Manifest Destiny in two minutes
- An 1845 Democratic Review editorial, usually credited to John O'Sullivan, named manifest destiny: Providence meant Americans to spread across the continent. Supporters mixed democratic ideals, land hunger and belief in Anglo-Saxon superiority.
- Texans rebelled against Mexico in 1836. The Senate rejected Tyler's annexation treaty 35 to 16, so Congress used a joint resolution, and Texas joined as a slave state in 1845.
- Polk won in 1844 promising Texas and Oregon. He accepted the 49th parallel as the Oregon border in 1846 and won the Mexican Cession in 1848; the Gadsden Purchase followed in 1853.
- Settlers moved first: wagon trains left Missouri for Oregon from 1843, Mormons reached Utah in 1847, and gold found at Sutter's Mill in January 1848 drew tens of thousands to California.
- Expansion fell hardest on people already there: Native Californians dropped from an estimated 150,000 in 1846 to about 30,000 by 1870. Every new acre also raised whether slavery would spread.
- Expansion also reached across the Pacific: the Treaty of Wangxia (1844) gave Americans trading rights in China, and Perry's Treaty of Kanagawa (1854) opened two Japanese ports to American ships.
- On the exam: sources such as O'Sullivan's editorial or John Gast's 1872 painting test causation and point of view. Link expansion to the Mexican–American War, Native peoples and the slavery debate.
Topic 5.2 key terms
- Annexation
Formally adding a territory to a country. Texans asked in 1836; Congress finally agreed in 1845.
- Security interests
A nation's worry that a rival power next door could threaten it. Americans feared Britain would gain influence in Texas, Oregon or California.
- Liberty Party
A small antislavery party that ran James G. Birney in 1844. Its votes in New York may have cost Clay the state and the election.
- Joint resolution
A measure passed by a simple majority of both houses of Congress. Unlike a treaty, it needs no two-thirds vote in the Senate.
- Manifest Destiny
The 1840s belief that God and history meant the United States to spread across North America, because its institutions were better. Supporters used it to justify taking Texas, Oregon and California. Critics saw ambition and slavery.
- Whig Party
A party formed in the 1830s against Andrew Jackson. Whigs backed roads, canals and banks, and many opposed adding territory that might spread slavery or start a war.
- Joint occupation
The 1818 agreement, renewed later, that let Americans and Britons settle and trade in Oregon Country while neither nation gave up its claim.
- Oregon Treaty (1846)
Signed in June 1846. Britain and the United States split Oregon Country at the 49th parallel: the United States got the land south of it, and Britain kept Vancouver Island.
- Overland trails
The wagon roads west across the plains to Oregon, California and Utah. Most emigrants left in spring from towns on the Missouri River, to reach the mountains before winter snow.
- Push and pull factors
Reasons people leave one place (push) and reasons a new place attracts them (pull). In the 1840s, Americans were pulled west by cotton land, farms, religious refuge and gold.
- Mexican Cession
The land Mexico gave up to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1848. It included California, Nevada and Utah, and much of Arizona and New Mexico.
- Gadsden Purchase (1853)
A strip of desert the United States bought from Mexico for $10 million in 1853, in what is now southern Arizona and New Mexico. It offered the best route for a railroad across the South to the Pacific.
- Gold Rush
The mass migration to California that began when gold was found at Coloma in January 1848. It drew people from across the United States and the Pacific world, and it sped California's path to statehood in 1850.
- Forty-niners
The roughly 80,000 people who came to California in 1849 to look for gold, by sea and overland, from across the United States and the world. Most were men, and most did not strike it rich.
- Gam Saan (Gold Mountain)
The Cantonese name Chinese migrants gave California. Most who came were men from Guangdong province, hoping to earn money in the gold fields and, often, to return home.
- Californios
Spanish-speaking families whose roots in California go back to Spain and Mexico. They ran large cattle ranchos, and the Gold Rush made them a minority in their own homeland.
- Free state
A state that did not allow slavery. In 1850 the Senate stood at 15 free and 15 slave states. California's admission made it 16 free.
- Treaty of Wangxia (1844)
The first U.S. treaty with China, signed after Britain's victory in the Opium War (1839–42). It opened five ports to American trade and put Americans in China under their own country's courts.
- Extraterritoriality
Foreigners tried under their own country's laws, not the host country's. Under Wangxia, Americans accused of crimes in China answered to U.S. consuls, not Chinese courts.
- Sakoku
Japan's “closed country” policy of the 1600s to 1850s. Almost no foreign contact, apart from limited trade with the Dutch and Chinese at Nagasaki.
- Treaty of Kanagawa (1854)
The first U.S. treaty with Japan. It opened the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American ships for coal and supplies, and promised help for shipwrecked sailors.
