Six years later, in 1845, O'Sullivan wrote another essay titled Annexation in the

Democratic Review,[25] in which he first used the phrase manifest destiny.[26] In

this article he urged the U.S. to annex the Republic of Texas,[27] not only because
Texas desired this, but because it was "our manifest destiny to overspread the
continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying
millions".[28] Overcoming Whig opposition, Democrats annexed Texas in 1845.
O'Sullivan's first usage of the phrase "manifest destiny" attracted little
attention.[29]

O'Sullivan's second use of the phrase became extremely influential. On December 27,
1845, in his newspaper the New York Morning News, O'Sullivan addressed the ongoing
boundary dispute with Britain. O'Sullivan argued that the United States had the
right to claim "the whole of Oregon":

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.[30]

That is, O'Sullivan believed that Providence had given the United States a mission
to spread republican democracy ("the great experiment of liberty"). Because the
British government would not spread democracy, thought O'Sullivan, British claims
to the territory should be overruled. O'Sullivan believed that manifest destiny was
a moral ideal (a "higher law") that superseded other considerations.[31]

O'Sullivan's original conception of manifest destiny was not a call for territorial
expansion by force. He believed that the expansion of the United States would
happen without the direction of the U.S. government or the involvement of the
military. After Americans immigrated to new regions, they would set up new
democratic governments, and then seek admission to the United States, as Texas had
done. In 1845, O'Sullivan predicted that California would follow this pattern next,
and that Canada would eventually request annexation as well. He disapproved of the
Mexican–American War in 1846, although he came to believe that the outcome would be
beneficial to both countries.[32]

Ironically, O'Sullivan's term became popular only after it was criticized by Whig
opponents of the Polk administration. Whigs denounced manifest destiny, arguing,
"that the designers and supporters of schemes of conquest, to be carried on by this
government, are engaged in treason to our Constitution and Declaration of Rights,
giving aid and comfort to the enemies of republicanism, in that they are advocating
and preaching the doctrine of the right of conquest".[33] On January 3, 1846,
Representative Robert Winthrop ridiculed the concept in Congress, saying "I suppose
the right of a manifest destiny to spread will not be admitted to exist in any
nation except the universal Yankee nation."[34] Winthrop was the first in a long
line of critics who suggested that advocates of manifest destiny were citing
"Divine Providence" for justification of actions that were motivated by chauvinism
and self-interest. Despite this criticism, expansionists embraced the phrase, which
caught on so quickly that its origin was soon forgotten.[citation needed]
Themes and influences
A New Map of Texas, Oregon, and California, Samuel Augustus Mitchell, 1846

Historian William E. Weeks has noted that three key themes were usually touched
upon by advocates of manifest destiny:

the virtue of the American people and their institutions;

the mission to spread these institutions, thereby redeeming and remaking the
world in the image of the United States;
the destiny under God to do this work.[35]
The origin of the first theme, later known as American exceptionalism, was often
traced to America's Puritan heritage, particularly John Winthrop's famous "City
upon a Hill" sermon of 1630, in which he called for the establishment of a virtuous
community that would be a shining example to the Old World.[36] In his influential
1776 pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine echoed this notion, arguing that the
American Revolution provided an opportunity to create a new, better society:

We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to
the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a
new world is at hand ...

Many Americans agreed with Paine, and came to believe that the United States'
virtue was a result of its special experiment in freedom and democracy. Thomas
Jefferson, in a letter to James Monroe, wrote, "it is impossible not to look
forward to distant times when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond
those limits, and cover the whole northern, if not the southern continent."[37] To
Americans in the decades that followed their proclaimed freedom for mankind,
embodied in the Declaration of Independence, could only be described as the
inauguration of "a new time scale" because the world would look back and define
history as events that took place before, and after, the Declaration of
Independence. It followed that Americans owed to the world an obligation to expand
and preserve these beliefs.[38]

The second theme's origination is less precise. A popular expression of America's

mission was elaborated by President Abraham Lincoln's description in his December
1, 1862, message to Congress. He described the United States as "the last, best
hope of Earth". The "mission" of the United States was further elaborated during
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, in which he interpreted the American Civil War as a
struggle to determine if any nation with democratic ideals could survive; this has
been called by historian Robert Johannsen "the most enduring statement of America's
Manifest Destiny and mission".[39]

