In accordance with the Buchanan-Pakenham Treaty of 1846, Britain accepted the lands north of the 49th parallel while the United States took those south of it. The British eventually decided to compromise with the Americans over the Oregon territory. The Mexicans, who upon their independence in 1821 had claimed the Spanish possessions in North America, and the British in Canada, who via the Hudson Bay Company had established posts in the Northwest, struggled to contain the expansion of the United States. American movement also created conflict with neighboring countries. Many of the peoples native to the West, such as the Apache, Comanche, Crow, and Sioux or Lakota, sharpened their combat skills to ensure their own survival and success in the maelstrom of competing ethnic and national groups. Indians, such as the Cherokee, who had endured dispossession in the East found themselves under attack again in the West by white pioneers as well as those native to the areas in which they settled. Those confronting the Americans were seen simply as objects to be surmounted, removed, or destroyed rather than as peoples or nations with legitimate cultures and claims. They saw themselves as an irresistible force and worried little about coming up against immoveable objects. As Americans moved west they trampled tribal lands, trespassed over territorial boundaries, and ignored international agreements. United States citizens generally celebrated their self-proclaimed manifest destiny Native Americans, Mexicans, and Europeans who still had claims in the Western Hemisphere did not. The majority of Americans, however, supported such growth. Opponents believed that expansioneither in its means or endswould hurt, not help, the nation. That opposition in itself also shows some of the complexity that was inherent to this issue. Some contemporaries noted these problems and used them in their arguments against expansion. There were also regional variations to the arguments for and against expansion as northerners, southerners, and westerners pursued their own agendas. For instance, some citizens promoted expansion as a way of incorporating other peoples into American culture, while others used it to push them out. O'Sullivan, the editor of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, coined a now familiar term when in 1845 he wrote that "our manifest destiny is to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." Both the idea of manifest destiny and the reality of expansion showed the nature of the American character and nation and profoundly influenced their continuing development.Ĭontradictions abounded in the ideas supporting expansion, just as there were dichotomies between the ideas and their implementation. They not only nodded in agreement when they read John Louis O'Sullivan's articles advocating expansion, they packed up and hied themselves out to the West. Manifest Destiny - Document Overview Manifest Destinyīy the 1830s many Americans may no longer have believed in predestination in a religious or spiritual sense, but a great many did espouse national predestination.
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