Manifest Destiny was the belief that the U.S. should expand from the East Coast to the West Coast. Through Manifest Destiny, the U.S. acquired Oregon Territory, Texas, New Mexico, and other Northwest territories. The motivation for moving west were mostly gold, land, and opportunity. A journalist named John O’Sullivan put a name to the idea that helped pull many pioneers toward the western frontier. Westward migration was an essential part of the republican project, he argued, and it was Americans’ “manifest destiny,” to carry the “great experiment of liberty” to the edge of the continent: to “overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us,” O’Sullivan wrote. The survival of American freedom depended on it as stated in the third document. The role of Manifest Destiny was to motivate settlers and make it seem like it was their “destiny” to move west and obtain more of North America’s lands. It played a big role in western …show more content…
Despite this sectional conflict, Americans kept on migrating West in the years after the Missouri Compromise was adopted. The U.S. would offer to buy lands, and if the people wouldn’t sell them, the U.S. would threaten a war. We wanted these areas for their land, fertile soil, convenient locations, and to try and spread religion. They justified war and taking lands with the idea of Manifest Destiny, as if it was granted to them by God. An example of this is the Mexican Cession. Polk offered to buy land from Mexico and they refused, so we responded with war. The war proved to be relatively unpopular, in part because many Northerners objected to what they saw as a war to expand the “slavocracy.” In the 6th document a U.S. governor was wary of this war with Mexico and how what would come after could effect out county. He wanted to “abandon all ideas of gaining further territory” and cease the senseless war. Then in 1848, the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War and added more than 1 million square miles, an area larger than the Louisiana Purchase, to the United States. The acquisition of this land re-opened the question that the Missouri Compromise had ostensibly settled: What would be the status of slavery in new American territories? Kentucky Senator Henry Clay proposed another compromise. It had four parts: first, California would enter the Union as a free state; second, the status