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James K. Polk ran on a simple platform. First, settle the Oregon question, second, settle the Texas/Mexico question, and third, settle the California question.There was a significant minority of Americans, including Lincoln, who felt the Mexican war was nothing more than a simple land grab to add land for slavery's expansion. By the end of Polk's term he had settled all three questions and decided not to run for a second term, keeping his campaign promise. Polk realized there was not much land left to conquer or to acquire, but he did offer to purchase Cuba for $100 million. He never attempted to conquer it or listen to the Democrats and take all of Mexico. The idea that the USA should have conquered more land, Canada, Cuba, and Mexico, is not something a majority of Americans would have supported.
James Polk and Teddy Roosevelt had at least one thing in common. They both understood the greatest of our nation was and understood how great our nation could be. They both set out to achieve it and for the most part both were successful at accomplishing it.
Slavery robbed our nation from achieving its true grandeur in the 1850's. Without slavery the future "filibuster" in the 1850's would have been successful gobbling up parts of Latin America. Without slavery the Democrats might have talk the nation into annexing all of Mexico after the Mexican-American war..
As I have stated repeatedly the south precious love of slavery robbed our nation the borders it should have had..
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"States Rights are about States Wrongs" - Jesse Jackson
I too pose that question: How large should the United States have been? Should the United States have annexed the whole of Mexico? Should they have fought Spain for Cuba if Spain did not accept the $100 million offered for the island? Should it really have been
54º 40” or fight if Britain did not accede to the demands of 54º 40” being the northern border of the Oregon territory?
I will once again reiterate my point that it wasn't slavery that killed manifest destiny. If America had truly tried to stretch its boundaries to the limits that it truly wanted, we would have had too much territory to cover and fought a war with Spain and a third war with Great Britain. Manifest Destiny was started with the idea to expand slavery into territory where the institution would be conducive. Hence the attempts at trying to take Cuba and territory in Central America. However, it did not gain enough support, not because slavery didn't have enough support, but because it wasn't prudent. America was still a fledgling nation, not even 75 at the time of the Mexican-American war. They did not have the ability to take on England and Spain and have even a prayer of winning. To try and hold all of Mexico was a pipe dream. Hence, they took what they could, and if something didn't seem prudent, they forgot about it. But it wasn't slavery that caused it to die out in the mid 19th century; it was prudence.
__________________ "War is, at its best, barbarism." General W.T. Sherman
"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it." General R.E. Lee
The United States of North America did not happen, but there are those who want some sort of North American Federation. Would that satisfy Manifest Destiny? I am satisfied with the USA just as it is!
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"Those who forget to remember the past are condemned to repeat it", George Santayana.
A couple versions of the origin of the term "Manifest Destiny":
In July 1845, amidst all the agitation over getting Texas into the Union, editor John L. O'Sullivan of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review wrote an editorial in which he denounced other nations who had "the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the Continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." This was probably the first use of the phrase "manifest destiny," but the idea implied in the term was current long before 1845.
"’And yet after all, unanswerable as is the demonstration of our legal title to Oregon - and the whole of Oregon, if a rood! - we have still better title than any that can ever be constructed out of all these antiquated materials of old black-letter international law. Away, away with all these cobweb tissues of rights of discovery, exploration, settlement, continuity, etc. 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.’"
It always bothers me when different sources purport to quote someone, yet the "quotes" don't match! Whatever.
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I think the concept of "Manifest Destiny" and it's collision with the issue of Slavery was first manifest (sorry) with the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
1820: Henry Clay
creates a compromise.
-Admit Missouri as a slave state, Maine as free.
-Slavery will be prohibited in all the lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase north of the southern border
of Missouri at 36 30’ latitude.
-Any slaves who escaped to the free states would be returned.
Results:
-Abolitionist societies in the North begin to grow and submit petitions:
slavery was a blot on the nation, a
violation of the spirit of Christianity, an abomination that must not spread into places it had not already ruined.
