HIST 405N Week 3 Discussion: Manifest Destiny and the Mexican War of 1846
How did the ideology of Manifest Destiny contribute to the Mexican War of
... [Show More] 1846? Why did the Mexican War of 1846 take place? Was the war necessary? Was it beneficial to the United States? What does this war tell us about this period of American history? Was it God’s plan that the United States extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or were imperialists looking for a way to defend what they planned to do anyway? Elaborate.
Answer
Manifest Destiny by definition is “a term coined by editor and columnist John O’Sullivan to describe his belief in America’s divine right to expand westward” (Keene, Cornell, and O’Donnell, 2013, p. 319). The Manifest Destiny was a dream in which America should gain control of North America all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans. Mexico already legally claimed Texas and also owned Arizona, New Mexico, and California. The Northwest part of the U.S. had already achieved their dream of being able to reach the Pacific supported by the Louisiana Purchase as well as the agreement with England in regards to the Oregon Territory. The U.S. now desired to extend borders all the way to the Pacific and across the southwest and northwest. Mexico however, was blocking this dream. President James Polk tried pursuing Mexico to go to war with America. Allegedly, the controversies between Mexico and the U.S. over the Texas border is what ultimately led to the Mexican War (Manifest destiny and slavery, 2017).
I supposed that the war was necessary to gain more land. I don’t think this would’ve gone down without a fight. The U.S. had the desire and need to expand. Some of the social, economic, and political pressures of promoting the U.S. to expand include a high periodic birth rate as well as an increased population from immigration; two economic depressions (1818 and 1839) that drove people to live in frontier lands; frontier lands were very cheap and sometimes even free; expanding into frontier land gave opportunities for independent self-advancement and new commerce; owning land meant wealth, political power, self-sufficiency, and “self-rule”; and opened up opportunities for maritime merchants to promote and expand new commerce by constructing ports in the West Coast which would eventually lead to expanded trade with other countries in the Pacific (Manifest destiny, 2006).
According to Keene, et al. (2013), there was belief in which God had destined the United States to expand westward all the way to the Pacific. “The sun’s location in the Western sky evokes God’s blessing and the optimistic vision of Manifest Destiny—a symbol of both the settler’s and the nation’s bright future” (Keene, et al. 2013, p. 321).
References
Keene, J.D., Cornell, S., & O’Donnell, E. D. (2013). Visions of America: A History of the United States (2nd ed). Pearson Learning Solutions.
Manifest destiny and slavery. (2017). US history. Retrieved from https://socratic.org/questions/how-did-the-concept-of-manifest-destiny-lead-to-war-with-mexico
Manifest destiny. (2006). PBS. Retrieved from
https://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/prelude/md_introduction.html [Show Less]