- Kansas–Nebraska Act (1854)
Law creating the Kansas and Nebraska territories. Settlers there could decide on slavery for themselves, which wiped out the Missouri Compromise's ban north of 36°30′.
- Homestead Act (1862)
Law that gave settlers 160 acres of western public land if they lived on it and farmed it for five years. Signed May 20, 1862.
- Pacific Railway Act (1862)
Law that backed a railroad from the Missouri River to the Pacific with federal loans and land grants. The Union Pacific built west and the Central Pacific built east. Signed July 1, 1862.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
Who Is James K. Polk?
1821–1845
Key terms: Annexation, Security interests, Liberty Party, Joint resolution
Texas had been knocking since 1836. It took a leaked letter and a dark-horse candidate.
In the 1820s, Mexico invited American settlers into Texas. Thousands came, and many brought enslaved people.
Mexico abolished slavery in 1829. Settlers found ways around it. By 1830, American settlers and the people they enslaved outnumbered Mexicans three to one.
In 1836 they rebelled, with Tejano allies, and won.
The Republic of Texas legalized slavery and asked to join the United States. Two presidents put it off.
In 1844, President Tyler tried a treaty to annex Texas. His secretary of state, John C. Calhoun, defended it to Britain.
John C. Calhoun
It is with still deeper concern the President regards the avowal of Lord Aberdeen of the desire of Great Britain to see slavery abolished in Texas…
The letter leaked. The Senate voted the treaty down, 35 to 16.
The Whigs jeered, "Who is James K. Polk?" He had been Speaker of the House. Voters found out.
The Democrats promised the "re-annexation" of Texas and the "re-occupation" of Oregon. The United States had never owned either one.
Henry Clay wobbled on Texas, so New York's antislavery voters backed the Liberty Party. Polk won the state by about five thousand votes, and with it the presidency.
A treaty needs two-thirds of the Senate. A joint resolution needs only a simple majority. Tyler signed it three days before leaving office.
It even ran the Missouri line through Texas. The flat top of the Texas Panhandle is still that line.
March 4, 1845. Polk took the oath in the rain. Samuel Morse tapped his speech to Baltimore from the platform.
John Quincy Adams stayed home. He wrote that Polk spoke…
John Quincy Adams
…to a large assemblage of umbrellas, for it was raining hard all the time.
James K. Polk
Our title to the country of the Oregon is “clear and unquestionable,”…
Texas joined that December, as a slave state.
Overspread
1845–1846
Key terms: Manifest Destiny, Whig Party, Joint occupation, Oregon Treaty (1846)
In 1845, a New York magazine gave the mood a name.
The essay ran unsigned. Most historians credit its editor, John O’Sullivan.
…our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.
“Manifest” meant obvious. “Destiny” meant God’s plan.
It saw settlers pouring into California,
…armed with the plough and the rifle, and marking its trail with schools and colleges, courts and representative halls…
It called the settlers an army of Anglo-Saxons. Better institutions, it assumed, came from a better race.
In December, his newspaper claimed Oregon. God gave Americans the continent, it said, for…
John L. O'Sullivan
…the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.
In the House, a Whig mocked it.
Robert C. Winthrop
…I suppose the right of a manifest destiny to spread, will not be admitted to exist in any nation except the universal Yankee nation!
Mockery helped make the phrase famous. Whigs wanted to improve the country they had. Abolitionists saw a land grab for slavery. Mexico, Britain and Native nations had claims of their own.
Historians still argue whether it was mostly a democratic mission or a racial conquest. The sources support both, often in one sentence.
Oregon was the other half of Polk’s promise, shared with Britain since 1818.
You may know the slogan “Fifty-four forty or fight!” It caught on in 1846, not 1844, among Democrats who wanted all of Oregon.
James K. Polk
…the only way to treat John Bull was to look him straight in the eye…
Polk looked, and took the 49th parallel. The Senate approved it in June 1846.
Polk compromised with Britain, a great power. Mexico, he pushed. By June, the United States and Mexico were already at war.
Four Frontiers
1843–1853
Key terms: Overland trails, Push and pull factors, Mexican Cession, Gadsden Purchase (1853)
Diplomats drew lines. Families moved first.
From 1843, wagon trains left Missouri each spring for Oregon, two thousand miles away. Wagon, oxen and supplies cost hundreds of dollars, so the poorest stayed home.
At twelve or fifteen miles a day, the trip took four to six months. By 1860, about three hundred thousand people had taken the trails west.
Disease, cholera above all, was the great killer. On the trails, emigrants killed more Native people than Native people killed emigrants.
Nobody went west for one reason. Here is the continent in 1844. Four places pulled Americans west, and every one was already somebody's home.
Cotton land in Texas. Farms in Oregon. A refuge in Utah. Gold in California, and a harbor facing Asia.
