Manifest destiny was the idea that God had decreed that white settlers would and should
conquer and settle the American continent, no matter what terrible measure they needed
to take to do so - up to and including genocide.
Here's the messed up truth of manifest destiny.
The basic idea behind manifest destiny is that some divine imperative gives one group
of people the right - or mandate - to conquer another and take their land.
And this is an idea that obviously predates America.
In fact, who's to say that homo sapiens weren't all, like, "God hath ordained we take these
caves away from the Neanderthal guys."
Obviously, written history doesn't go back that far, but the British were manifest-destinying
all over the world before America was doing it, and so was most of Europe, and it's not
like Americans woke up one day and said to themselves, "We should own North America."
That was pretty much a given when the first European settlers decided to move into the
Indigenous peoples' backyard.
Of course, people had to come up with justifications as to why it was proper for them to kill other
people and take their stuff.
That's when God, or some kind of philosophical proxy for God, came in.
And it was happening in America long before the term "manifest destiny" was created.
In 1818, for instance, future President Andrew Jackson led a brutal attack against escaped
slaves and Seminoles in Florida because they supposedly threatened a group of white settlers....who
had illegally seized land in Florida….which wasn't even apart of the United States yet,
as it was owned by Spain at the time.
Americans were okay with it, though, because they apparently felt that Florida should be
theirs by right.
It was the first taste of the imperialist expansion of white supremacy that would become
known as manifest destiny.
Once Jackson became president, racism basically became federal policy.
He was the man behind the "Indian Removal Act," which was so racist no one even bothered
to come up with a not-racist name for it.
In an 1830 speech, he said,
"What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand
savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms embellished
with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than
12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and
religion?"
According to the Library of Congress, the Indian Removal Act — enacted 15 years before
the term "manifest destiny" was even a thing — basically just made it legal for Jackson
to seize Indigenous lands that were within state borders and force their occupants to
move west into unsettled territories which they'd never seen and were going to have to
leave in a few years anyway as land-hungry Americans decided to go west in search of
even better lands to steal.
The most infamous resettlement that happened under the auspices of the Indian Removal Act
was the "Trail of Tears," a forcible march to new lands that cost thousands of Native
lives.
The first guy to use the phrase "manifest destiny" didn't set out to coin a racist slogan,
he was just trying to justify the American annexation of yet another foreign land that
settlers had appropriated for themselves — this time, Texas.
In 1845, political magazine editor John L. O'Sullivan wrote a screed decrying interference
by England and France, who he bemoaned were
"[...] thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking
the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence
for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."
People liked it, so he wrote a second one, this time adding in some language about the
importance of spreading democracy throughout the world, this time espousing
"[...] the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the
continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of
liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us."
In other words, Americans were just making the world safe for democracy, which would
also become a common justification for American expansion and military action.
In order to make yourself feel okay about all of that manifest destiny, you had to build
up a fake moral framework around it.
So that's what Americans did.
First of all, they declared that America was virtuous, its people were extra-super virtuous,
and its laws and institutions were especially virtuous, and therefore it was America's obligation
to remake the rest of the world in its own image, starting with the people who were here
first.
According to the Blackhawk Museum, Americans wanted to redeem the sins of the Old World
— you know, the tyranny of kings, the brutal wars, that stuff — by building a better
world in the New World.
Even if building it meant the wholesale slaughter and displacement of the Native population.
But the major driving force behind manifest destiny was the "destiny" part, the belief
that no one could change the trajectory of white occupation of the New World because
it was a duty assigned to America by God.
And this logic didn't just excuse bad behavior, it demanded it, because if you weren't doing
your part to take over the lands of the New World and subjugate the Indigenous population,
well, that was an affront to God.
And many missionaries and educators took that very seriously, turning it into a philosophical
notion called the White Man's Burden.
This was the idea that white Europeans had a duty to bring civilization and Christian
enlightenment to the supposedly uncivilized, heathen populations of the world, for their
own good.
Whether they liked it or not.
Still, no matter how much people dressed it up with religion or feigned altruism, there's
no denying what the fundamental roots of manifest destiny actually were.
It was all about white people taking everyone else's stuff and not being held accountable
for it.
According to the National Humanities Center, during the heyday of manifest destiny there
were clear racial lines drawn between the haves, the have-nots, and the shouldn't-haves.
Native Americans could not claim permanent possession of any land on the North American
continent, even though it literally belonged to them.
Other non-whites couldn't claim possession of land, either.
And if natives and other non-whites couldn't claim the land, then you can do the math:
the only people who could claim it were white Americans.
Though this period has been romanticized in pop culture, it was at its heart white supremacy
in its pure, unadulterated form — a belief that non-whites couldn't be trusted with land
ownership, and therefore only whites could become stewards of the land as God intended.
Not everyone was on board with manifest destiny.
Indeed, there were plenty of prominent people who tried to stand up to expansionism.
For instance, according to the Blackhawk Museum, prominent Americans like Abraham Lincoln and
Ulysses Grant opposed the idea of manifest destiny.
