WEBVTT - How Did Manifest Destiny Shape America? 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:07.440 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:12.639 Stuff Lauren Bogelbaum. Here a woman in white floats above 0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:16.680 a verdant plane, her eyes turned westward, a star glowing 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:20.800 on her forehead. She's a phantasm hovering at the center 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:23.960 of the oil on canvas painting completed in eighteen seventy 0:00:23.960 --> 0:00:27.520 two by the Prussian American artist John Gast. The work 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:33.080 is called American Progress. This simple painting, less than a 0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:36.440 foot tall, is the artistic realization of a concept that's 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:38.960 been at the center of America's psyche for most of 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:43.120 its existence. It's right there in the paintings, settled but 0:00:43.280 --> 0:00:47.560 brutal allegory. The woman, a white woman with wavy golden hair, 0:00:48.080 --> 0:00:51.360 leads a group of farmers and other settlers, also all white. 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:54.600 In her left hand is a string of telegraph wire. 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:57.800 In her right, a book, A stage coach, and a 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:00.840 train also follow in her wake, and the land behind 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:04.800 her is bright and bountiful. Ahead of her, to the west, 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:08.640 dark skies and foreboding mountains await. A herd of buffalo 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:11.959 rumbles away in the distance. A wild beast, perhaps a 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:15.520 bear or badger, snarls at her as it retreats, a 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:19.160 band of Native Americans flees As she glides ever onward. 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:25.280 She is manifest destiny, a belief born in America's infancy 0:01:25.480 --> 0:01:28.240 and fully implemented with the country's drive west during the 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:33.520 eighteen hundreds. Manifest destiny was a doctrine that basically espoused 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:37.119 that the Christian God wanted European Americans to take over 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:42.480 the continent. In a single word, manifest destiny was and 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:48.840 still is trouble. The term manifest destiny sprung from the 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:52.160 fingers of a newspaper columnist and editor in eighteen forty five, 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:55.400 though the basic idea had been around from the country's 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:58.760 get go. After all, it takes a hefty dose of 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:01.600 self entitlement to claim a land as your own, even 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:05.880 though millions of people lived there already in the early 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:08.840 days of what we now know as America. What lands 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:12.160 couldn't be relatively easily taken were bought, like in the 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:15.760 Louisiana Purchase, split with others like the Oregon Country, or 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:18.160 fought over like big parts of the West in the 0:02:18.240 --> 0:02:23.120 Mexican American War of eighteen forty to eighty eight. It 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:26.400 was the latter that pushed to annex land held by 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:29.360 Mexico before it was one in the war, the prompted 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:34.280 editor John O'Sullivan to coin the term manifest destiny. He wrote, 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:38.880 it is our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:42.880 by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:49.000 But of course, the concept of manifest destiny was inextricably 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:52.040 tied into the politics of the time, which were, as 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:58.639 they are now, fueled by something decidedly unholy money. America's 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:01.639 land must was driven first and foremost by the first 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:06.480 four more wealth for its colonists, but distributing that often 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:10.320 ill gained bounty wasn't easy in a time when the 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:13.720 scourge of slavery was already beginning to rip apart the nation. 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:17.200 The issue of how to divide the newly acquired land, 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:20.320 which states to be would allow slavery and which would 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:25.320 not became a political hot button, and declaring the land 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:28.440 grabs a divine right seemed, if nothing else, a nice 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:32.440 cover story for expansionists of the time. But even more 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:37.480 than money, politics, or religion, manifest destiny demonstrated something else 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:42.640 about the mindset of many Americans. For the article, this 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:45.200 episode is based on how stuff Works spoke with Don 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:48.120 Hayter Markle, the head of the Department of Political Science 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:52.000 at the University of Kansas. He said, implied in the 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:55.640 notion of Manifest Destiny is that we know best. And 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:58.760 basically when we say we, we mean sort of Anglo 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:03.360 Saxon Protestant, otherwise known as sort of white. That's telling 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:07.200 Native Americans, that's telling Mexicans, that's telling Africans, we kidnapped, 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:11.240 it enslaved, that we are superior. Our way is superior. 