Reflection Analysis 3

Hey everyone, Will here. So for today's video we are going to be analyzing Manifest Destiny. That means we are going to be going over all aspects of this belief, including the origins of this belief, how this belief gained prominence, and what happened as a result of this belief. So without further ado, let's begin. So Manifest Destiny was a 19th century belief, stating it was God's given destiny for United States settlers to expand and move across North America, spreading their institutions and traditions across the continent. Historian William E. Weeks noted that supporters of Manifest Destiny typically used three main themes to promote their ideas. Firstly, the American people and their institutions were virtuous. Secondly, it was the moral mission for the United States to spread their institutions and remake the world. And thirdly, God had given the people of the United States this mission. So the story behind Manifest Destiny had begun in the 1630s, when Puritan John Winthrop, one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, had written his highly regarded and iconic sermon, City Upon a Hill. In this sermon, Winthrop called for the establishment of a virtuous community that could be a shining example of democracy to the old world. Today, Winthrop's City Upon a Hill sermon has become an icon in American politics. It has been referred to multiple times by several U.S. presidents, including John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. The idea of setting a new precedent of American democracy to the world had soon become a key part in starting the American Revolution. On January 10, 1776, prominent American revolutionary Thomas Paine published his influential pamphlet, common sense. In this pamphlet, Paine expressed his belief that the American Revolution provided an opportunity to establish a free and fairer society. John Winthrop's City Upon a Hill and Thomas Paine's Common Sense are held in high regard by almost all Americans. The conflict in perspective showed up when US expansionism and imperialism came into play. The debate of whether the U.S. should simply lead by example as its own democracy, or whether it should take other lands and annex them into the U.S., soon became a hotly debated subject. Many Americans echoed Paine's sentiments from his pamphlet Common Sense, and by the 1800s, many Americans believed the United States'success was a result. of its testing of freedom and democracy. As this feeling of pride grew, many Americans began to feel they had an obligation to expand their way of life to the rest of the world. In 1803, US President Thomas Jefferson helped expand to the size of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase. Louisiana Purchase was a deal between the United States and France that gave the US access to 827,000 square miles of land in exchange for 15 million dollars. Adjusted for inflation this 15 million dollars would be worth approximately 342 million dollars in US currency today. One of the biggest misconceptions of the Louisiana Purchase was that the US had bought all of the land. The majority of the land in the Louisiana Purchased Territory at this time was occupied by Native American tribes. Therefore, much of what the U.S. had purchased was imperial rights to the land, rather than simply the land itself. The United States spent $2.6 billion to buy land from Native American tribes. Adjusted for inflation, this $2.6 billion would be equivalent to over $8. $8.5 billion today. Although this was a much higher price tag than the amount the US had paid to France, it was still far lower than the true value of the land. Many of the native tribes rebelled against US occupation of their land, however, and refused to leave. As a result of this, many tribes east of the Mississippi were removed from their land by US settlers. This, in effect, caused the start of the Trail of Tears. Many US settlers began to see expansion as their mission. They believed their expansion could cause other countries to establish democratic republics as well. In 1814, at the end of the War of 1812, the United States turned its focus towards conquering remaining Native American owned land in North America. One of the British negotiators at the Treaty of Ghent expressed surprise at the commitment. the U.S. had towards seizing control of Native American owned territory. British negotiator Henry Goulborn remarked, Till I came here I had no idea of the fixed determination which there is in the heart of every American to extirpate the Indians and appropriate their territory. One of the prominent supporters of U.S. expansion was U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Before becoming Secretary of State, Adams wrote a letter to his father expressing his belief in U.S. expansion. In the letter, John Quincy Adams stated, The whole continent of North America appears to be destined by divine providence to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language. professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs. For the common happiness of them all, for their peace and prosperity, I believe it is indispensable that they should be associated in one federal union. U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams formulated several treaties that helped the U.S. expand its access to land. In 1818, he helped negotiate the Treaty of 1818, a treaty between the United States and Britain, which established the Canada-U.S. border as far west as the Rocky Mountains. The treaty also gave the U.S. and Britain joint occupation of the region of Oregon Country. Then, in 1819, Adams negotiated the Florida Purchase Treaty between the United States and Spain, which gave the land of Florida to the US while also extending the US border with Mexico all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Finally, in 1823, Adams drafted the Monroe Doctrine, which warned Europe to not colonize in the Western Hemisphere anymore. As the United States began to acquire more land and territory, American journalist John L. O'Sullivan wrote an article in 1839 describing a divine destiny that the United States had based on values such as quality, rights of conscience, and personal enfranchisement. His article also claimed that the United States would be a union of many republics to share those values. Six years later, in 1845, John L. O'Sullivan wrote another article called Annexation in the Democratic Review, this time using the phrase Manifest Destiny. O'Sullivan called for the annexation of Texas in his article, saying in his own words that it was, quote, our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. On March 4th, 1845, James Polk was inaugurated as the next President of the United States. As President of the United States, James Polk worked to both head Texas to the Union and formulate the Oregon Treaty, which settled the Oregon country boundary issue between the U.S. and Britain. As President, James Polk quickly moved to occupy a portion of Texas that had declared its independence from Mexico. Despite support from the United States, from the Republic of Texas, many Americans opposed adding Texas to the US. Slavery activists opposed adding Texas to the Union because they did not want to add another slave state to the U.S. Another faction to oppose the