Sample Student Research Project 2013
Journal
LITR
4232 American Renaissance
Sample Student Research Project 2013
Journal
Mickey Thames
American Progress- John Gast 1872
Why the West Was Won--Manifest Destiny
Introduction
American exceptionalism; that idea that somehow, we Americans
are set apart to do great deeds and lead the world into a better society. I’ve
often wondered where this idea sprang up in our history, and how it managed to
so ingrain itself into our culture. How did it manage to influence multiple
generations in the realms of foreign policy, economics, and literature?
What I stumbled upon was the idea of Manifest Destiny. The idea that
America, as a nation, much stretch from “sea to shining sea” appears all over
literature from the time of the American Renaissance, and I intend to find out
where this idea came about (Bates).
In this journal, I am going to discover the first usage of the term Manifest
Destiny, its roots in the American expansion westward, and find out why people
believed in it. I am eager to find the political machinations that ensued, or
were behind its rise to popularity, and wonder how it transformed into the idea
of American Exceptionalism. I will give general history and background
information about the movement, thanks to a few prodigious scholars.
I also plan to discover the origins of the term, break down the idea into
its most basic tenets, and analyze the literature of Ralph Waldo Emerson and
Abraham Lincoln to discover embedded examples of the idea. I also plan to review
the University of Groningren’s website on Manifest Destiny, to see a foreign
perspective of the expansion. And finally, I want to understand how the idea of
a Manifest Destiny is Romantic.
History
Manifest Destiny is the idea that America was meant to expand
from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, encompassing all the territories
between. Historian Frederick Merck defines it as “expansion, prearranged by
heaven, over an area” that was not yet part of the United States (p 24). He goes
on to say that this policy was originally one of peaceful expansion, to allow
peoples to ask for admission to the American system of their own volition (2).
And the first feat of expansion, the Louisiana Purchase, was just that. A
peaceful acquisition of territory from France in 1803, then-President Thomas
Jefferson doubled the size of the nation, and with it began the great move
westward. This new land introduced for Americans their first frontier since the
Revolutionary War, with writers such as Emerson and Whitman unwittingly
encouraging expansion with their Romantic essays such as Nature.
In 1818, Andrew Jackson on orders from President Monroe, led forces into
Spanish-owned Florida, and essentially took it from Spain, marking the second
expansion of the United States in twenty years (Lubragge). Because Florida was
part of the North American continent, people argued, it should be a part of
America (Lubragge). This idea, as historian Robert J. Miller, in his book
Native America: Discovered and Conquered, came “easi[ly] and comfortab[ly]
to Americans…[their] virtue, mission, and divine ordination mandated the
expansion of America’s borders” (120). This aggressive expansion continued with
the Mexican American War. President Polk, desiring to acquire more territory,
first annexed the Republic of Texas, then proceeded to go to war with Mexico
over its former colony and over half the lands that went with it (White). This
particular expansion came at the heels of the annexation of Texas, which
Americans took as another sign of people wanting to join the Union, and that
given time, the territories of California and Colorado would follow suit. They
were simply taking the initiative. And with its victory, America had secured the
vision of expanding from one ocean to the other.
First Use
The first use of the term Manifest
Destiny came in an essay by John L O’Sullivan, entitled Annexation.
Published in 1845 in his self-edited Democratic Review, O’Sullivan argues
for the annexation of Texas, citing the “greatness [of the people] and... the
fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by
Providence.” This was not the first allusion to a divine mission by O’Sullivan,
as he would use the phrase again, this time to much more attention, when he
published in the New York Morning News,
"...To state the truth at once in its
neglected simplicity, we are free to say that were the respective cases and
arguments of the two parties, as to all these points of history and law,
reversed - had England all ours, and we nothing but hers - our claim to Oregon
would still be best and strongest. 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."
John L.O’Sullivan, “Manifest Destiny”
This editorial caught on with several political
groups, including the Democrats, who used it as a campaign slogan in the years
after. O’Sullivan would go on to influence a faction of the Democratic Party
called Young America.
Themes and Ideas of Manifest Destiny
The idea of Manifest Destiny was not solely the realm of
expansionist politicians. It was a group of beliefs that pervaded the culture of
America during the early to mid 19th century, and can be identified and applied
to a multitude of literary forms of the day. In his book, Native America,
Discovered and Conquered, Robert J. Miller puts for the following themes of
American Manifest Destiny:
“ 1.The Special Virtues of the American people and their
institutions;
2. America’s mission to redeem and remake the world in the
image of America; and
3. A divine destiny under God’s direction to accomplish
this wonderful task.” (120)
While none of these are openly expansionist, they can be
interpreted to allow for it. If the virtues of American peoples are special,
then they are superior to whatever indigenous population already inhabits an
area, and it is to the inferior people’s benefit if Americans colonize their
area. This line of reasoning feeds right into the second theme of a mission. The
idea of a mission is nothing new; it has existed in American Romanticism and
puts these ideas firmly in the realm of Romanticism. The third and final theme,
that of destiny, gives the appearance of operating under a higher power. This
idea is also from Romanticism, as a “higher law” is often a motivation to
accomplish something. These three themes, all being notions of Romanticism, also
fall under the idea of Transcendence. Following the direction of God, bringing
others ‘into the light’ of republican democracy, and instilling in others the
same higher characteristics of the American people all are aspects of
Transcendence.
