- History Classics
- Your Profile
- Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
- Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
- Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
- Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
- Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
- This Day In History
- History Podcasts
- History Vault
Westward Expansion
By: History.com Editors
Updated: September 30, 2019 | Original: December 15, 2009
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson purchased the territory of Louisiana from the French government for $15 million. The Louisiana Purchase stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to New Orleans, and it doubled the size of the United States. To Jefferson, westward expansion was the key to the nation’s health: He believed that a republic depended on an independent, virtuous citizenry for its survival, and that independence and virtue went hand in hand with land ownership, especially the ownership of small farms. (“Those who labor in the earth,” he wrote, “are the chosen people of God.”) In order to provide enough land to sustain this ideal population of virtuous yeomen, the United States would have to continue to expand. The westward expansion of the United States is one of the defining themes of 19th-century American history, but it is not just the story of Jefferson’s expanding “empire of liberty.” On the contrary, as one historian writes, in the six decades after the Louisiana Purchase, westward expansion “very nearly destroy[ed] the republic.”
Manifest Destiny
By 1840, nearly 7 million Americans–40 percent of the nation’s population–lived in the trans-Appalachian West. Following a trail blazed by Lewis and Clark , most of these people had left their homes in the East in search of economic opportunity. Like Thomas Jefferson , many of these pioneers associated westward migration, land ownership and farming with freedom. In Europe, large numbers of factory workers formed a dependent and seemingly permanent working class; by contrast, in the United States, the western frontier offered the possibility of independence and upward mobility for all. In 1843, one thousand pioneers took to the Oregon Trail as part of the “ Great Emigration .”
Did you know? In 1853, the Gadsden Purchase added about 30,000 square miles of Mexican territory to the United States and fixed the boundaries of the “lower 48” where they are today.
In 1845, 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 [land] which Providence has given us,” O’Sullivan wrote. The survival of American freedom depended on it.
Westward Expansion and Slavery
Meanwhile, the question of whether or not slavery would be allowed in the new western states shadowed every conversation about the frontier. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise had attempted to resolve this question: It had admitted Missouri to the union as a slave state and Maine as a free state, preserving the fragile balance in Congress. More important, it had stipulated that in the future, slavery would be prohibited north of the southern boundary of Missouri (the 36º30’ parallel) in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase .
However, the Missouri Compromise did not apply to new territories that were not part of the Louisiana Purchase, and so the issue of slavery continued to fester as the nation expanded. The Southern economy grew increasingly dependent on “King Cotton” and the system of forced labor that sustained it. Meanwhile, more and more Northerners came to believed that the expansion of slavery impinged upon their own liberty, both as citizens–the pro-slavery majority in Congress did not seem to represent their interests–and as yeoman farmers. They did not necessarily object to slavery itself, but they resented the way its expansion seemed to interfere with their own economic opportunity.
Westward Expansion and the Mexican War
Despite this sectional conflict, Americans kept on migrating West in the years after the Missouri Compromise was adopted. Thousands of people crossed the Rockies to the Oregon Territory, which belonged to Great Britain, and thousands more moved into the Mexican territories of California , New Mexico and Texas . In 1837, American settlers in Texas joined with their Tejano neighbors (Texans of Spanish origin) and won independence from Mexico. They petitioned to join the United States as a slave state.
This promised to upset the careful balance that the Missouri Compromise had achieved, and the annexation of Texas and other Mexican territories did not become a political priority until the enthusiastically expansionist cotton planter James K. Polk was elected to the presidency in 1844. Thanks to the maneuvering of Polk and his allies, Texas joined the union as a slave state in February 1846; in June, after negotiations with Great Britain, Oregon joined as a free state.
That same month, Polk declared war against Mexico , claiming (falsely) that the Mexican army had “invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil.” The Mexican-American War proved to be relatively unpopular, in part because many Northerners objected to what they saw as a war to expand the “slaveocracy.” In 1846, Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot attached a proviso to a war-appropriations bill declaring that slavery should not be permitted in any part of the Mexican territory that the U.S. might acquire. Wilmot’s measure failed to pass, but it made explicit once again the sectional conflict that haunted the process of westward expansion.
Westward Expansion and the Compromise of 1850
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? After two years of increasingly volatile debate over the issue, Kentucky Senator Henry Clay proposed another compromise. It had four parts: first, California would enter the Union as a free state; second, the status of slavery in the rest of the Mexican territory would be decided by the people who lived there; third, the slave trade (but not slavery) would be abolished in Washington , D.C.; and fourth, a new Fugitive Slave Act would enable Southerners to reclaim runaway slaves who had escaped to Northern states where slavery was not allowed.
