05b: Our Manifest Destiny

Expansionism and Manifest Destiny
The American population was booming. The Louisiana Territory was beginning to fill up. As a result of victory in the War of 1812 and the success of the Monroe Doctrine, America enjoyed international prestige. Americans naturally attributed their nation's rise to their freedoms, their ideals, and their relation with Providence as llustrated on the Great Seal: annuit coeptis. Americans began to believe the United States was literally destined to rule North America from East to West. The Jacksonian Democrats (so called after the aggressive Andrew Jackson) urged expansionism - the addition of the most territory possible to the United States. Even if Canada was off limits for good, and the British seemed willing to fight for the Oregon Territory, there was always Mexico.

In 1844, New York journalist John O'Sullivan coined the term "Manifest Destiny" in an essay arguing for the annexation of Texas. In a more influential 1845 essay supporting annexation of the Oregon Territory, O'Sullivan explained:

And that claim is by 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.

Those who supported American expansion were slow to seize on the term. At first "manifest destiny" was used as a derogatory term by the dying Whig political party, which feared that expansion would somehow dilute America's stable government. But Jacksonian Democrats such as Tennessee's James K. Polk quickly recognized the term's appeal. "Manifest Destiny" implied the Americans were a uniquely superior people, specifically ordained by God to spread civilization throughout North America. Northerners saw Manifest Destiny as a wonderful opportunity for the nation's economy in general and themselves in particular. Southerners saw it as a wonderful opportunity to ensure the continued growth of King Cotton. In short, Manifest Destiny had something to offer almost every American.

Napoleon of the Stump
In 1844, James K. Polk became America's youngest president yet at age 49. He campaigned on a four point platform: annex the Oregon territory, annex Mexico's North American territory, establish an independent treasury, and reduce crippling tariffs. Polk believed lower tariffs would benefit everyone by stimulating the economy. If foreign trade picked up, tax revenues would jump and so would the American public's buying power. Polk's instrument was the  "Walker Tariff," based not on an imported product's value, but rather, imposed equally on all goods. Even the Northerners who supported the existing tariff system they had to acknowledge that the Walker Tariff actually worked exactly as designed. In fact, the Walker Tariff also gave the US Treasury more than enough money to pursue Polk's expansionist foreign policy.

President Polk's first foreign policy goal was to obtain a settlement of the Oregon Territory. The territory was still underexplored (despite Lewis and Clark's efforts). Land-hungry American squatters were moving north of the 49th Parallel, which had long served as a working boundary. This prompted the expansionist war cry 54' 40" or Fight! But neither the US nor Britain were interested in a war over Oregon when they got on so well otherwise. The 1846 Oregon Treaty established the 49th Parallel as a permanent boundary between the US and modern Canada. With the nation's northern boundary stabilized for good, Polk was free to look south. Even though the Mexican republic had openly emulated the United States from its birth, US-Mexican relations had been strained for a decade by the time Polk took office.

Hungry as ever for new lands, American settlers had started moving into the northeastern Mexican states of Coahuila and Tejas. Welcomed at first, the settlers soon wore out their welcome by openly calling for union with the United States. In 1836 the settlers seceded from Mexico and declared the Republic Of Texas. The Texans were defeated at the Alamo, but their later victory at San Jacinto established a nation - which still openly wanted union with the United States. President Polk was pleased to annex the Republic in 1845. The Mexicans, naturally unhappy, protested angrily. Intent on grabbing even more Mexican land, Polk staged a supposed Mexican attack and goaded Congress into declaring war. But not everyone was fooled by Polk's tactics. As a young Whig congressman from Illinois pointed out, both on the House floor and in the following 1848 letter to a friend:

The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.

Representative Abraham Lincoln's bold stand almost cost him his political career - he lost his seat in Congress when the Whigs refused to endorse him again in 1849. The Mexican War was wildly successful, and it became highly popular, at least at the start. Thanks to Polk's economic reforms, the United States paid up front for 60% of the war's costs. After the 1848 capture of Mexico City, the war was ended by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. As a result of this treaty, America gained Texas, California, and the major parts of Arizona and New Mexico - nearly 1.2 million square miles of new land.

Regardless of how one feels about the means Polk used to start it, the Mexican War brought great benefit to the United States. The importance of the former Mexican territory to our nation's development can not be understated. For instance, the California Gold Rush of 1848 drew the American people west and poured millions of dollars into the young nation's economy, as did the new state of Texas When the United States wanted to buy more Mexican land to straighten out the borders - the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 - the Mexicans wisely kept quiet and sold it. They had learned not to get in between the United States and its manifest destiny.