Manifest DestinyEssential Question: Was Westward Expansion and positive or negative experience for Americans?

Why do people move?

Is it good or bad to move?

Objective: SWBAT use the concept of Manifest Destiny to explain the rationale of Federal policies towards the West.

“Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread and posses the whole of the continent which Providence [God] has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and…self-government.”

John O’ Sullivan, United States Magazine and Democratic Review. 1845

Warm-up

1) What do you see in this picture?

2) What do you think it means?

Buffalo & Indians are driven into obscurity…

“American Progress” by John Gast, 1872

Lady Liberty“Star of Empire”

Carries a schoolbook… …and

telegraph wire

…as settlers move westward

“The tools of progress”

Manifest Destiny Concept Map

Rate your current knowledge of the phrase “Manifest Destiny.”

Listen to the word, repeat the word.

Definition:Listen to the definition. State a definition in your own words. Share with a partner. Record your definition on your paper.

Write an analogy for Manifest Destiny.

Manifest DestinyDefinition - the belief that America’s destiny was to stretch across continent.

This suggested that expansion was not only good but inevitable.

Manifest Destiny became a gov’t policy under James K. Polk (11th president)

American expansionists – favored U.S. territorial growth – see Texas, New Mexico, and California as targets for American expansion

They believed that the west was unoccupied even though Native Americans and Mexican peoples lived there. Rich in resources – water and oldMexican government and economy weak after revolution and not worthy of the land that the USA “needs.”

Manifest Destiny Reading

Before: Academic Vocabulary

During:Mark your text as you read.

After: Look at the Gast painting again.Explain how the artist uses specific images to convince people to move west.

Homework

Complete Manifest Destiny Reading activity.