annexation of Texas were members of the Whig Party, who opposed U.S. expansion across the New World. One of the biggest critics of U.S. expansion into Texas was Mexico, who still claimed control over Texas. This, in effect, caused a land dispute, which paved the way for the Mexican-American War, which broke out on April 24, 1846. After the US had won several battles during the Mexican-American War, there were calls for the annexation of all of Mexico in the summer of 1847. Many eastern democrats believed that bringing all of Mexico into the Union would ensure future peace in that area. The concept of the annexation of Mexico had proven to be a controversial proposal for two main reasons. Firstly, many of the believers in Manifest Destiny, like John L. O'Sullivan, had stated that the U.S. should not impose its laws on people against their will. Secondly, many people in the U.S. were against the idea of extending U.S. citizenship to people of Mexican descent. South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun, who had supported the annexation of Texas, was one such person who did not believe in annexing Mexico into the Union. In a racist speech to Congress on January 4, 1848, John C. Calhoun stated, We have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race, the free white race. To incorporate Mexico would be the very first instance of the kind of incorporating an Indian race. For more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that. Our, sir, is the government of a white race. The call to annex all of Mexico had sparked a debate over what the mission of Manifest Destiny really was. Many supporters of Manifest Destiny believed that the U.S. should expand into new areas regardless of the racial makeup of the territories that they entered. Other supporters of Manifest Destiny believed that non-white people were not worthy of being a part of American democracy. They believed that expansion should only take place in predominantly white areas. This disagreement severely fractured the supporters' of Manifest Destiny, as both sides had different views on how they thought American expansionism and imperialism should be implemented. Many of these divisions were regional. At the time, Democrats in Mississippi heavily favored annexing all of Mexico, while Democrats in Louisiana strongly opposed annexing all of Mexico. This divide was eventually mitigated by the Mexican secession, which took place on February 2, 1848. In this deal, Mexico ceded territory that now makes up the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. As conflict grew between supporters of Manifest Destiny, another issue was happening concurrently. During Polk's presidency, the U.S. and Britain were at a standstill over how to divide the Oregon Country Region. On December 27, 1845, John L. O'Sullivan wrote another news article, this time in his own newspaper, the New York Morning News. In his newspaper, O'Sullivan argued that the United States had the right to claim all of Oregon. Describing his opinion on the Oregon Boundary Dispute, O'Sullivan once again used the word Manifest Destiny, this time to a lot of attention. O'Sullivan argued in his essay that the United States had a critical mission to spread the Republican democracy to new places. O'Sullivan argued that because Britain was not a Republican democracy, it was critical that the U.S. lay claim to all of the Oregon region. In his writings, O'Sullivan described Manifest Destiny as a higher law that was more important than other laws. As president, however, James Polk chose to instead negotiate with the British, opting to divide the Oregon Territory along the 49th parallel in 1846. James Polk opted to do this primarily because he realized the dangers in fighting a war with the British. With the Mexican-American War beginning, President Polk wanted to ensure that U.S. military forces were not caught up in fighting two different wars at the same time. Most of the supporters of Manifest Destiny came to accept President Polk's decision, primarily because the majority of them wanted to expand into the west and southwest parts of the continent, instead of the northern parts of the continent. A major conflict between supporters of Manifest Destiny came into play after the Mexican-American War and the Oregon Treaty took place. In 1848, disagreements over the expansion of slavery began to emerge. Supporters of Manifest Destiny all agreed on spreading their institutions and values across the world, but what they couldn't agree on was what their institutions and values truly were. In order to expand the institution of slavery, some southern slave owners started to fund illegal, non-government-sponsored military missions into foreign countries. These operations were later referred to as military filibustering. Filibusters like these primarily targeted Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua in the 1840s and 1850s. These filibusters only further divided supporters of Manifest Destiny. These divisions eventually became a leading catalyst for the eventual U.S. Civil War in 1861. Approximately 20 years after the U.S. Civil War, the term Manifest Destiny made its short-lived return in the United States. In 1885, Protestant missionary Josiah Strong argued that the future of the world depended upon America, claiming that the U.S. had perfected the values of civil liberty. This sentiment was echoed in the 1892 US presidential election when the official Republican Party platform proclaimed, We reaffirm our approval of the Monroe Doctrine and believe in the achievement of the manifest destiny of the republic in its broadest sense. Although the Republican president, Benjamin Harrison, had lost re-election, in 1896 the Republican Party won the presidency back with then-candidate William McKinley. During his term, McKinley cited Manifest Destiny repeatedly to promote U.S. overseas expansion. Advocating for the annexation of the Republic of Hawaii in 1898, McKinley stated, We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is our Manifest Destiny. Many historians, however, debate whether or not U.S. acquisition of Pacific Islands in the 1890s was a true example of manifest destiny, or whether it was simply a show of imperialism. The term was also briefly referred to by US politician William Jennings Bryan when opposing the Spanish-American War. In a publicized statement, Bryan stated, Destiny is not as manifest as it was a few weeks ago. While the term Manifest Destiny is not as prevalent in US politics as it used to be, the theme of America's mission to promote and defend democracy abroad remains very relevant in US politics today. Although American expansionism has started to cease in the 21st century, American interventionism remains extremely prevalent in American foreign policy today, in the form of events like the war in Afghanistan, the Iraq war, and The Yemeni Civil War. Thank you for checking out our video. If you enjoyed this video, please leave a like, comment, and subscribe for more additional content. If you have any ideas for a future video topic, please leave a comment and let me know what you would like to see me cover next. I'm really hoping to grow this channel and provide you all with more content in the future, and your support means the world to me. Thanks everyone!

