Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Bogelbaum. Here a woman in white floats above
Speaker 1: a verdant plane, her eyes turned westward, a star glowing
Speaker 1: on her forehead. She's a phantasm hovering at the center
Speaker 1: of the oil on canvas painting completed in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: two by the Prussian American artist John Gast. The work
Speaker 1: is called American Progress. This simple painting, less than a
Speaker 1: foot tall, is the artistic realization of a concept that's
Speaker 1: been at the center of America's psyche for most of
Speaker 1: its existence. It's right there in the paintings, settled but
Speaker 1: brutal allegory. The woman, a white woman with wavy golden hair,
Speaker 1: leads a group of farmers and other settlers, also all white.
Speaker 1: In her left hand is a string of telegraph wire.
Speaker 1: In her right, a book, A stage coach, and a
Speaker 1: train also follow in her wake, and the land behind
Speaker 1: her is bright and bountiful. Ahead of her, to the west,
Speaker 1: dark skies and foreboding mountains await. A herd of buffalo
Speaker 1: rumbles away in the distance. A wild beast, perhaps a
Speaker 1: bear or badger, snarls at her as it retreats, a
Speaker 1: band of Native Americans flees As she glides ever onward.
Speaker 1: She is manifest destiny, a belief born in America's infancy
Speaker 1: and fully implemented with the country's drive west during the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. Manifest destiny was a doctrine that basically espoused
Speaker 1: that the Christian God wanted European Americans to take over
Speaker 1: the continent. In a single word, manifest destiny was and
Speaker 1: still is trouble. The term manifest destiny sprung from the
Speaker 1: fingers of a newspaper columnist and editor in eighteen forty five,
Speaker 1: though the basic idea had been around from the country's
Speaker 1: get go. After all, it takes a hefty dose of
Speaker 1: self entitlement to claim a land as your own, even
Speaker 1: though millions of people lived there already in the early
Speaker 1: days of what we now know as America. What lands
Speaker 1: couldn't be relatively easily taken were bought, like in the
Speaker 1: Louisiana Purchase, split with others like the Oregon Country, or
Speaker 1: fought over like big parts of the West in the
Speaker 1: Mexican American War of eighteen forty to eighty eight. It
Speaker 1: was the latter that pushed to annex land held by
Speaker 1: Mexico before it was one in the war, the prompted
Speaker 1: editor John O'Sullivan to coin the term manifest destiny. He wrote,
Speaker 1: it is our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted
Speaker 1: by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.
Speaker 1: But of course, the concept of manifest destiny was inextricably
Speaker 1: tied into the politics of the time, which were, as
Speaker 1: they are now, fueled by something decidedly unholy money. America's
Speaker 1: land must was driven first and foremost by the first
Speaker 1: four more wealth for its colonists, but distributing that often
Speaker 1: ill gained bounty wasn't easy in a time when the
Speaker 1: scourge of slavery was already beginning to rip apart the nation.
Speaker 1: The issue of how to divide the newly acquired land,
Speaker 1: which states to be would allow slavery and which would
Speaker 1: not became a political hot button, and declaring the land
Speaker 1: grabs a divine right seemed, if nothing else, a nice
Speaker 1: cover story for expansionists of the time. But even more
Speaker 1: than money, politics, or religion, manifest destiny demonstrated something else
Speaker 1: about the mindset of many Americans. For the article, this
Speaker 1: episode is based on how stuff Works spoke with Don
Speaker 1: Hayter Markle, the head of the Department of Political Science
Speaker 1: at the University of Kansas. He said, implied in the
Speaker 1: notion of Manifest Destiny is that we know best. And
Speaker 1: basically when we say we, we mean sort of Anglo
Speaker 1: Saxon Protestant, otherwise known as sort of white. That's telling
Speaker 1: Native Americans, that's telling Mexicans, that's telling Africans, we kidnapped,
Speaker 1: it enslaved, that we are superior. Our way is superior.
