Manifest Destiny vs. Declaration of Independence

1.  Read and annotate the following selections from the Declaration of Independence (especially the 2nd paragraph) and the explanation of Manifest Destiny.

2.  Respond to the following in a short essay (5-6 sentences) using specific details and examples from the text:

  1. Analyze whether Manifest Destiny was a realization of the American ideal or a betrayal of it.
  2. Did the idea of Manifest Destiny violate the ideas expressed and described by the Declaration of Independence?

The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

MANIFEST DESTINY

Manifest Destiny is a term for the attitude prevalent during the 19th century period of American expansion that the United States not only could, but was destined to, stretch from coast to coast. This attitude helped fuel western settlement, Native American removal and war with Mexico. The phrase was first employed by John L. O’Sullivan in an article on the annexation of Texas published in the July-August 1845 edition of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, which he edited.

The term manifest destiny originated in the 1840s. It expressed the belief that it was Anglo-Saxon Americans’ providential mission to expand their civilization and institutions across the breadth of North America. This expansion would involve not merely territorial aggrandizement but the progress of liberty and individual economic opportunity as well.

It was, O’Sullivan claimed, ‘our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.’ The term and the concept were taken up by those desiring to secureOregonTerritory,California, Mexican land in the Southwest, and, in the 1850s, Cuba. Originally a partisan Democratic issue, ‘manifest destiny’ gained Republican adherents as time passed. By the end of the century, expansionists were employing quasi-Darwinist reasoning to argue that because its ‘Anglo-Saxon heritage’ made America supremely fit, it had become the nation’s ‘manifest destiny’ to extend its influence beyond its continental boundaries into the Pacific and Caribbean basins.

The Reader’s Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.


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