Throughout the first half of the 19th century, it was the ambition of both U. S. citizens and the federal government to expand the nation’s borders west to the Pacific, north into present-day Canada, and south to the Rio Grande. In July 1845, John O’Sullivan, editor and publisher of the proDemocratic Party United States Magazine and Democratic Review, gave this American expansionist urge a name and an ideological definition: Manifest Destiny. This was the belief that the United States had the divinely ordained responsibility to expand its borders across the entire North American continent and, in the process, to spread its democratic principle and its Christian civilization to less-developed and unenlightened people.
O’Sullivan represented the pro-expansionist wing of the Democratic Party, commonly referred to as the “Young America” Movement. In his newspaper he published the works of Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others, and trumpeted the Democratic cause. In his 1839 treatise, “The Great Nation of Futurity,” O’Sullivan declared that the young republic was “the nation of human progress,” and he arrogantly queried, “who will, what can, set limits to our onward march?” Six years later, in “Annexation,” a manifesto demanding that the U. S. government annex the independent state of Texas, he was even more blatant in his declaration. He argued that it was America’s “Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” Yet Texas, according to O’Sullivan, was not enough; California, he insisted, was also the just right of U. S. conquest.
Inspired by this mission statement, Americans continued to pursue expansion with both impressive zeal and ruthless violence. O’Sullivan and other pro-expansionists found a willing agent to carry out their aims in Democratic president James K. Polk, who was elected to the nation’s high office in 1844. Polk echoed O’Sullivan’s desires, asserting that “The jurisdiction of our laws and the benefits of our republican institutions should be extended” to American settlers who had staked claims in western territory beyond current U. S. dominion. With Polk as its chief proponent, what Manifest Destiny meant in terms of national policy was a near-war with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory and a two-year war with Mexico.
Although tension existed between the United States and Great Britain over the territory of Oregon since the Americans had acquired portions of it from Russia in the 1820s, both nations had accepted joint occupancy of it. However, in the early 1840s, pressure was brought to bear on the U. S. government to claim the territory for its own by an increasing number of Oregon settlers. After assuming office in 1845, President Polk took up the Oregon cause and sought to claim all of Oregon below the 54th parallel (54° 40') solely of the United States. Despite shouts of “Fifty-four forty or fight” from such extreme expansionists as Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, Polk resisted armed conflict and sought a diplomatic solution. Although negotiations between the two nations were at times thorny and precarious, peace was maintained through the Oregon Treaty of 1846. The United States agreed to the establishment of the 49th parallel as the permanent U. S.-Can-ada border. In exchange for this concession, the Americans allowed the British to keep control of Vancouver Island.
Although the situation with Britain was resolved short of war, no such compromise could be reached between the United States and Mexico over Polk’s claims for territory that Mexico called its own. His justification for armed conflict was the U. S. annexation of Texas, which the Mexican government bitterly contested. The 1836 defeat of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s Mexican army by the forces of Sam Houston secured Texas’s independence from Mexico. By 1845 Texans were seeking annexation, and Polk and Congress obliged, disregarding Mexico’s protests. The federal government annexed Texas out of expansionist desires; concerns about foreign influence, namely the British; and to further provoke Mexico into a military encounter. This was because Polk had larger designs than Texas. He was determined to acquire, by force if necessary, large portions of northern Mexico, including the territory of California and what would become New Mexico. Although the Mexican government refused to recognize Texas’s annexation, it also refused direct military confrontation with its belligerent and aggressive neighbor to the north. Nevertheless, using as provocation the dispute with Mexico over Texas and a dubious act of Mexican military aggression, the United States invaded its southern neighbor in May 1846. After a string of victories, U. S. troops pushed easily down to Mexico City and forced the Mexican government to surrender, ending the Mexican-American War. According to the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), Mexico ceded to the U. S. two-fifths of its territory (including Texas, California, and New Mexico) for $15 million. Whether they wanted it or not, the inhabitants of these lands were incorporated into the United States.