Bleeding Kansas
But the larger question remained unanswered. In 1854, Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas proposed that two new states, Kansas and Nebraska , be established in the Louisiana Purchase west of Iowa and Missouri. According to the terms of the Missouri Compromise, both new states would prohibit slavery because both were north of the 36º30’ parallel. However, since no Southern legislator would approve a plan that would give more power to “free-soil” Northerners, Douglas came up with a middle ground that he called “popular sovereignty”: letting the settlers of the territories decide for themselves whether their states would be slave or free.
Northerners were outraged: Douglas, in their view, had caved to the demands of the “slaveocracy” at their expense. The battle for Kansas and Nebraska became a battle for the soul of the nation. Emigrants from Northern and Southern states tried to influence the vote. For example, thousands of Missourians flooded into Kansas in 1854 and 1855 to vote (fraudulently) in favor of slavery. “Free-soil” settlers established a rival government, and soon Kansas spiraled into civil war. Hundreds of people died in the fighting that ensued, known as “ Bleeding Kansas .”
A decade later, the civil war in Kansas over the expansion of slavery was followed by a national civil war over the same issue. As Thomas Jefferson had predicted, it was the question of slavery in the West–a place that seemed to be the emblem of American freedom–that proved to be “the knell of the union.”
Access hundreds of hours of historical video, commercial free, with HISTORY Vault . Start your free trial today.
Sign up for Inside History
Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.
By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.
More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us
- History & Society
- Science & Tech
- Biographies
- Animals & Nature
- Geography & Travel
- Arts & Culture
- Games & Quizzes
- On This Day
- One Good Fact
- New Articles
- Lifestyles & Social Issues
- Philosophy & Religion
- Politics, Law & Government
- World History
- Health & Medicine
- Browse Biographies
- Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
- Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
- Environment
- Fossils & Geologic Time
- Entertainment & Pop Culture
- Sports & Recreation
- Visual Arts
- Demystified
- Image Galleries
- Infographics
- Top Questions
- Britannica Kids
- Saving Earth
- Space Next 50
- Student Center
- Introduction & Top Questions
Origin of the term
A history of expansion.
- The end of Manifest Destiny
- The New Manifest Destiny
- Conflicting interpretations
What was Manifest Destiny?
When was the term manifest destiny coined, how did manifest destiny lead to the growth of the west.
Manifest Destiny
Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
- HistoryNet - Manifest Destiny
- Academia - Manifest Destiny
- National Humanities Center - TeacherServe - The Religious Origins of Manifest Destiny
- American History Central - Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion
- Humanities LibreTexts - Manifest Destiny
- The Canadian Encyclopedia - Manifest Destiny
- UShistory.org - Manifest Destiny
- Manifest Destiny - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
- Manifest Destiny - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
- Table Of Contents
Propounded during the second half of the 19th century, the concept of Manifest Destiny held that it was the divinely ordained right of the United States to expand its borders to the Pacific Ocean and beyond. Before the American Civil War the idea of Manifest Destiny was used to validate continental acquisitions in the Oregon Country, Texas , New Mexico , and California . Later it was used to justify the purchase of Alaska and annexation of Hawaii .
The term Manifest Destiny was coined in the July–August 1845 issue of The United States Magazine, and Democratic Review by its editor, John L. O’Sullivan. He expanded the idea in the New York Morning News in December, invoking “the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.”
The idea of Manifest Destiny arose in response to the prospect of U.S. annexation of Texas and to a dispute with Britain over the Oregon Country, which became part of the union. With its triumph in the Mexican-American War , the United States seemingly realized its Manifest Destiny by gaining an immense domain (more than 525,000 square miles [1,360,000 square km] of land), including present-day Arizona , California , western Colorado , Nevada , New Mexico , Texas, and Utah .
Manifest Destiny , in U.S. history, the supposed inevitability of the continued territorial expansion of the boundaries of the United States westward to the Pacific and beyond. Before the American Civil War (1861–65), the idea of Manifest Destiny was used to validate continental acquisitions in the Oregon Country, Texas , New Mexico , and California . The purchase of Alaska after the Civil War briefly revived the concept of Manifest Destiny, but it most evidently became a renewed force in U.S. foreign policy in the 1890s, when the country went to war with Spain , annexed Hawaii , and laid plans for an isthmian canal across Central America .
