Manifest Destiny: Difference between revisions

{{tropeUseful Notes}}

[['''Manifest Destiny]]''' was a theory and a movement in the 1800s and 1900s in America. It can be summed up as the idea that the United States of America was fated to extend from one coast to another, eventually to encompass the entirety of North America, an idea that helped fuel westward expansion. This is the secular version. A more complete story accounts for the fact that most of America was Christian at the time, and the theory of [['''Manifest Destiny]]''' held that not only was it fate that America stretch from coast to coast, it was considered [[Mission Fromfrom God|only right and good by God himself]] and [[Utopia Justifies the Means|any means necessary were to be used to make it so]]. They were.

Though it sounded like a good idea at a time, the fact of the matter is that most of America way back when wasn't owned by the United States. America acquired it through various means, some of which have drawn criticism from later generations, such as [[Mexican-American War|the conquest of two thirds of Mexico]] and the ignoble expulsion of the native tribes from [[Injun Country|their lands]] and onto [[The Rez|reservations]]. Even at the time, the idea was criticized by the [[Someone Elses Problem|more isolationist]] parts of the country as imperialistic. Among supporters, the ''direction'' of expansion, [[Canada, Eh?|north]] or [[South of the Border]], was subject to fierce debate. Northerners and abolitionists were afraid that a sea of new slave states would be carved out of the former Mexican territories, and thus demanded [[The Other Rainforest|the Oregon country]] to make up for it. Arguments over which of the new territories would enter the Union as slave states and which would enter as free states were a major part of the growing North/South divide that led to [[The American Civil War|the Civil War]].

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