Then the borders caught up. Texas in 1845. Oregon in 1846. The Mexican Cession in 1848: more than half a million square miles, taken by war.
And in 1853, ten million dollars bought a strip of desert. It held the best route for a southern railroad to the Pacific.
In under nine years, the country grew by more than two-thirds. In place after place, newcomers and the people already there ended up fighting.
And the old Missouri line pointed west into all of it. Did it count out here? Nobody had decided.
Seeing the Elephant
1848–1852
Key terms: Gold Rush, Forty-niners, Gam Saan (Gold Mountain), Californios, Free state
January 24, 1848. At a sawmill on the American River, James Marshall saw something shine in the ditch.
One of his crew, Henry Bigler, wrote it in his pocket diary, spelling it as best he could. Nine days later, Mexico signed California away. Neither side knew.
James K. Polk
The accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief…
James K. Polk
…were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service.
In 1849, about eighty thousand people came, around Cape Horn, across Panama or overland. They called it seeing the elephant: the big thing everyone talked about, whatever it cost.
Luzena Wilson crossed the plains with her husband and two small boys. The night before Sacramento, she baked biscuits.
Luzena Stanley Wilson
I'll give you five dollars, ma'am, for them biscuit.
He raised it to ten dollars, for bread made by a woman, and put a gold coin in her hand. By morning she'd lost it. She went into the hotel business instead.
Most miners never struck it rich. The steady money went to sellers: shovels, flour, boots, beds and biscuits.
In early 1848, San Francisco had about 800 people. By 1850, its cove was a forest of masts.
Crews walked off their ships for the gold fields. Some captains went too. The ships stayed.
They came from Chile, Mexico, Hawaii, France, Australia and China. Chinese miners called California Gam Saan: Gold Mountain. About twenty thousand arrived in 1852 alone.
California already had people: Californios on their ranchos, and an estimated 150,000 Native Californians.
Within twenty-five years, disease, hunger and killing had left about thirty thousand.
In 1850, California asked to join the Union as a free state. That broke the Senate's balance, and Congress nearly came apart.
Black Ships
1843–1854
Key terms: Treaty of Wangxia (1844), Extraterritoriality, Sakoku, Treaty of Kanagawa (1854)
American merchants had traded at Canton for sixty years. Tea and silk for silver, furs and, too often, opium.
John Tyler
I, John Tyler, President of the United States of America, which States are Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts…
…and twenty-three more. He said his country ran “from one great ocean to the other.” Not yet.
Britain had just won trading rights in China by war. In 1844, Caleb Cushing asked for the same. He got them, plus five open ports, without firing a shot.
Americans accused of crimes in China went before their own consul.
Americans wanted Japan too: coal for steamships, and safety for wrecked whalers. Japan had kept most foreigners out for two centuries.
Millard Fillmore
The United States of America reach from ocean to ocean…
This time it was true.
July 8, 1853. Commodore Matthew Perry steamed into Edo Bay with four warships.
His orders said to use force only in self-defense.
Guard boats swarmed the flagship. From one, a man called up in English.
Japanese interpreter at Uraga
I can speak Dutch.
His English ran out there. The talk went on in Dutch.
An Edo wit
泰平の眠りをさます上喜撰 たった四盃で夜も寝られず
An Edo wit wrote that. Jōkisen was a fancy tea. It sounds like “steamship.” And there were four of them.
The Japanese called them kurofune: black ships.
Perry came back in 1854 with more ships. The Treaty of Kanagawa opened two ports to American ships for coal and supplies, and promised help to shipwrecked sailors.
The Americans brought a steam train too small for a six-year-old, so officials rode on the roof. Their hosts brought sumo wrestlers, who carried two sacks of rice at a time.
They also strung a telegraph wire nearly a mile long. Ten years after “What hath God wrought,” Morse's machine was ticking in Japan.
Every New Acre
1854 → 1872
Key terms: Manifest Destiny, Kansas–Nebraska Act (1854), Homestead Act (1862), Pacific Railway Act (1862)
In ten years the country grew by more than a million square miles and reached the Pacific.
Some went for farms, some for gold. Planters took enslaved people to new cotton land. Their leaders called it destiny.
Who already lived here? The answer was on the map, under the new names.
Slave or free? California forced that question in 1850. Kansas would make it bloody.
In 1861, as the South left, a painter climbed a Capitol scaffold to paint pioneers crossing the Rockies.
In 1862, with Southern members gone, Congress gave settlers 160 acres and backed a Pacific railroad.
In 1872 another painter made Manifest Destiny a woman, floating west with a schoolbook, stringing telegraph wire. Look at the left edge, at who's running ahead of her.
Next, a war, and a congressman who demanded to see the exact spot where it began.