Literature of Manifest Destiny: Abraham Lincoln
When looking for examples of literature that embodied the
tenets of Manifest Destiny, I decided to start at the top. Abraham Lincoln’s
writings are full of the virtue and mission described by the Manifest Destiny.
In his The House Divided Speech, he characterizes the Union as” the frame
of a house or a mill , all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the
lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their
respective places;” This description of the Union as a building, brought forth
with a specific purpose, preordained with “a common plan or draft drawn up
before the first blow was struck.” Lincoln says this house called the United
States, with all its different pieces made by different people, adhere to a
preordained order. In this case, Lincoln refers to the divine destiny as
accorded by Providence. In one short speech he hits upon all the tenets of
Manifest Destiny.
Lincoln’s next speech, the short but
poignant Gettysburg Address, contains perhaps the most overt Manifest
Destiny imagery that we read in class. To describe a nation as “brought forth on
this continent, ... conceived in Liberty” is to directly tie its descent from
the divine. Liberty, being a common personification of freedom during the time,
provides a link between human endeavors and God himself, making Americans quite
literally, sons of God. As sons of God, they are “to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced,” and
carry on the mission to preserve and enhance the Union. Lincoln is playing up
the idea of a nation that carries a glorious burden upon its shoulders, and that
it is in “a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure” its burden. The mission of the
United States is clear to Lincoln in this speech; the question is merely can the
nation partake that mission effectively?
Lincoln’s final speech for our class, The Second Inaugural
Address, sees Lincoln focus more on the virtue of the American people he is
now attempting to reunite. His final words in the speech seek to play upon that
supposed virtue:
“With
malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God
gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to
bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and
for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and
lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations”
This passage is meant to appeal to the virtue, one of the
tenets of Manifest Destiny, of the American people. Their common decency towards
each other, a desire to fix the rending of the nation that had just befallen,
and a call to the work yet to be done are meant to play up the idealized notions
of what it means to be an American. Lincoln, in these Romantic words, espouses
the ideas of the Manifest Destiny as ideas of what it means to be American.
Literature of Manifest Destiny: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s lecture The Young
American gives Emerson’s views on the emerging American sense of self. That
he sees America “beginning to assert itself to the senses and to the imagination
of her children, and Europe is receding in the same degree” implies an inherent
superiority to the peoples of Europe. Here, the appeal to America’s inherent
virtue, and that of its children, is being used to spur education so that
America can accomplish its mission of “the task of surveying, planting, and
building upon this immense tract” of land. Already, virtue and mission are being
mentioned, and both in context of the American People. Emerson here seeks to
instruct the young American in what he is to do with this astounding tract of
land, to allow “Destiny, sublime and friendly” to guide them to the goals it has
set before them. Emerson, in saying that a Divine presence was guiding America
toward a noble future, reflects the idea of Manifest Destiny; of stretching out
over the land westward, and inhabiting it as God saw fit.
Emerson again reiterates the ideas of
Manifest Destiny in his essay Nature. To the American he espouses “know
then, that the world is made for you...All that Adam had, all that Ceasar
could,” and to “build, therefore, your own world.” America can be said here, to
be the heir of Adam’s promise, dominion over the world. America is also the heir
to Rome’s promise, of ruling the whole of the Earth and of all peoples being
Roman. The mission has been passed down through Rome, the center of
Christianity, through Adam, who comes direct from God. The mission is to
multiply and expand unto the ends of the Earth. It is the divine destiny, as
descendents of Adam and Ceasar, to rule over the lands. By the virtue of those
men, so do too do the American people have virtue. The American people, with
“beautiful faces, warm hearts, wise discourse, and heroic acts” are the heirs of
the earth (Emerson).All of these words simply reiterate the same message;
America is bound to bring the world into civility, by the nature of their
mission, as ordained by God himself.
