Social Origins of Aggressive Expansionism

At the close of the 1820s, expansionism began heating up. One of the favorite metaphors of expansionists was that of territories dropping into America's lap like fruit falling from a tree.

This transformation was grounded in a host of changes. An evangelical religious movement known as the Second Great Awakening swept the nation in the 1820s and convinced Protestant Americans that God wanted them to spread the word of God's salvation. Religiously “awakened” Americans believed that the spiritual con­version of the entire nation would usher in a millennium of peace on earth. A vivid strain of anti-Catholicism had always energized Protestantism. But the Second Great Awakening exacerbated the American tendency to view the Catholic nations to the south and west of their country as a distinct challenge to their religion and security, ripe for reformation.^[2336]

A combination of economic and social transformations in the 1830s and 1840s helped propel territorial expansion to the forefront of political debate, turning a vague sense of America's mission into a politically potent ideal celebrated by poli­tician and newspaper editor alike. The rise of a market economy and beginning of industrialization in the Northeast, combined with mass immigration from Europe, led to a hardening of class divisions and decreased mobility for working men. At the same time, women began to lobby for increased rights, which further challenged traditional notions of men's and women's roles. These factors provided an ideal environment for the flowering of Manifest Destiny, an ideology that justified ex­pansionism by pointing to the supposed racial and gender superiority of American white, native-born men.^[2337]

The first clear journalistic expression of America's Manifest Destiny appeared in print in 1839.

But to many Americans, Manifest Destiny appeared as common sense. The phrase became immediately popular. In reality, there was nothing predestined about Manifest Destiny. It was a self-serving ideology that achieved a variety of purposes, few of which were noble. Land speculation had helped drive expansion since the colonial era. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, speculators bought up vast tracts of Midwestern land with the expectation that the lands would quickly increase in value. In the 1830s and 1840s, speculators set their sights fur­ther afield. Many of the most active proponents of Manifest Destiny owned foreign investments in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America, that would vastly in­crease in value under America's flag.^[2340]

Expansionism was also a winning issue with voters, particularly in the South and the trans-Appalachian West. Many residents of what were then “western” states, including Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois, were the products of a western migration from states further east. They speculated in western land, under­stood that western migration would increase the value of their property, and might move west again if conditions proved auspicious. Southern slave owners also stood to profit from the increased value of their slaves when new territories appropriate for staple-crop agriculture opened to settlement, creating yet another market for slaves.

It was no coincidence that America's “destiny” was usually commensurate with advancing American economic interests, particularly control of international trade via the valuable harbors of the Pacific and Gulf coasts. Business interests in East Coast cities embraced Manifest Destiny because they wanted access to lucrative shipping routes to Asia. Businessmen in New Orleans saw immense profit in an American Yucatan, Cuba, and Central America. Manifest Destiny papered over base instincts, casting land-hunger and greed as God's plan.^[2342]

Transformations in race relations within the United States in the 1830s were cen­tral to the intensifying drive to expand its boundaries. The last vestiges of colonial slavery did not disappear in the Northern states until the 1820s. Gradual emanci­pation in the North turned slavery into a purely sectional phenomenon, putting Southerners on the defensive about their “peculiar institution,” but also leading to social unrest north of the Mason-Dixon Line. The newly elevated status of Northern freedmen, along with the increasing size of free Black urban communities, led to an upsurge in Northern racism in the 1830s and 1840s. Working men in the North also faced competition from surging numbers of immigrants drawn to the United States by declining conditions in Europe. Between 1840 and 1860 almost four and a half million European immigrants arrived in the United States, the largest mi­gration in US history relative to the total population of the country. Many of those immigrants were Catholics from Ireland and Germany, resulting in a notable in­crease in anti-Catholicism and fears among Protestants of an attempted European- led Catholic takeover of the American political system. The working conditions of laboring men also declined with the beginnings of the industrial revolution and devaluing of many traditional artisanal skills.

All these changes left working men, who based their self-worth in their physical strength, traditional labor skills, and dominance over both women and non-white people, on the defensive. Manifest Destiny promised working men upward mobility and an escape from declining working conditions through land ownership on the frontier. In reality, few urban workers moved to the frontier. Virtually all Western settlers were farmers who had already found at least moderate success working the land. It was simply too expensive to purchase land and equipment and survive until the first harvest, for laborers or poor farmers to start a Western farm.^[2344]

Southerners were as enthusiastic about aggressive expansionism as were Northern working men. Mass immigration to the North left the South outnumbered in the House of Representatives, where representation is based on population. This wor­ried Southerners about slavery's future. After the Missouri Compromise of 1820 prohibited slavery in the territories north of the parallel 36°30' north (with the ex­ception of the new state, Missouri), Southerners began to look south for new ter­ritory. Expansion could bring new slave states into the Union, strengthening the power of the South. It also promised an opportunity for non-slave-holding white yeoman farmers, who made up the bulk of the Southern population, to gain slaves and land. This too would strengthen the institution of slavery.^[2345]

Aggressive territorial expansion offered the promise to men of asserting their martial (or military) virtues, dominating supposed racial inferiors, and—through dint of their physical strength and courage—winning fertile lands of their own, docile women, and an empire for the United States. Although there were some women who avidly supported territorial expansion, by and large Manifest Destiny was an ideology promoted by men, for men. In a period when working men, Democrats, and slave holders were quick to fight or to threaten to fight upon the slightest provocation, Manifest Destiny offered rewards. Not surprisingly, aggres­sive expansionism was supported by men who embraced physical domination by individuals and nations.^[2346]