So did the Whig political party, and later opponents included Mark Twain and President
Grover Cleveland.
Long before he became president, Lincoln was opposed to the Mexican-American War largely
because he thought it was an excuse for the United States to conquer new territories.
He was right, but he didn't have the power yet to affect change, while then-President
James K. Polk enjoyed wide support.
Objections to the war, and further expansion, failed.
More than 1,700 Americans were killed in action during the Mexican-American War, along with
an estimated 25,000 Mexicans who were killed or wounded.
And those totals don't count the more than 13,000 Americans who died from disease during
the war.
But the death toll was only the start of the long term consequences of the Mexican-American
war.
When America annexed Texas in 1845, it became clear that the United States could successfully
take land away from other claimants, and there was nothing anyone could do about it, which
opened up the rest of the continent for settlement by American citizens.
Meanwhile, people were on wagon trains to Oregon, where they'd been promised land that
could be cultivated year-round.
At first, the Indigenous people who lived along the Oregon Trail were tolerant of the
invaders, even seeing the wagons as an opportunity for trade.
Occasionally, the natives killed pioneers but not as often as the pioneers killed natives.
But as more and more settlers headed west, there was less and less land available to
share.
To make room for new arrivals, someone had to be pushed out - and we all know who that
would be.
It's pretty hard to argue against slavery when you're in favor of genocide, so naturally
manifest destiny went hand-in-hand with slavery.
Not only was manifest destiny racism and genocide that was coded into law, but the westward
expansion that was being done in its name made some people wonder if they wouldn't need
to bring slaves with them to wash the camp dishes and make the beds and feed the horses
— you know, because all that stuff was just too hard to do when you've been sitting in
a wagon all day.
Besides leading to the annexation of a bunch of Indigenous lands, the Mexican-American
War also helped promote the idea of the expansion of slavery.
The northern and southern states disagree about whether or not slaves should accompany
settlers into the new territories, though.
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 stipulated that slavery would be legal south of the 36
and a half parallel, stretching as far west as the country could go.
So slavery expanded into the southwest, but not the northwest; the tensions created during
this ideological disagreement was a major contributing factor to the American Civil
War.
The original justification for manifest destiny was that America was destined to command the
entire North American continent.
By 1860, that had been accomplished, and by the 1870's, the transcontinental railroad
spanned the whole nation.
So you might have thought that manifest destiny and expansionist imperialism would have ended
there.
But you’d be very wrong.
The driving force this time?
Not God, but capitalism.
After all, there was money to be made by exploiting new resources, new cheap labor forces, and
new markets.
Preferably all three at once.
Which is how America ended up conquering the sovereign nation of Hawai'i through the force
of private enterprise.
Sugarcane and pineapples were just two of the hot commodities produced in Hawai'i, and
the American oligarchs who controlled production wanted more control and more profits.
In 1887, a group of rich white businessmen formed an armed militia that forced Hawaii's
king to sign a new constitution that they had drawn up which stripped him of power and
gave it to American business interests.
When the king died, though, his successor queen Lili'uokalani attempted to assert Hawai'ian
independence.
In 1893, the Americans turned to the U.S. military for support, and the U.S. ambassador
sent a force of Marines to strong-arm the queen into abdicating.
President Grover Cleveland, who opposed manifest destiny, ruled the overthrow illegal and demanded
that the American businessmen return the queen to power.
However, in 1896, the pro-imperialist William McKinley was elected president, and two years
later America annexed Hawaii - shortly before conquering the Philippines as well.
Today, almost everyone is very aware of how epically crappy the whole manifest destiny
thing is.
Fortunately, America is mostly done capturing territory and expanding its borders.
But many of the people who were displaced by the policy are still suffering.
According to the African American Policy Forum, hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Americans
were forced onto reservations, where they were isolated, stripped of their traditions,
and denied their rights.
In most cases they couldn't hunt or gather food the way they once had, due to being given
the worst land around, so they were forced to adopt the European system of employment.
But their isolation kept unemployment numbers high and income levels low.
As a result, alcoholism in Native-American communities is disproportionately high, and
so is morbidity, mortality, and disease.
These conditions persist today because it's the end result of a long tradition of broken
treaties, lies, and genocide, all perpetuated by the concept of manifest destiny.
On a broader level, manifest destiny has evolved from physical expansion to cultural expansion.
Today, manifest destiny is a political ideal, as many Americans believe that American-style
capitalism and American-style democracy are a one-size-fits-all solution to all of the
world's problems.
And the biggest way in which America now conquers people isn't through violence or seizing lands,
but by changing hearts and minds through what some people call cultural imperialism.
American products are sold worldwide through American stores and restaurants that can be
found everywhere, while American movies and music play in movie theaters, over the airwaves,
and through computer screens in every corner of the globe.
At its core, manifest destiny was about reshaping the world in America's image.
And by that metric, manifest destiny has been more successful than anyone in the 19th century
could possibly have imagined.
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