-United new states of the Northwest and New England, New York, and Pennsylvania.
-United new states of the Southwest and Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgian
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"I take it for granted that the present question is a mere preamble—a title page to a great tragic volume
."
J.Q. Adams
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Thomas Jefferson, in retirement at his Virginia home of Monticello in 1820, reacted with great concern about slavery as a political issue, when Missouri petitioned to enter the Union. Jefferson saw correctly that the Missouri Compromise would be only a temporary solution leading to future division. He expressed his concerns in a letter to his friend, John Holmes:
Monticello, April 22, 1820
I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your
constituents on the Missouri question. It is a perfect justification to them. I had for a long time
ceased to read newspapers or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good
hands…But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with
terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment.
But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence…I can say, with conscious truth, that there is not
a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in
any practicable way…[An end of slavery] would not cost me a second thought, if , in that way, a
general emancipation and expatriation [resettlement overseas] could be effected. And,
gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be.
But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears,
and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and selfpreservation
And so then as this issue temporarily put the nature of Westward expansion into question, it did have some unanticipated consecquences, among them, this, from Walter A. McDougall's Freedom Just Around the Corner:
"Did Clay('s Compromise) save the Union or condemn it to civil war? He did neither. The events of 1820 made inevitable none of the decisions or flights from decision made by Americans later. It can be said, however, Clay purchased valuable time during which the North industrialized and the Middle West matured. That meant, should civil war come, the North was far more likely to win."
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"It was a very peculiar time." - Franklin D. Cossitt
Ancestors in USA Army: 6th IA Inf, 11th IL Cav, 1st AL Cav; 122nd NY Inf; 6th MI Cav; 35th MA Inf; 100th IL Inf; 1st CO Inf/Cav; 22nd IN Inf
Please go back and read the opening post and you will see the vision that should have been our nation.
We should have been from the Ice sheets of the Arctic circle to the Jungles of Panama from sea to shining sea...and
The Home of the Brave...
Was the United States to become another Great Britain? In order for this United States of North America to happen, we would have to fight with England at least one more time to gain Canada, possible fight Spain if Cuba is to be added to the fold, possibly fight Russia for Alaska, and take over several fledgling countries in Central America which are trying to establish themselves after gaining independence.
It seems you are advocating mass expansion at a time where it would not have been feasible for a country as young as the United States to have done. The United States wasn't even a century old, and I don't think it could have survived trying to hold so much territory as you are advocating here. Whereas Britain was able to sustain its vast holdings, it was also a very well developed country, with a vast navy and army, ready to defend itself. The standing army and navy of the United States during this period was still quite small, hence the reason that the War of 1812, Mexican, and Civil War's were all fought predominantly by volunteer units from the different states. The concept of a standing army was still iffy for them. Without a strong standing army and navy, you have no prayer of holding such an expanse of territory.
__________________ "War is, at its best, barbarism." General W.T. Sherman
"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it." General R.E. Lee
Additionally, you are not talking about annexing territories which are sparcely populated by Native Americans, but areas with hundreds of thousands of contentious, rebellious peoples who would have not looked kindly to a United States hegemony.
I do not believe the peoples of Canada or Mexico or Central America would have eagerly joined the United States and, given the racial prejudices of the times (many of which hold over into today) I do not think that the US was ready to make United States citizens of millions of Spanish-speaking dark-skinned people from "south of the border").
Arguably, manifest destiny reached its logical limits. The United States had its hands full absorbing the territories it already took.
__________________ "There must be more historians of the Civil War than there were generals figthing in it... Of the two groups, the historians are the more belligerent." David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (1961)
Check out the interplay of Grant's attempt to annex/impose a protectorate over the Dominican Republic.
Manifest Destiny can, in my humble opinion, be best explained by the US acquiring, not just all the territory that it could, but also by acquiring territory that it could 'culturally stamp' as being undeniably 'American' in the future....'all Mexico' / Dominican Republic / Phillipines / Cuba were all places where it would be very difficult to accomplish this.....
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