wk 13 ; manifest destiny

Manifest destiny was a term used to support the annexation of Texas. It was also used to justify and promote the Americans to settle on European and Indian land that was in the West and in the Great Plains. John l O’Sullivan sees a very clear connection between both manifest destiny and American freedom. He believes that the ultimate freedom for the Americans would be to take over the land to the West of them in California. One specific example of O’Sullivan’s views would be with Mexico. He believed that Mexico would be much better off governed by the Americans and become a part of the U.S. rather than stay its own country and also believed that “race” was the key to the “history of nations” (liberty 471). His ideas lead to continued conflict because some of the Southern states were still proslavery and the Americans wanted either proslavery or no slavery at all. Both the North and the South continued to conflict as the expansion of manifest destiny kept growing because it sparked the beginning of the Civil War. As the Southern states still expressed their proslavery views, the states in the West such as California did not support it. Manifest destiny was about the Americans “freedom” and both the North and South had different views of it, which eventually ended up being a battle between the two due to no compromise being made and congress trying to please both sides of the country.