Project 2

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Project 2

• By Austin Keating, Santiago Gutierrez, and Sam
  Spears

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Question

• Although Americans perceived Manifest Destiny as
  a benevolent movement, it was in fact an
  aggressive imperialism pursued at the expense of
  others.
• Assess the validity of this statement with
  specific references to American expansionism in
  the 1840s.

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Thesis

• Manifest destiny is the idea that that America
  deserves and has every right to take over all the
  land. It was imperialism because they were taking
  the land away from the Native Americans and
  eventually toke land from mexico. They were
  hostile towards Native Americans and during the
  civil war the north and the south were both
  struggling to maintain power over each other,
  land was a key factor.

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Manifest destiny

• Manifest Destiny is an intangible ideology that
  created American history. In its simplest form,
  Manifest Destiny can be defined as, "A Movement."
  More specifically, it would be the systematic
  body of concepts and beliefs that powered
  American life and American culture.
• Manifest Destiny reflected both the prides that
  characterized American Nationalism in the mid
  19th century, and the idealistic vision of social
  perfection through God and the church.

• Manifest destiny was a justification for
  expansion and western movement, or, in some
  interpretations, an ideology or doctrine that
  helped to promote the process of civilization.

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Manifest Destiny continued

• "Without Manifest Destiny, phrases and terms such
  as "Beyond the Great American Desert," "The North
  West Passage," and "The Oregon Trail", would be
  just empty examples of white man's travels."
• Herman Melville, an American novelist, addresses
  the perils that underlay the soaring ambition and
  aggressiveness of the new age. The whaling
  captain Ahab, who brings his own demise and the
  destruction of his own ship by his own relentless
  pursuit of the white whale.-- this symbolizes,
  among others-- the dangers facing a nation that
  was overreaching itself by indulging its pride
  and exalted sense of destiny with too little
  concern for the moral and practical consequences

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Mexican American war

• The Mexican American war also know as the Mexican
  war, was an armed conflict between the united
  states and Mexico from 1846-1848 in the wake of
  the 1845 U.S. annexation from Texas. Mexico still
  considered Texas part of their country despite
  the 1836 Texas revolution.
• The war with Mexico was just one of a series of
  aggressive acts that can be tied to America's
  manifest destiny. Manifest destiny emerged
  naturally out of the fundamental need and want to
  explore, conquer new land, and establish borders.
  With this growth came moral, cultural, social
  ideological and economic differences between
  people, states, and countries.

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Native Americans

• Manifest destiny had serious consequences for
  native Americans, since continental expansion for
  America toke place heavily on Native America
  soil.
• The age of manifest destiny came to be associated
  with extinguishing Americans Indian territorial
  claims and removing them to reservations. An
  example of this would be Jackson's indian removal
  act of 1830 which best correlates to the trail of
  tears where thousands of Indians died on a
  treacherous forced relocation.

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Civil war

• The civil war could also be considered an
  aggressive imperialism pursued at the expense of
  others because of the enormous amount of
  casualties caused by the issue of land.
• The civil war was entirely fought over the
  South's secession. If the south seceded than many
  others could have succeeded as well causing a
  massive loss of land for the U.S.
• Manifest destiny therefor is the reason that
  Lincoln could not have stood the loss of land and
  toke any and all measures to ensure he didn't,
  even if that meant the deaths of hundreds of
  thousands.

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Conclusion

• In conclusion Manifest destiny was an aggressive
  imperialism pursued at the expense of others
  which is shown by each of the following, the
  Mexican American war, the Indian removal act of
  1830, and the civil war.