5.2: Manifest Destiny
5.2: Explain the causes and effects of westward expansion from 1844 to 1877.
We’ve made it to Unit 5! At this point, we’re roughly halfway done with the curriculum now and we’ll be moving on to the years 1844 to 1877, going over the antebellum period, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. But now, we’re going to be talking about westward expansion and Manifest Destiny. So let’s begin!
Manifest Destiny
All throughout American history, the nation has always been expanding westward. Starting with the East Coast, settlers then progressed to the Ohio River Valley during the French and Indian War, followed by the Louisiana Purchase and the creation of states such as Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. In 1845, this pattern of expansion was given a name by John O’Sullivan, a newspaper editor: Manifest Destiny. Manifest destiny was the idea that the U.S. had the right to expand across the whole continent and control everything from the Pacific to the Atlantic. They believed that the land was given to them by God, and that it was their duty to expand and spread the ideas of democracy and liberty to the west. Eventually, this idea led to expansion beyond the Pacific Coast into islands throughout the Pacific and Caribbean. Expansion into the Pacific was fueled by a desire to gain access to Asian markets in Japan and China. In 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry arrived on the Japanese coast and used the threat of steamships and cannons to force Japan to sign the Treaty of Kanagawa, which opened Japan to trade with the U.S.
Democrats were some of the main supporters of Manifest Destiny, as the belief provided them with a way to gain more land and create new slave-supporting states.
James K. Polk, Oregon, and Texas
When James Polk campaigned for presidency in 1844, he brought Manifest Destiny to politics by promising to annex Texas and Oregon into the United States. Originally, Texas had belonged to Mexico in the 1820s. But by 1830, many Americans had settled there and began outnumbering Mexicans by a ratio of 3-to-1. Many of these settlers were Protestant and owned slaves, which went against the Mexican government’s desire to convert people to Catholicism and their ban on slavery. As a result, Mexico shut down the border. In response, the settlers, led by a man named Sam Houston, revolted in 1836. Although the Mexicans won a large victory at the Battle of the Alamo, the Texans eventually captured the Mexican general at the Battle of San Jacinto. This led to negotiations and the surrender of Mexico. However, Mexico did not recognize Texas’s independence. Because of this, although Texas applied for statehood then, presidents Jackson and Van Buren refused to admit Texas due to fear of war with Mexico. The tenth president, John Tyler, worked to admit Texas but the Senate denied it, leaving it up to his successor, James Polk.
As for Oregon, both the British and the Americans disputed this territory due to both claiming control over it. The British claimed it because they had been there for much longer than the Americans and had been profiting off of the fur trade there for years. The Americans claimed it because while the British had been there longer, there were more Americans there than British people.
As a result, after Polk was elected as the eleventh president in 1844, John Tyler, in the last months of his presidency, took it as a sign that the American people wanted these territories to become part of the Union. He then spent the last few months of his presidency to push for Texas’s annexation. When Polk became president, he made an agreement with the British for Oregon’s annexation. The Oregon Treaty was soon after ratified in 1846, dividing the Oregon Territory at the 49th Parallel, with the southern portion belonging to the U.S. But the annexation of Texas went a little bit more poorly and would eventually lead the U.S. into war against Mexico, and that will be the topic of our next set of notes.
There were many reasons why Americans expanded to the west. Some expanded to gain more access to natural resources and minerals. For example, many migrated westward after gold was discovered in California in 1848, sparking the California Gold Rush. Later discoveries of gold and silver in places like Pike’s Peak in Colorado, the Dakotas, and Nevada caused even more people to migrate westward. Some also migrated in search of new economic opportunities and land. This increased after Congress passed the Preemption Acts in the 1830s and 1840s, which offered large areas of land in the west for anyone who could afford it and could farm it. This led to many middle-class people migrating westward. On the other hand, some moved for religious reasons, such as the Mormons who fled to Utah to escape persecution. By the late 1860s, around 70,000 Mormons had arrived in the Utah Territory.