So without further ado, let's begin. So Manifest Destiny was a 19th century belief, stating it was God's given destiny for United States settlers to expand and move across North America, spreading their institutions and traditions across the continent. Historian William E. Weeks noted that supporters of Manifest Destiny typically used three main themes to promote their ideas. Firstly, the American people and their institutions were virtuous. Secondly, it was the moral mission for the United States to spread their institutions and remake the world.

And thirdly, God had given the people of the United States this mission. So the story behind Manifest Destiny had begun in the 1630s, when Puritan John Winthrop, one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, had written his highly regarded and iconic sermon, City Upon a Hill. In this sermon, Winthrop called for the establishment of a virtuous community that could be a shining example of democracy to the old world.

Today, Winthrop's City Upon a Hill sermon has become an icon in American politics. It has been referred to multiple times by several U.S. presidents, including John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. The idea of setting a new precedent of American democracy to the world had soon become a key part in starting the American Revolution.

On January 10, 1776, prominent American revolutionary Thomas Paine published his influential pamphlet, common sense. In this pamphlet, Paine expressed his belief that the American Revolution provided an opportunity to establish a free and fairer society. John Winthrop's City Upon a Hill and Thomas Paine's Common Sense are held in high regard by almost all Americans. The conflict in perspective showed up when US expansionism and imperialism came into play.

The debate of whether the U.S. should simply lead by example as its own democracy, or whether it should take other lands and annex them into the U.S., soon became a hotly debated subject. Many Americans echoed Paine's sentiments from his pamphlet Common Sense, and by the 1800s, many Americans believed the United States'success was a result. of its testing of freedom and democracy. As this feeling of pride grew, many Americans began to feel they had an obligation to expand their way of life to the rest of the world.

In 1803, US President Thomas Jefferson helped expand to the size of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase. Louisiana Purchase was a deal between the United States and France that gave the US access to 827,000 square miles of land in exchange for 15 million dollars. Adjusted for inflation this 15 million dollars would be worth approximately 342 million dollars in US currency today. One of the biggest misconceptions of the Louisiana Purchase was that the US had bought all of the land.

