Others talked of spreading the American ethic of hard work and economic progress. Still others imagined a United States with Pacific ports that could open Asian markets. Before long, some were imagining a North America without what they considered the savagery of Native Americans, the laziness and political instability of Mexicans, or the corrupt and dying monarchism of the British. God, they said, clearly wanted hard-working American republicans to occupy North America. In 1845 a New York City journalist named John L. O'Sullivan gave these ideas a name: Manifest Destiny. It is, he wrote, our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. The new Republic of Texas asked to be annexed to the United States as early as 1837. The governments of Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren took no action for two reasons. First, the question of Texas annexation divided the North and South. Up to the 1840s, trans-Mississippi expansion had extended Southern society: Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri were all slave states.
Texas would be another, and Northerners who disliked slavery and Southern political power imagined that the Texas territory could become as many as 11 new slave states with 22 new proslavery senators. Annexation of Texas was certain to arouse Northern and antislavery opposition. President John Tyler, who supported the South, tried to annex Texas in 1844 but was defeated by congressional Northerners and by some Southern members of the anti-Jacksonian Whig Party. The second reason for avoiding annexation was that Mexico still considered Texas its own territory. Annexation would create a diplomatic crisis, and perhaps lead to war. In the presidential election of 1844 the Whig Party nominated Henry Clay of Kentucky. Clay refused to take a stand on the annexation of Texas. The Democrats rejected former president Martin Van Buren, who opposed annexation, and nominated James K. Polk of Tennessee. Polk ran on a pro-annexation platform: He would annex Texas, and he would assert American ownership of all of Oregon's territory disputed with Britain. Polk's position on Oregon was intended to reassure Northerners that expansion would benefit them as well as the South. This position on Oregon was, however, a radical change from earlier policies. Previously, Americans had not claimed land north of the 49th parallel, the present-day United States-Canada border on the Pacific. Polk claimed all the land up to 54°40'N, the present southern boundary of Alaska, which at the time was owned by Russia.
attention battle continent
demands faced home
materials message opposition
roads southern train
x box