The third theme can be viewed as a natural outgrowth of the belief that God had a
direct influence in the foundation and further actions of the United States.
Clinton Rossiter, a scholar, described this view as summing "that God, at the
proper stage in the march of history, called forth certain hardy souls from the old
and privilege-ridden nations ... and that in bestowing his grace He also bestowed a
peculiar responsibility". Americans presupposed that they were not only divinely
elected to maintain the North American continent, but also to "spread abroad the
fundamental principles stated in the Bill of Rights".[40] In many cases this meant
neighboring colonial holdings and countries were seen as obstacles rather than the
destiny God had provided the United States.

Faragher's analysis of the political polarization between the Democratic Party and
the Whig party is that:

Most Democrats were wholehearted supporters of expansion, whereas many Whigs

(especially in the North) were opposed. Whigs welcomed most of the changes wrought
by industrialization but advocated strong government policies that would guide
growth and development within the country's existing boundaries; they feared
(correctly) that expansion raised a contentious issue, the extension of slavery to
the territories. On the other hand, many Democrats feared industrialization the
Whigs welcomed... For many Democrats, the answer to the nation's social ills was to
continue to follow Thomas Jefferson's vision of establishing agriculture in the new
territories to counterbalance industrialization.[41]

Another possible influence is racial predominance, namely the idea that the
American Anglo-Saxon race was "separate, innately superior" and "destined to bring
good government, commercial prosperity and Christianity to the American continents
and the world". This view also held that "inferior races were doomed to subordinate
status or extinction." This was used to justify "the enslavement of the blacks and
the expulsion and possible extermination of the Indians".[42]
Alternative interpretations

With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, which doubled the size of the United States,
Thomas Jefferson set the stage for the continental expansion of the United States.
Many began to see this as the beginning of a new providential mission: If the
United States was successful as a "shining city upon a hill", people in other
countries would seek to establish their own democratic republics.[43]

However, not all Americans or their political leaders believed that the United
States was a divinely favored nation, or thought that it ought to expand. For
example, many Whigs opposed territorial expansion based on the Democratic claim
that the United States was destined to serve as a virtuous example to the rest of
the world, and also had a divine obligation to spread its superordinate political
system and a way of life throughout North American continent. Many in the Whig
party "were fearful of spreading out too widely", and they "adhered to the
concentration of national authority in a limited area".[44] In July 1848, Alexander
Stephens denounced President Polk's expansionist interpretation of America's future
as "mendacious".[45]

Ulysses S. Grant, served in the war with Mexico and later wrote:

I was bitterly opposed to the measure [to annex Texas], and to this day regard
the war [with Mexico] which resulted as one of the most unjust ever waged by a
stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the
bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to
acquire additional territory.[46]

In the mid-19th century, expansionism, especially southward toward Cuba, also faced
opposition from those Americans who were trying to abolish slavery. As more
territory was added to the United States in the following decades, "extending the
area of freedom" in the minds of southerners also meant extending the institution
of slavery. That is why slavery became one of the central issues in the continental
expansion of the United States before the Civil War.[47]

Before and during the Civil War both sides claimed that America's destiny was
rightfully their own. Lincoln opposed anti-immigrant nativism, and the imperialism
of manifest destiny as both unjust and unreasonable.[48] He objected to the Mexican
war and believed each of these disordered forms of patriotism threatened the
inseparable moral and fraternal bonds of liberty and union that he sought to
perpetuate through a patriotic love of country guided by wisdom and critical self-
awareness. Lincoln's "Eulogy to Henry Clay", June 6, 1852, provides the most cogent
expression of his reflective patriotism.[49]
Era of continental expansion
John Quincy Adams, painted above in 1816 by Charles Robert Leslie, was an early
proponent of continentalism. Late in life he came to regret his role in helping
U.S. slavery to expand, and became a leading opponent of the annexation of Texas.

