The Annexation Manifest Destiny

Manifest destiny. These two words were the reason America fought and defeated Mexico. These two words caused thousands of deaths, and was one of the biggest steps in making America what it is today. These two words are no longer the defining goal of America; however, that is only because this goal was accomplished in the 1840s. President Polk, a man who was elected because he swore that he would serve for only one term, managed to extend the country’s boundaries to the Pacific Ocean. This was only possible because of the Mexican - American War, which began with the annexation of Texas and ended with America emerging as the largest power on the continent and a major player in the world. The growing belief in Manifest Destiny and the annexation

This term was coined by John L O’Sullivan in 1845, and soon spread across America and was used as an argument by the expansionists of the time, who believed in manifest destiny even before the term was created. These people often believed that America was the most socially advanced country in the world, and that others such as the Native Americans and Mexicans were all inferior. Some of these people further justified manifest destiny by pretending that they wanted to help these “backward cultures” or “savages” become civilized, like the Americans. “However, Manifest Destiny was primarily a justification for satisfying the United States’ lust for land” (Moriarty, 5). This new land was acquired with four different methods: war, purchase, appropriation, and diplomacy. Manifest destiny was not just a concept bandied around by politicians seeking power; it was an idea that attracted many Americans and “the phrase evoked a sense of national uniqueness and superiority known as American exceptionalism” (Stansbury, “Manifest Destiny”). Many Americans thought that they were the most advanced nation in the world as they were both stable and had a democracy. This call to colonize all of the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific resonated deeply in the hearts of many otherwise average Americans. It “inspired

immigrants to settle in its northern state of Texas, yet many of those settlers refused to comply with the Mexican laws that they had promised to obey” (Crawford, “Mexican - American War”). The most important three of those laws were: become a Mexican citizen, convert to Catholicism, and an immigrant could only own the land after seven years of farming it. These Texans also traded with America and did not contribute much to the Mexican economy. The Mexican government had just finished subduing several other rebellions in the country and so decided to preemptively send soldiers to Texas in an attempt to enforce the law. However, just like the Americans in the 1760s and early 1770s, the Texans viewed the arrival of these soldiers as an invasion force. The stationing of these soldiers “invariably lead to confrontations between Mexican forces intent on upholding the honor of the republic of Mexico and Anglo-Texans who saw such garrisons as an alien occupying force” (Rohrbough, “Texas Revolution”). Much of the war was fought before Texas formally declared independence on March 2, 1836, but the battle that ended the war was in April of that year - the battle of San Jacinto ended, and the Republic of Texas was established. The Republic of Texas only lasted from 1836 - 1845, but in those years, its goal was to be “a unique experiment in creating a multiethnic state in the New World” (Powell, “Republic of Texas”). During the