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:13.880 I don't see how you can escape from the notion 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:19.120 that this is a form of white supremacy. So did 0:04:19.200 --> 0:04:24.080 people really accept this idea at the time. Certainly many 0:04:24.080 --> 0:04:27.159 people at the time believed in Manifest Destiny that God 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:30.200 wanted the newcomers to take over the continent, to work 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:33.320 the land, to bring Christianity to the Indians and Mexicans, 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:36.880 to be biblically fruitful and multiplied as a Sullivan pudd it, 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:40.280 and if God found it within his grace to grow 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:44.040 rich while doing it, expelling more than a hundred thousand 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:47.360 Native Americans from their homes in the American South, murdering 0:04:47.400 --> 0:04:50.919 thousands of others, and taking land from Mexicans, wasn't just 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:54.520 accepted as a divine American right, it was a duty. 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:59.400 But not everyone bought into the notion. Many saw the 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:03.919 idea as little more than a dodge. Housta Works also 0:05:03.960 --> 0:05:06.800 spoke with Harry Watson, a professor of Southern culture at 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:10.440 the University of North Carolina. He said there were people, 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:13.320 for example, who thought that the drive to annex Texas 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:16.080 was a ploy to gain more land to create more 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:20.000 slave states, because eastern Texas was suitable for growing cotton. 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:23.640 Even then, there were people who were bitterly opposed to 0:05:23.720 --> 0:05:27.040 slavery and desperately wanted to abolish it, and the first 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:29.960 step to abolishing it might be to prevent it from growing. 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:33.039 They did not want to admit Texas. They did not 0:05:33.120 --> 0:05:35.640 want to fight Mexico to get Texas. They did not 0:05:35.760 --> 0:05:38.920 want slavery to be allowed to spread. All of this 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:44.159 was fought out very bitterly in Congress. Still, politicians like 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:48.359 President James K. Polk founded politically and economically favorable to 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:52.279 press onward. His call to annex both Texas and Oregon, 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:55.719 which would appeal to both northern and southern political stances, 0:05:56.040 --> 0:05:58.920 helped him win the presidency in eighteen forty five over 0:05:59.000 --> 0:06:03.159 anti expansionist Henry Clay. Even though Polke's drive threatened war 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:07.840 with both Great Britain and Mexico, and despite fears from many, 0:06:08.040 --> 0:06:11.840 Polk believed that a vast nation transversing the continent would 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:15.279 be more easily defended and mightier than one concentrated on 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:19.159 the eastern seaboard. He said in his inaugural address, it 0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:22.800 is confidantly believed that our system may be safely extended 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:25.960 to the utmost bounds of our territorial limits, and that 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:28.559 as it shall be extended, the bonds of our union, 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:34.320 so far from being weakened, will become stronger. By the 0:06:34.320 --> 0:06:37.640 time Polk left office in eighteen forty nine, Manifest Destiny 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:41.279 was all but complete. Barely sixty years after the U 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:45.599 s Constitution was ratified, America stretched from sea to Shining Sea. 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:51.479 In historical terms, Manifest Destiny is defined only as the 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:54.680 doctrine that increased the United States landholdings on the North 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:59.640 American continent. The idea, though, is still reference today, though 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:03.239 it's us about expansionism and divine intervention, and more about 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:07.560 spreading the American way of life to other places. In 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:10.640 that way, Manifest Destiny is a precursor to what's now 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:15.880 termed American exceptionalism, the belief that America is uniquely exceptional 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:20.040 and that its virtues the freedom, democracy, capitalism, are worthy 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:23.600 of sharing with, or perhaps even imposing on other countries 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:29.640 and cultures. Historically, that's often meant more trouble. The Philippine 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:33.720 American War, the business led Coup of Hawaii, the Korean War, 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:38.400 the Vietnam War, the Gulf Wars, just for example. America's 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:42.840 bloody history after the country's continental expansion, which continues today 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:45.680 in places like the Middle East, shows that the idea 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:49.120 of American exceptionalism that was so evident in Manifest Destiny 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:53.880 still lives on. Watson said, I think the idea of 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:57.280 Manifest Destiny supported the idea of a global role for 0:07:57.320 --> 0:08:00.120 the United States in the twentieth century, and they there 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:03.120 is still this notion that it's not only America's right, 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:07.200 but America's obligation to extend its influence over various countries, 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:12.440 and that can work both ways or many ways. The 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:21.520 Woman in White, it seems, presses ever onward. Today's episode 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:24.240 is based on the article how Manifest Destiny stretched the 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:26.800 US from Sea to Shining Sea on House to works 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:29.840 dot Com, written by John Donovan. Brain Stuff is production 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:32.360 by Heart Radio in partnership with Houstfworks dot Com and 0:08:32.480 --> 0:08:35.319 is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:38.360 heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:40.080 wherever you listen to your favorite shows.