The victory over Mexico only whetted the American appetite for territory. Bolstered by its success on the southern border, the federal government shifted its manifest-destiny ambitions in other directions. Expansionists began to covet lands beyond the North American continent and turned their attention toward Central America and the Caribbean. Cuba, for example, was, by the 1840s, a sought-after gem for pro-expansionists like O’Sullivan. A like-minded Polk, who was not completely satisfied with the acquisitions from Mexico and Great Britain, offered Spain as much as $100 million for the archipelago in 1848. The Spanish rejected his offer, and France and Britain diplomatically blocked it. President Franklin Pierce made a similar offer to the Spanish government for Cuba and even threatened the use of force to compel the sale. He withdrew this intimidating offer, however, because of negative domestic public reaction. Pierce’s successor, President James Buchanan, also supported the acquisition of Cuba and urged Congress to pass a bill for its purchase. Only the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 put the issue of Cuba to rest. Lincoln opposed any purchase because he thought it part of a southern states’ plot to extend slavery beyond its current borders.
The expansionist lust of some Americans spurred them on to seek territory in the Caribbean and Central America as private enterprises. During the early 1850s, these adven-
This engraving depicts an American settlement with school, church, and a railroad train, ca. 1868 (Library of Congress)
Turesome Americans, also called “filibusters,” attempted to invade and conquer Cuba, Nicaragua, and even parts of Mexico. Ardent proslavery southerners who professed the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, these filibusters hoped to increase the power and influence of the slave states through conquest. None of the private filibuster expeditions was successful, including an attempted invasion of Cuba in 1850 by, among others, John L. O’Sullivan. The ruthless Tennessean William Walker was able to seize control of and rule the rudderless Nicaragua periodically between 1855 and 1860. In 1856, the Pierce administration even briefly recognized one of Walker’s Nicaraguan governments before it collapsed. Four years later, Walker was executed by the government of Honduras for his filibustering. Despite the filibusters’ failures to seize new lands and U. S. presidents to buy them, Americans hungered for much of what they saw south of Mexico throughout the remainder of the century.
U. S. expansionist desires and Manifest Destiny was not restricted to the Western Hemisphere. In an effort to establish a presence in the Pacific, promote commerce, find coaling stations and protect shipwrecked American sailors, President Pierce sent U. S. Navy Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry to “open” Japan. In 1853, four U. S. warships, two of them intimidating, steam-powered vessels that belched black smoke, dropped anchor off the coast of Japan. Perry’s efforts and determination to fulfill his orders produced a commercial trade treaty with Japan in 1854. The Tokugawa Shogunate rulers of Japan capitulated to Perry’s demands because of superior U. S. military power. They also hoped to avoid the humiliating domination several European powers exercised over other Asian nations like India and China. The opening of Japan was only a beginning of direct U. S. interest in Asia and the Pacific.
With the outbreak of the Civil War at Fort Sumter in 1861, U. S. expansionism took secondary importance as Americans became consumed with this costly, bloody, and tragic domestic crisis. However, manifest-destiny sentiments were only temporarily replaced by this more immediate concern. Following the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, the U. S. government once again returned to an expansionist foreign policy. For the next half-century and beyond, the concept of Manifest Destiny encouraged U. S. commercial and territorial desires well beyond national borders and onto the global stage. It provided the battle cry for the 1898 Spanish-American War, legitimized the seizure of the Hawaiian Islands, justified the colonization of the Philippine Islands, and motivated continued economic domination and political manipulation in Latin America. At the close of the 19th century, the pro-expansionist Republican senator Albert J. Beveridge, drawing on the ideas of John L. O’Sullivan, argued for U. S. empire. According to the bellicose senator, “[God] has marked the American people as his chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world” and “[t]his is the divine mission
Of America.” In 1898, as the United States was embarking on a war with Spain, President William McKinley was more direct in his reference to O’Sullivan, arguing that U. S. expansion into the Pacific and Asia “is Manifest Destiny.”