The phrase "manifest destiny" is most often associated with the territorial
expansion of the United States from 1812 to 1867. This era, from the War of 1812 to
the acquisition of Alaska in 1867, has been called the "age of manifest destiny".
[50] During this time, the United States expanded to the Pacific Ocean—"from sea to
shining sea"—largely defining the borders of the continental United States as they
are today.[51]
War of 1812
Further information: War of 1812
One of the goals of the War of 1812 was to threaten to annex the British colony of
Lower Canada as a bargaining chip to force the British to abandon their
fortifications in the Northwestern United States and support for the various Native
American tribes residing there.[52][53] The result of this overoptimism was a
series of defeats in 1812 in part due to the wide use of poorly-trained state
militias rather than regular troops. However, the American victories at the Battle
of Lake Erie and the Battle of the Thames in 1813 ended the Indian raids and
removed the main reason for threatening annexation. To end the War of 1812 John
Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and Albert Gallatin (former treasury secretary and a
leading expert on Indians) and the other American diplomats negotiated the Treaty
of Ghent in 1814 with Britain. They rejected the British plan to set up an Indian
state in U.S. territory south of the Great Lakes. They explained the American
policy toward acquisition of Indian lands:

The United States, while intending never to acquire lands from the Indians
otherwise than peaceably, and with their free consent, are fully determined, in
that manner, progressively, and in proportion as their growing population may
require, to reclaim from the state of nature, and to bring into cultivation every
portion of the territory contained within their acknowledged boundaries. In thus
providing for the support of millions of civilized beings, they will not violate
any dictate of justice or of humanity; for they will not only give to the few
thousand savages scattered over that territory an ample equivalent for any right
they may surrender, but will always leave them the possession of lands more than
they can cultivate, and more than adequate to their subsistence, comfort, and
enjoyment, by cultivation. If this be a spirit of aggrandizement, the undersigned
are prepared to admit, in that sense, its existence; but they must deny that it
affords the slightest proof of an intention not to respect the boundaries between
them and European nations, or of a desire to encroach upon the territories of Great
Britain ... They will not suppose that that Government will avow, as the basis of
their policy towards the United States a system of arresting their natural growth
within their own territories, for the sake of preserving a perpetual desert for
savages.[54]

A shocked Henry Goulburn, one of the British negotiators at Ghent, remarked, after
coming to understand the American position on taking the Indians' land:

Till I came here, I had no idea of the fixed determination which there is in
the heart of every American to extirpate the Indians and appropriate their
territory.[55]

Continentalism

The 19th-century belief that the United States would eventually encompass all of
North America is known as "continentalism",[56][57] a form of tellurocracy. An
early proponent of this idea, Adams became a leading figure in U.S. expansion
between the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and the Polk administration in the 1840s. In
1811, Adams wrote to his father:

The whole continent of North America appears to be destined by Divine

Providence to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one
general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general
tenor of social usages and customs. For the common happiness of them all, for their
peace and prosperity, I believe it is indispensable that they should be associated
in one federal Union.[58]

The first Fort Laramie as it looked prior to 1840. Painting from memory by Alfred
Jacob Miller.

Adams did much to further this idea. He orchestrated the Treaty of 1818, which
established the Canada–US border as far west as the Rocky Mountains, and provided
for the joint occupation of the region known in American history as the Oregon
Country and in British and Canadian history as the New Caledonia and Columbia
Districts. He negotiated the Transcontinental Treaty in 1819, transferring Florida
from Spain to the United States and extending the U.S. border with Spanish Mexico
all the way to the Pacific Ocean. And he formulated the Monroe Doctrine of 1823,
which warned Europe that the Western Hemisphere was no longer open for European
colonization.

The Monroe Doctrine and "manifest destiny" formed a closely related nexus of
principles: historian Walter McDougall calls manifest destiny a corollary of the
Monroe Doctrine, because while the Monroe Doctrine did not specify expansion,
expansion was necessary in order to enforce the doctrine. Concerns in the United
States that European powers were seeking to acquire colonies or greater influence
in North America led to calls for expansion in order to prevent this. In his
influential 1935 study of manifest destiny, Albert Weinberg wrote: "the
expansionism of the [1830s] arose as a defensive effort to forestall the
encroachment of Europe in North America".[59]