Manifest Destiny: The Moral Reasoning for Economically and Politically Driven Westward Expansion

A lofty slogan, particularly the one that emphasizes the moral superiority and general goodness of a promoted action, is an important part of any campaign, and it is particularly applicable in a democratic society such as the United States, where policy cannot be implemented without the consent of the majority of the voting public. Without John O'Sullivan's creation of the Manifest Destiny slogan, the westward expansion of the U.S. still would have occurred, but it probably would have been accompanied with more moral qualms and opposition based on them. The inevitability of this expansion, even without the moral justification for it, can be seen in the economic and political environment in the U.S. during the first half of the nineteenth century, specifically the increased emphasis on self-reliance, the popular drive to obtain individual property and achieve individual prosperity, and tensions over slavery that drove legislators from both the North and South to increase the representation of their views in Congress through the increase in the number of senators and representatives by way of new states of the Union.

One proof that the American expansion would have taken place regardless of the slogans accompanying it was the fact that Thomas Jefferson outlined the need and the way for such a movement in his address to Congress 41 years prior to the term Manifest Destiny being coined (Richardson, 1908). This stance was mostly economically driven, but at its base was the distinctly American sociopolitical idea of individual sovereignty and self-reliance: the government feared that, as the number of Americans multiplied and competition for the nation's resources became more severe, the conditions in a geographically limited U.S. would result in the creation of a large number of destitute people, no longer in control of their own productive destiny and instead relying on charity or, worse yet, governmental handouts to survive (Foner, 1998). In the west lay the opportunity for many individuals to finally acquire property, for manufacturers in the eastern states to acquire new markets for their products, and for politicians to relieve the population pressure in the east due to increased immigration. In addition, the need to create better communication and transportation infrastructure between increasingly distant points of the nation created an opportunity for further technological and industrial development, such as the railroad and the telegraph.

The fact that Northern and Southern legislators saw the westward expansion as the way to push their respective sociopolitical agendas is clearly represented by the congressional crisis in 1850 over the admission of the newly acquired western territories into the Union. The brokered deal that expanded the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to the new territories emphasized the strong division between Free and Slave states of the union (Henretta, Brody, & Dumenil, 2006). As the new territories were admitted to statehood, their legislative representatives entered both chambers of Congress, and it was vitally important for both the Northern and Southern representatives to ensure that the new additions joined their cause and thus increased their voting strength in either the Senate or the House of Representatives.

References:
Eric Foner. The Story of American Freedom. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998).
James A. Henretta, David Brody, and Lynn Dumenil. America: A Concise History. (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006).
Thomas Jefferson. "Message to Congress." In James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1908), pp. 352-353.