Further reading: Thomas G. Paterson, J. Garry Clifford, and Kenneth J. Hagen, eds., American Foreign Policy: A History, 3d ed. (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Company, 1988); Thomas G. Paterson and Dennis Merrill, eds. Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Vol. I, 4th ed. (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Company, 1995); Edward L. Widmer, Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
—Charles Hawley
Mann, Horace (1796-1859) education reformer As an educational reformer, Horace Mann was responsible for improving the educational system in the antebellum United States. He was born on his family farm in
Franklin, Massachusetts, on May 4, 1796. The product of a strict Puritan upbringing, his education proved episodic, although he displayed a great aptitude for learning. Mann disliked farming, so he prevailed upon his mother to hire personal tutors to study geometry, Greek, and Latin. Consequently, in 1816 he gained admittance to prestigious Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He graduated with honors three years later and, after serving as a tutor and librarian at Brown, subsequently studied law under Tapping Reeve in Litchfield, Connecticut.
Mann was admitted to the Boston bar in 1823 and gained election to the General Court of Massachusetts (the state legislature) four years later. In this capacity he quickly established himself as an activist Whig reformer, championing prison reform and better treatment for the mentally retarded. In concert with Dorothea Dix, he created the state’s first mental hospital. Mann was also active in promoting the temperance movement through moral suasion, and in 1831 he sponsored the state’s first liquorlicensing regulations. However, it was in the field of education reform, an area in which he had previously displayed little interest, that Mann exerted his biggest influence.
As a legislator, Mann had become aware that barely a third of school-age children in Massachusetts received any instruction. The public-school system was in a shambles and generally avoided by families affluent enough to afford private academics. Moreover, the curriculum was either outdated or imperfectly taught, and the buildings themselves were usually dilapidated. In 1837, Mann pushed through legislation creating the Massachusetts School Board of Education, for which he resigned from politics to become secretary. It was Mann’s belief from the start that common schools, as public institutions, could serve as a great equalizer for all classes, extending positive influences into fields of morality and social mobility. As such, he placed great emphasis on teacher education, creating three of the first normal schools to train teachers in the nation. Moreover, he standardized the curriculum, spent state money on a variety of instructional texts, and doubled the wages of teachers. Mann was also the first educator to recognize the importance of personal hygiene and physical fitness. As a result, Massachusetts students became the first to spend one hour each day either studying or practicing these topics. Most important of all, Mann formally extended the school year to six months and made it compulsory for all Massachusetts children.
Mann toured his state incessantly and lectured public officials on the direct connection between public learning and public morality. As a reflection of his treatment of education as a profession, he compiled and published annual education reports that statistically reflected progress and anticipated problems statewide. He also founded the Common School Journal, one of the earliest educational periodicals, and served as its editor for a decade. During his tenure no less than 50 new public schools were founded, replete with new textbooks and school libraries. Through all these expedients, Mann single-handedly revolutionized both the quality and the concept of public education in America. He made an indelible impact on the educational process in Massachusetts for over a decade, with dramatic and sustainable results. His methods were also exported to other states and abroad to other countries, granting him considerable renown.
In 1848 Mann resigned from the educational board to run for the U. S. House of Representatives as a Whig. He was elected and proved a vocal opponent of the extension of slavery. However, Mann was unprepared for the enmity this stance engendered, and in 1852 he declined to run again. That year he made an unsuccessful bid to become governor of Massachusetts as a Free-Soil Party candidate. Afterwards, he accepted the presidency of Antioch College in Ohio. Mann applied himself vigorously to his charge and was active in creating a curriculum and teaching program. He further distinguished himself among contemporaries by insisting on equal treatment for female students. However, the school failed financially and was ultimately sold.
Mann died of exhaustion in Ohio on August 2, 1858, only two weeks after exhorting Antioch’s graduating class to win “some victory for humanity.” His strong belief in
Horace Mann (Hulton/Archive)
The virtues of public education, coupled with an unyielding determination to enhance it for the benefit of all citizens, established him as an influential social reformer of the 19th century.
Further reading: Thomas M. Buck, “Horace Mann: Enigmatic Leader in Change and Conflict” (unpublished Ph. D. dis., Marquette University, 1999); Susan-Mary Grant, “Representative Mann: Horace Mann, the Republican Experiment, and the South,” Journal of American Studies 32 (April 1998): 105-24; Ronald L. Jensen, “A Religious and Social Study of Horace Mann” (unpublished Ph. D. dis., University of Iowa, 1991); Kem K. Sawyer, Horace Mann (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1993).
—John C. Fredriksen
World History