The majority of the land in the Louisiana Purchased Territory at this time was occupied by Native American tribes. Therefore, much of what the U.S. had purchased was imperial rights to the land, rather than simply the land itself. The United States spent $2.6 billion to buy land from Native American tribes.

Adjusted for inflation, this $2.6 billion would be equivalent to over $8. $8.5 billion today. Although this was a much higher price tag than the amount the US had paid to France, it was still far lower than the true value of the land.

Many of the native tribes rebelled against US occupation of their land, however, and refused to leave. As a result of this, many tribes east of the Mississippi were removed from their land by US settlers. This, in effect, caused the start of the Trail of Tears.

Many US settlers began to see expansion as their mission. They believed their expansion could cause other countries to establish democratic republics as well. In 1814, at the end of the War of 1812, the United States turned its focus towards conquering remaining Native American owned land in North America.

One of the British negotiators at the Treaty of Ghent expressed surprise at the commitment. the U.S. had towards seizing control of Native American owned territory. British negotiator Henry Goulborn remarked, Till I came here I had no idea of the fixed determination which there is in the heart of every American to extirpate the Indians and appropriate their territory.

One of the prominent supporters of U.S. expansion was U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Before becoming Secretary of State, Adams wrote a letter to his father expressing his belief in U.S. expansion. In the letter, John Quincy Adams stated, The whole continent of North America appears to be destined by divine providence to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language.

professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs. For the common happiness of them all, for their peace and prosperity, I believe it is indispensable that they should be associated in one federal union. U.S.

Secretary of State John Quincy Adams formulated several treaties that helped the U.S. expand its access to land. In 1818, he helped negotiate the Treaty of 1818, a treaty between the United States and Britain, which established the Canada-U.S. border as far west as the Rocky Mountains.

The treaty also gave the U.S. and Britain joint occupation of the region of Oregon Country. Then, in 1819, Adams negotiated the Florida Purchase Treaty between the United States and Spain, which gave the land of Florida to the US while also extending the US border with Mexico all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Finally, in 1823, Adams drafted the Monroe Doctrine, which warned Europe to not colonize in the Western Hemisphere anymore. As the United States began to acquire more land and territory, American journalist John L. O'Sullivan wrote an article in 1839 describing a divine destiny that the United States had based on values such as quality, rights of conscience, and personal enfranchisement. His article also claimed that the United States would be a union of many republics to share those values.

Six years later, in 1845, John L. O'Sullivan wrote another article called Annexation in the Democratic Review, this time using the phrase Manifest Destiny. O'Sullivan called for the annexation of Texas in his article, saying in his own words that it was, quote, our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. On March 4th, 1845, James Polk was inaugurated as the next President of the United States. As President of the United States, James Polk worked to both head Texas to the Union and formulate the Oregon Treaty, which settled the Oregon country boundary issue between the U.S. and Britain. As President, James Polk quickly moved to occupy a portion of Texas that had declared its independence from Mexico.

Despite support from the United States, from the Republic of Texas, many Americans opposed adding Texas to the US. Slavery activists opposed adding Texas to the Union because they did not want to add another slave state to the U.S. Another faction to oppose the annexation of Texas were members of the Whig Party, who opposed U.S. expansion across the New World. One of the biggest critics of U.S. expansion into Texas was Mexico, who still claimed control over Texas. This, in effect, caused a land dispute, which paved the way for the Mexican-American War, which broke out on April 24, 1846. After the US had won several battles during the Mexican-American War, there were calls for the annexation of all of Mexico in the summer of 1847. Many eastern democrats believed that bringing all of Mexico into the Union would ensure future peace in that area.

The concept of the annexation of Mexico had proven to be a controversial proposal for two main reasons. Firstly, many of the believers in Manifest Destiny, like John L. O'Sullivan, had stated that the U.S. should not impose its laws on people against their will. Secondly, many people in the U.S. were against the idea of extending U.S. citizenship to people of Mexican descent.

South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun, who had supported the annexation of Texas, was one such person who did not believe in annexing Mexico into the Union. In a racist speech to Congress on January 4, 1848, John C. Calhoun stated, We have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race, the free white race. To incorporate Mexico would be the very first instance of the kind of incorporating an Indian race. For more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that.

Our, sir, is the government of a white race. The call to annex all of Mexico had sparked a debate over what the mission of Manifest Destiny really was. Many supporters of Manifest Destiny believed that the U.S. should expand into new areas regardless of the racial makeup of the territories that they entered.

