Manifest Destiny

Westward Expansion

From the Beginning, Americans

had been interested in westward expansion, or extending the nation beyond its existing borders.

By the 1840s, many Americans strongly favored westward expansion.

Westward Expansion

Newspaper editor John L. O’Sullivan wrote in 1845:

“The American claim is by the right of our manifest [obvious] destiny to overspread and

possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of

the great experiment of liberty and… self-government entrusted to us.”

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

The phrase Manifest Destiny quickly became popular.

Manifest Destiny

It described the belief that

the United States was destined, or meant, to extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific

“from sea to shining sea.”

Manifest Destiny