Speaker 1: I don't see how you can escape from the notion
Speaker 1: that this is a form of white supremacy. So did
Speaker 1: people really accept this idea at the time. Certainly many
Speaker 1: people at the time believed in Manifest Destiny that God
Speaker 1: wanted the newcomers to take over the continent, to work
Speaker 1: the land, to bring Christianity to the Indians and Mexicans,
Speaker 1: to be biblically fruitful and multiplied as a Sullivan pudd it,
Speaker 1: and if God found it within his grace to grow
Speaker 1: rich while doing it, expelling more than a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: Native Americans from their homes in the American South, murdering
Speaker 1: thousands of others, and taking land from Mexicans, wasn't just
Speaker 1: accepted as a divine American right, it was a duty.
Speaker 1: But not everyone bought into the notion. Many saw the
Speaker 1: idea as little more than a dodge. Housta Works also
Speaker 1: spoke with Harry Watson, a professor of Southern culture at
Speaker 1: the University of North Carolina. He said there were people,
Speaker 1: for example, who thought that the drive to annex Texas
Speaker 1: was a ploy to gain more land to create more
Speaker 1: slave states, because eastern Texas was suitable for growing cotton.
Speaker 1: Even then, there were people who were bitterly opposed to
Speaker 1: slavery and desperately wanted to abolish it, and the first
Speaker 1: step to abolishing it might be to prevent it from growing.
Speaker 1: They did not want to admit Texas. They did not
Speaker 1: want to fight Mexico to get Texas. They did not
Speaker 1: want slavery to be allowed to spread. All of this
Speaker 1: was fought out very bitterly in Congress. Still, politicians like
Speaker 1: President James K. Polk founded politically and economically favorable to
Speaker 1: press onward. His call to annex both Texas and Oregon,
Speaker 1: which would appeal to both northern and southern political stances,
Speaker 1: helped him win the presidency in eighteen forty five over
Speaker 1: anti expansionist Henry Clay. Even though Polke's drive threatened war
Speaker 1: with both Great Britain and Mexico, and despite fears from many,
Speaker 1: Polk believed that a vast nation transversing the continent would
Speaker 1: be more easily defended and mightier than one concentrated on
Speaker 1: the eastern seaboard. He said in his inaugural address, it
Speaker 1: is confidantly believed that our system may be safely extended
Speaker 1: to the utmost bounds of our territorial limits, and that
Speaker 1: as it shall be extended, the bonds of our union,
Speaker 1: so far from being weakened, will become stronger. By the
Speaker 1: time Polk left office in eighteen forty nine, Manifest Destiny
Speaker 1: was all but complete. Barely sixty years after the U
Speaker 1: s Constitution was ratified, America stretched from sea to Shining Sea.
Speaker 1: In historical terms, Manifest Destiny is defined only as the
Speaker 1: doctrine that increased the United States landholdings on the North
Speaker 1: American continent. The idea, though, is still reference today, though
Speaker 1: it's us about expansionism and divine intervention, and more about
Speaker 1: spreading the American way of life to other places. In
Speaker 1: that way, Manifest Destiny is a precursor to what's now
Speaker 1: termed American exceptionalism, the belief that America is uniquely exceptional
Speaker 1: and that its virtues the freedom, democracy, capitalism, are worthy
Speaker 1: of sharing with, or perhaps even imposing on other countries
Speaker 1: and cultures. Historically, that's often meant more trouble. The Philippine
Speaker 1: American War, the business led Coup of Hawaii, the Korean War,
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War, the Gulf Wars, just for example. America's
Speaker 1: bloody history after the country's continental expansion, which continues today
Speaker 1: in places like the Middle East, shows that the idea
Speaker 1: of American exceptionalism that was so evident in Manifest Destiny
Speaker 1: still lives on. Watson said, I think the idea of
Speaker 1: Manifest Destiny supported the idea of a global role for
Speaker 1: the United States in the twentieth century, and they there
Speaker 1: is still this notion that it's not only America's right,
Speaker 1: but America's obligation to extend its influence over various countries,
Speaker 1: and that can work both ways or many ways. The
Speaker 1: Woman in White, it seems, presses ever onward. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article how Manifest Destiny stretched the
Speaker 1: US from Sea to Shining Sea on House to works
Speaker 1: dot Com, written by John Donovan. Brain Stuff is production
Speaker 1: by Heart Radio in partnership with Houstfworks dot Com and
Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my
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