When studying history, you are often presented with a view of the past or an idea about why a process happened. In this article we look at the idea of ‘Manifest Destiny’ and see whether it was really a motivating factor in the settlement of the American West in the nineteenth century.
Manifest Destiny is understood to be an idea prevalent in the nineteenth century that motivated Americans to expand westwards. Manifest Destiny meant that it was the right or duty of American settlers to conquer the continent and settle its lands. The expression became commonplace from 1845 after being used by the New York Morning News columnist John O’Sullivan who stated it was ‘the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent’. He was using the term to justify the annexation of Texas and Oregon to the United States, but it has come to be seen as a motivating force for settlers across America.
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