Phrase popular in the 1840s referring to an assumed divine
intention that the United States should expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast and used to justify American designs on the Pacific Northwest (Oregon), the American
Southwest (Texas), and California.
Journalist John L. O’Sullivan coined the phrase manifest
destiny in the July 1845 edition of the United States Magazine
and Democratic Review. Although the term signifies American territorial expansionism in the 1840s, the concept of
manifest destiny has roots deep in American culture and history. Manifest destiny reflected a dynamic and not always stable or consistent blend of Protestant millennialism (which
preached the end of the world), ethno-racial attitudes, commercial agenda, and political pragmatism. Historian Anders
Stephanson maintains that the term merely served as an expression, saying it involved “a whole matrix, manner of interpreting the time and space of America.”
According to O’Sullivan and many like-minded Americans of the period, “providence” had determined America’s
future and required that the continent make room for the
“multiplying millions” of Americans. This fusion of religiosity and demographic destiny can also be found in earlier political generations. Thomas Jefferson’s purchase of Louisiana
and desire for a continental, republican empire was partly
grounded on these principles. Similarly, the widespread acceptance of Anglo-Saxon superiority among the white population in the United States reinforced religious and political
motivations for territorial acquisition throughout the pre–
Civil War period.
Manifest destiny transcended terrestrial and continental
boundaries. The concept wedded American expansion to
Western and Christian civilization spanning the Atlantic and
the North American continent that, by the 1840s, stood ready
to reach across the Pacific Ocean to Asia. Within this context,
China merchant Asa Whitney and Whig politician William
Seward cast the term in a decidedly commercial and global
light. Although American farm families populated newly acquired territories, American entrepreneurs and businesses envisioned a vast financial and transportation network spanning
the continent and underwriting U.S. penetration of foreign
markets. To these interests, a transcontinental railroad served
as the ultimate physical expression of manifest destiny. Within
this vision, railroads channeled the agricultural and industrial
products of the America’s hinterlands through California seaports and on to the Far East, creating a commercial framework that promoted both profit and prophecy. Commerce became a vehicle for expansion of Christianity and Anglo-Saxon
civilization. Other, particularly southern, versions of manifest
destiny envisioned similar possibilities for Mexico, Central
America, and the Caribbean basin.
—Robert Rook
References
Merk, Frederick. Manifest Destiny and Mission in American
History. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1963.
Stephanson, Anders. Manifest Destiny: American Expansion
and the Empire of Right. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.