- Term
Manifest Destiny
- Qualifier
Encounters exhibition
- Remarks
Manifest Destiny, a term used by leaders and politicians in the 1840s to explain continental expansion by the United States, revitalized a sense of mission or national destiny for Americans. Expansionists argued that all lands of North America, including the American West, the area west of the Mississippi River, rightly belonged to the United States. The triumph of liberty was inevitable and foreordained by God. Not all Americans agreed, but by the end of the decade, the United States had swallowed up Texas, northern Mexico, and Oregon. These additions quickly became part of the political struggle in the United States: decisions involving whether these lands should allow slavery or not eventually tore the Union apart and led to the Civil War.