ad always
detested among the European powers.
Tensions between the U.S. and Mexico over Texas reached a breaking
point the following year. As hostilities led to combat, Polk said,
"After reiterated menaces, Mexico has passed the boundary of the United
States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the
American Soil. She has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced, and
that the two nations are at war." [See Mexican-American War]
The war would last two years. When peace was negotiated, the defeated
Mexican government had little choice but to cede nearly half of its
northern territories (500,000 square miles) to the U.S. Under the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Rio Grande was fixed as the southern
boundary of Texas. The U.S., in return for $15 million, acquired
territory that today includes the states of California, Arizona, New
Mexico, Nevada, and Utah as well as parts of Colorado and Wyoming. In
fact, critics of the war claimed that Polk intentionally provoked the
war with Mexico in order to win California.
Following the conclusion of the war with Mexico, attention turned
southward. Polk sought to purchase Cuba from its Spanish colonizers,
but Spain refused to sell the island. Attention turned to Cuba again
during the presidency of Franklin Pierce (D, 1853-57). In 1854 three
American diplomats, Buchanan (ambassador to Britain at the time),
Pierre Soulé (ambassador to Spain), and John Mason (ambassador to
France) met in Ostend, Belgium; seeking to convince Spain that it
needed to sell Cuba to the U.S. or risk a war in which it would lose
Cuba by force.
The diplomats were speaking on behalf of southern slave holders who had
wanted the U.S. to acquire the island and continue the practice of
slavery on it. The time was urgent, slavery advocates believed, because
Spain was considering emancipating all Cuban slaves because of recent
slave rebellions in various Caribbean islands, including Haiti.
However, the diplomatic mission to Spain had not been approved by
Pierce, and he immediately renounced it. Public reaction to the affair,
both at home and abroad, was exceedingly negative.
The beginning of the Civil War put a damper on Manifest Destiny
desires, but they would resurface later in the century with regard to
expansion to the Caribbean. In 1898, the U.S. finally succeeded in
wresting Cuba from Spain in the Spanish American War. However, as
during the 1830s and 1840s, the benefits and drawbacks of expansion
were hotly debated. [See Spanish-American War]
Supporters of Manifest Destiny were motivated by two beliefs: the nation's God-given destiny
to expand its civilizing influence across the continent and the
practical need to expand the nation's borders. Most advocates of Manifest Destiny
believed that American society, being predominantly white northern
European, or "Anglo-Saxon," and Christian, was more advanced and
enlightened than other cultures. American novelist Herman Melville
summed up that belief when he stated, "We Americans are the chosen
people—the Israel of our time."
Adherents to the ideal of Manifest Destiny
asserted that, as the chosen nation, the U.S. had an obligation to
mankind to expand its reach and spread its culture, bringing God,
technology and civilization to the west. O'Sullivan had elaborated on
that idea in an 1839 article: [See John O'Sullivan on Manifest Destiny (Excerpts) (primary document)]
far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of American
greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of
many nations is destined to manifest to
mankind the excellence of divine principles; to establish on earth the
noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High—the
Sacred and the True. Its floor shall be a hemisphere—its roof the
firmament of the star-studded heavens....
Others stressed a more practical need for expansion. The U.S. was
experiencing a big growth in population, they said, and the U.S. needed
to expand to accommodate those people. Furthermore, they contended,
expansion would make the new nation more secure. Many agreed with
author 