Manifest Destiny And Westward Expansion In The Late 19th Century

Late 19th Century and early 20th Century expansionism was a clear continuation of earlier 19th century Manifest Destiny displaying the ideals of God and westward expansion, and the use of aggression. Manifest Destiny was the God-Given right for the American people to expand westward. Once we did expand to our full country today of America, our expansion was not done. It was time for America to expand out of its contiguous region and become an imperialist nation. Leaders like Josiah Strong, believed it was the God-Given right to spread the Anglo-Saxon culture, and Beveridge, believed we needed to expand our markets and for more opportunities. The U.S. acted aggressively in their years of expansion and it was key to the success of the nation

In the early 1800’s we were expanding westward towards California, Oregon, etc. In the late 1800’s we were still expanding westward, but expanding our empire to Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii. When we opened up the frontier in the late 1800s, many people traveled west for new opportunities to develop new settlement there (Document 2). There was new life in the West that people wanted to go to start over. We were destined to spread throughout the continent and dominate (Document 1). Later in time, there were disputes over the annexation of the Philippines. McKinley believed that God told him to take the Philippines and “Uplift, Civilize, and Christianize”. We were the chosen people by God in the world to dominate the West and keep expanding (Document 4). The idea of spreading westward with the influence of God was prevalent both in Manifest Destiny and

A country that wanted to expand had to be aggressive in order to achieve dominance. A clear example of this in the early 1800s was the Mexican-American War. A major cause of this war was Manifest Destiny. The United States was trying to expand and Mexico was in the way. Similar to this war was the Spanish-American War in 1898. A major cause of this was an increasing sense of jingoism in the United States. This was a very strong sense of nationalism in the U.S. that led to an aggressive foreign policy. The U.S. defeated Spain easily and conquered the lands of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. The Spanish people were eager for the U.S. to come and protect them during this war (Document 7). Later in the 1800s, the United States had developed a very powerful and efficient navy. In 1907, Teddy Roosevelt sent the Great White Fleet as an intimidation factor to other World Powers (Document 9). This was all part of Roosevelt’s Big Stick Policy. His famous saying was, “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.” There was nothing to say if other countries know that our navy is powerful (Document 6). The United States did still have some fear of European powers entering North or South America. Roosevelt developed his “Roosevelt Corollary” stating that the U.S. could intervene in Latin America if they were inviting in foreign aggression (Document 5). He was being positive and aggressive toward Latin America. He was