Literature of Manifest Destiny: Henry David Thoreau
While no fan of the American government’s
machinations of expansion, Thoreau nonetheless advocates the inherent virtues of
his own American people, and of the American continent. In his essay Walking,
Thoreau sees “the heavens of America appear infinitely higher, the stars
brighter, I trust that these facts are symbolical of the height to which the
philosophy and poetry and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar.” Thoreau
paints America’s destiny as being one of much greater potential than her Old
World ancestors, and that the peoples may raise above. In a Transcendental
sense, America is the very embodiment of the desire to strive for a higher form
of law, thought, and custom. Thoreau goes on to state :
“I trust that we shall be more imaginative; that our thoughts
will be clearer, fresher and more
ethereal, as our sky — our
understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our plains—our intellect
generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and
mountains and forests, — and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and
depth and grandeur to our inland seas”
-Walking
Here, the Manifest Destiny of the United States is shown as
reflective. The very physical shape of the continent, the way it rises higher
than any other, corresponds with the higher virtues and destiny of the American
people. Thoreau sees America as specially made for Americans, and their unique
place in the world, and marvels at it. What a thought, that a land would bend to
the shape of its people, instead of vice versa. How wonderfully Romantic a
sense, to have a place set out, made just for one’s self, reflecting the higher
thoughts inherent in the self. Thoreau understood and saw through the eyes of
Manifest Destiny, in that he marvelled at the landscape bequeathed to his
people.
Websites
When researching Manifest Destiny, I was hoping to find a
catalogue of all the variations of ideas that lead to the final phenomenon we
know of today. What I found was an entire website dedicated to an extensive
essay done by Micheal T. Lubragge, of the University of Groningen. Groningen is
located in the Netherlands, and as such, this website provided an outsider’s
view of Manifest Destiny. I have to admit I spend a number of hours just reading
the background of the movement, from its beginnings in the “City Upon A Hill”
speech in Puritan New England, to the rousing expansionism of James K. Polk.
What the website uncovered for me, was an understanding that Manifest Destiny,
while coming to a head during the American Renaissance, was an idea as old as
America itself. We have always considered ourselves as set apart from the world,
and it should come as no surprise that we continue this belief. The outsider
view was also quick to remind us of Manifest Destiny’s darker sides, in the
removal of Indians onto Reservations, aggressive actions towards nations such as
Spain, Britain, and even Mexico, another colony turned republic. You would think
being birthed out of the same circumstances would lend us some sympathies with
that sister nation of ours, but the tightly held xenophobic rationales of
Manifest Destiny demanded that it be Anglo Americans that colonized, not those
of mixed Indian descent. It also served as a reminder that a large portion of
the United States did not share the view of Manifest Destiny, and that there
were many detractors to expansionism, namely the Whig party. Reminding us of our
own history, without nationalist bias towards our own personal mythos is an
important function of this site.
This outside perspective is necessary to paint a whole picture of the movement
as it happened, as history does not just occur in a vacuum, but interacts with
the whole world.
Also reviewed was another site, The PBS
overview of the Mexican American War, which includes an entire section on
Manifest Destiny. This is the Manifest Destiny you learned about in school,
given from, while a historical viewpoint, is still in favor of US interests. As
such, the darker aspects of Manifest Destiny are played down, while the
realities of clashes with Mexico are brought up in far more detail than the
Groningen website. It is also a simpler read, and is made up of many more
contributors. It represents more of an amalgamation of American historian
viewpoints, compared to the single essay by an outsider. It also gave more links
to future American Imperialism ideas, and more clearly outlined how they
extended from Manifest Destiny.
Conclusion and What I Learned
What I came to realize from this assignment, with all of its
reading, and analyzing and re-reading, was a new view on the American
self-image. I had always thought that America, and Americans, were simply a
little full of themselves. After all, we are the land of plenty, with vast
tracts of land and natural resources, a powerful economy and military, and major
influence worldwide. I merely thought that America attitude was an extension of
these things. But through reading, I see that it was far older, and more deeply
rooted than simply pride. The idea of American exceptionalism, of being set
apart as better, is as fundamental to the idea of America as is the concept of
freedom. The two are directly linked. That idea of being exceptional was seen as
represented by the vast continent we found ourselves on. It is a necessary
component to travel far distances, over distant plains, harsh mountains, and to
faraway forests, just for the chance at freedom. America, and her sense of
Manifest Destiny, grew not just out of a desire to expand, but a desire to rise
higher than any nation that ever way. Swept up in the boundless potential, is it
any wonder the nation, weary of war, would Romanticize its very existence, and
its land? We wanted a chance to try our experiment at democracy, and to believe
ourselves worthy of its rewards, and strong enough to carry its burdens. I know
now why we study the American Renaissance era; because we as Americans, base our
entire culture on that Romantic notion of being on a mission. Americans are here
to share America, that Romantic idea of equality, freedom, and happiness.
Works Cited
http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/prelude/manifest_destiny_overview.html
Thoreau, Henry Davidhttp://thoreau.eserver.org/walking2.html
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
http://www.emersoncentral.com/youngam.htm
O’Sullivan, John L
.http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/HIS/f01/HIS202-01/Documents/OSullivan.html
White, Craig
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/xhist/MexAmWar.htm
Lubragge, Michael T.
http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/essays/1801-1900/manifest-destiny/
Merk Frederick. Manifest Destiny and Mission in American
History: A Reinterpretation
First Harvard University Press. Print 1995
Bates, Katherine Lee. “America The
Beautiful”
http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/games/songs/patriotic/americamid.htm
"Great Star" flag of pre-Civil War USA