Other supporters of Manifest Destiny believed that non-white people were not worthy of being a part of American democracy. They believed that expansion should only take place in predominantly white areas. This disagreement severely fractured the supporters' of Manifest Destiny, as both sides had different views on how they thought American expansionism and imperialism should be implemented.

Many of these divisions were regional. At the time, Democrats in Mississippi heavily favored annexing all of Mexico, while Democrats in Louisiana strongly opposed annexing all of Mexico. This divide was eventually mitigated by the Mexican secession, which took place on February 2, 1848. In this deal, Mexico ceded territory that now makes up the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. As conflict grew between supporters of Manifest Destiny, another issue was happening concurrently.

During Polk's presidency, the U.S. and Britain were at a standstill over how to divide the Oregon Country Region. On December 27, 1845, John L. O'Sullivan wrote another news article, this time in his own newspaper, the New York Morning News. In his newspaper, O'Sullivan argued that the United States had the right to claim all of Oregon. Describing his opinion on the Oregon Boundary Dispute, O'Sullivan once again used the word Manifest Destiny, this time to a lot of attention. O'Sullivan argued in his essay that the United States had a critical mission to spread the Republican democracy to new places.

O'Sullivan argued that because Britain was not a Republican democracy, it was critical that the U.S. lay claim to all of the Oregon region. In his writings, O'Sullivan described Manifest Destiny as a higher law that was more important than other laws. As president, however, James Polk chose to instead negotiate with the British, opting to divide the Oregon Territory along the 49th parallel in 1846. James Polk opted to do this primarily because he realized the dangers in fighting a war with the British. With the Mexican-American War beginning, President Polk wanted to ensure that U.S. military forces were not caught up in fighting two different wars at the same time.

Most of the supporters of Manifest Destiny came to accept President Polk's decision, primarily because the majority of them wanted to expand into the west and southwest parts of the continent, instead of the northern parts of the continent. A major conflict between supporters of Manifest Destiny came into play after the Mexican-American War and the Oregon Treaty took place. In 1848, disagreements over the expansion of slavery began to emerge. Supporters of Manifest Destiny all agreed on spreading their institutions and values across the world, but what they couldn't agree on was what their institutions and values truly were.

In order to expand the institution of slavery, some southern slave owners started to fund illegal, non-government-sponsored military missions into foreign countries. These operations were later referred to as military filibustering. Filibusters like these primarily targeted Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua in the 1840s and 1850s.

These filibusters only further divided supporters of Manifest Destiny. These divisions eventually became a leading catalyst for the eventual U.S. Civil War in 1861. Approximately 20 years after the U.S.

Civil War, the term Manifest Destiny made its short-lived return in the United States. In 1885, Protestant missionary Josiah Strong argued that the future of the world depended upon America, claiming that the U.S. had perfected the values of civil liberty. This sentiment was echoed in the 1892 US presidential election when the official Republican Party platform proclaimed, We reaffirm our approval of the Monroe Doctrine and believe in the achievement of the manifest destiny of the republic in its broadest sense.

Although the Republican president, Benjamin Harrison, had lost re-election, in 1896 the Republican Party won the presidency back with then-candidate William McKinley. During his term, McKinley cited Manifest Destiny repeatedly to promote U.S. overseas expansion. Advocating for the annexation of the Republic of Hawaii in 1898, McKinley stated, We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California.

It is our Manifest Destiny. Many historians, however, debate whether or not U.S. acquisition of Pacific Islands in the 1890s was a true example of manifest destiny, or whether it was simply a show of imperialism. The term was also briefly referred to by US politician William Jennings Bryan when opposing the Spanish-American War. In a publicized statement, Bryan stated, Destiny is not as manifest as it was a few weeks ago.

While the term Manifest Destiny is not as prevalent in US politics as it used to be, the theme of America's mission to promote and defend democracy abroad remains very relevant in US politics today. Although American expansionism has started to cease in the 21st century, American interventionism remains extremely prevalent in American foreign policy today, in the form of events like the war in Afghanistan, the Iraq war, and The Yemeni Civil War. Thank you for checking out our video.

If you enjoyed this video, please leave a like, comment, and subscribe for more additional content. If you have any ideas for a future video topic, please leave a comment and let me know what you would like to see me cover next. I'm really hoping to grow this channel and provide you all with more content in the future, and your support means the world to me.

Thanks everyone!

Transcript for:Reflection Analysis 3

Transcript for:
Reflection Analysis 3