believed that the U.S., as a
more advanced culture, had a God-given right to expand its borders.
Such expansion would have a civilizing influence in the west, they
argued. Many asserted in particular that such expansion benefited
Indians and people in newly acquired territories by spreading American
democratic, cultural and religious values and institutions.
Others argued that the territorial expansion that Manifest Destiny
entailed strengthened the foundations of the new union, making it
invulnerable. In addition, they said, expansion into new territories
was necessary to accommodate a dramatic increase in U.S. population.
Opponents of Manifest Destiny,
on the other hand, argued that a just God would not grant a right to
American expansion at the price of the rights and lives of tens of
thousands of innocent native people. They protested that the idea of "Manifest Destiny"
was extremely dangerous since it gave the U.S. an excuse to commit
barbarous acts at will. When expansion led to war, opponents became
even more vocal.
Other critics argued that the
Constitution did not give the country the right to acquire new lands.
They also warned of the dangers of expansion under Manifest Destiny: that the country's vital institutions would suffer as the country spread itself too thin. Abolitionists also criticized Manifest Destiny because they believed it would increase the possibility of the spread of slavery.
When the Constitution was adopted in 1787, the nation consisted of 13
colonies located in the East. In 1803, the country's landmass nearly
doubled when the U.S. bought two million square miles of land from
France in the Louisiana Purchase. The purchase extended the U.S. from
the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of
Mexico to the Canadian border. The following year, President Thomas
Jefferson (D, 1801-09) commissioned Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
to explore the territory, and accounts of their exploration began to
enthrall much of the country.
Many Americans were happy with the land purchase, but some doubted
whether the president had a constitutional right to acquire new
territory, because the Constitution did not specifically list that as a
federal function. And debate soon arose over which parts of the new
lands would become free states and which would become slave states. At
the time, there were 11 free states and 11 slave states. A swing either
way would give the North or the South an advantage in congressional
representation. Congress's solution was the 1820 Missouri Compromise,
which admitted Missouri as a slave state, and Maine as free, while
barring slavery "forever" in the Louisiana territory north of latitude
36° 30'. [See Missouri Compromise (sidebar)]
A sense of national destiny
or purpose had been part of the country's consciousness since its early
days. In 1783, future President George Washington (Federalist, 1789-97)
called the country a "rising empire." President James Madison
(Democratic-Republican, 1809-17) spoke of "one great, respectable, and
flourishing empire." But the word "empire" at that time probably meant
something like "sovereign nation" rather than, say, "nation having
dominion over far-flung lands and peoples," as it later came to mean.
Jefferson believed that European settlers would eventually people the
continent across to the Pacific, although he believed that the
territory along the Pacific coast would be "a great, free and
independent empire" populated by Americans "unconnected with us but by
the ties of blood and interest."
A landmark statement of
policy proclaimed in 1823 by President James Monroe
(Democratic-Republican, 1817-25) later became a rallying point for Manifest Destiny.
The so-called Monroe Doctrine stated that the U.S. would not tolerate
any new intervention by a European colonial power in the Americas. The
policy put on record that the U.S. believed itself the dominant power
in the hemisphere. In subsequent decades, many U.S. presidents would
take the Monroe Doctrine to heart.
As settlers sought to expand their holdings, they increasingly cam