked the idea [of Manifest Destiny] to justify Indian removal, war with Mexico, and American expansion into Cuba and Central America" ("Westward Expansion: Manifest Destiny," Digital History, 2007).