Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Manifest destiny refers to a belief and a sustained racial and imperialist project that the Christian God ordained United States settlers and land speculators to occupy the entire North American continent and claim territorial, political, and economic sovereignty over its people and resources. Articulations of this belief and project were prevalent yet widely contested in the nineteenth century; they persist into the twenty-first century. Many white settlers with Northwestern European heritage believed that it was their dutiful mission to remake the “New World” in their image and spread confidently US-styled liberty and democracy. This remarkably masculinist mission as the “Great Redeemer” provided for the western expansion across the lands of North American indigenous people (such as the Seminoles, Cherokees, Siouxs, Comanches, Pawnees, Apaches, Poncas, Arapahos, and Cheyennes) into Mexico and toward the Pacific frontier, bringing industrial and national prosperity. Accordingly, this manifest destiny belief conveys the idea that expansion and possession were ordained by God, fulfilled by Christian settlers, and not established by rifles, soldiers, and atrocities. While influential newspaper editor John O'Sullivan coined this term in 1839, Horsman's Race and Manifest Destiny (1981) reminds us that the white supremacist narrative of manifest destiny had already justified earlier ... log in or subscribe to read full text