John L. O’Sullivan , the editor of a magazine that served as an organ for the Democratic Party and of a partisan newspaper, first wrote of “manifest destiny” in 1845, but at the time he did not think the words profound. Rather than being “coined,” the phrase was buried halfway through the third paragraph of a long essay in the July–August issue of The United States Magazine, and Democratic Review on the necessity of annexing Texas and the inevitability of American expansion. O’Sullivan was protesting European meddling in American affairs, especially by France and England , which he said were acting
for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.
O’Sullivan’s observation was a complaint rather than a call for aggression, and he referred to demography rather than pugnacity as the solution to the perceived problem of European interference. Yet when he expanded his idea on December 27, 1845, in a newspaper column in the New York Morning News , the wider audience seized upon his reference to divine superintendence. Discussing the dispute with Great Britain over the Oregon Country, O’Sullivan again cited the claim to
the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.
Some found the opinion intriguing, but others were simply irritated. The Whig Party sought to discredit Manifest Destiny as belligerent as well as pompous, beginning with Massachusetts Rep. Robert Winthrop’s using the term to mock Pres. James K. Polk ’s policy toward Oregon.
Yet unabashed Democrats took up Manifest Destiny as a slogan. The phrase frequently appeared in debates relating to Oregon , sometimes as soaring rhetoric and other times as sarcastic derision . As an example of the latter, on February 6, 1846, the New-Hampshire Statesman and State Journal , a Whig newspaper, described “some windy orator in the House [of Representatives]” as “pouring for his ‘manifest destiny’ harangue.”
Over the years, O’Sullivan’s role in creating the phrase was forgotten, and he died in obscurity some 50 years after having first used the term “manifest destiny.” In an essay in The American Historical Review in 1927, historian Julius W. Pratt identified O’Sullivan as the phrase’s originator, a conclusion that became universally accepted.
Despite disagreements about Manifest Destiny’s validity at the time, O’Sullivan had stumbled on a broadly held national sentiment . Although it became a rallying cry as well as a rationale for the foreign policy that reached its culmination in 1845–46, the attitude behind Manifest Destiny had long been a part of the American experience. The impatient English who colonized North America in the 1600s and 1700s immediately gazed westward and instantly considered ways to venture into the wilderness and tame it. The cause of that ceaseless wanderlust varied from region to region, but the behaviour became a tradition within one generation. The western horizon would always beckon, and Americans would always follow. After the American Revolution (1775–83), the steady advance of the cotton kingdom in the South matched the lure of the Ohio Country in the North. In 1803, Pres. Thomas Jefferson ’s Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the country with the stroke of a pen. Expansionists eager to acquire Spanish Florida were part of the drive for the War of 1812 , and many historians argue that American desires to annex Canada were also an important part of the equation. Andrew Jackson ’s invasion of Florida in 1818 and the subsequent Transcontinental Treaty (Adams-Onís Treaty) settled a southern border question that had been vexing the region for a generation and established an American claim to the Pacific Northwest as Spain renounced its claim to the Oregon Country. The most consequential territorial expansion in the country’s history occurred during the 1820s. Spreading American settlements often caused additional unrest on the country’s western borders. As the United States pacified and stabilized volatile regions, the resulting appropriation of territory usually worsened relations with neighbours, setting off a cycle of instability that encouraged additional annexations.
Caught in the upheaval coincidental to that expansion, Southeast Indians succumbed to the pressure of spreading settlement by ceding their lands to the United States and then relocating west of the Mississippi River under Pres. Andrew Jackson ’s removal policy of the 1830s. The considerable hardships suffered by the Indians in that episode were exemplified by the devastation of the Cherokees on the infamous Trail of Tears , which excited humanitarian protests from both the political class and the citizenry.
Finally, in the 1840s, diplomacy resolved the dispute over the Oregon Country with Britain, and victory in the Mexican-American War (1846–48) closed out a period of dramatically swift growth for the United States. Less than a century after breaking from the British Empire , the United States had gone far in creating its own empire by extending sovereignty across the continent to the Pacific, to the 49th parallel on the Canadian border, and to the Rio Grande in the south. Having transformed a group of sparsely settled colonies into a continental power of enormous potential, many Americans thought the achievement so stunning as to be obvious. It was for them proof that God had chosen the United States to grow and flourish.
Yet in a story as old as ancient Rome ’s transformation from republic to empire, not all Americans, like the doubters of Rome, found it encouraging. Those dissenters saw rapid expansion as contrary to the principles of a true republic and predicted that the cost of empire would be high and its consequences perilous.
Westward Expansion
A significant push toward the west coast of North America began in the 1810s. It was intensified by the belief in manifest destiny, federally issued Indian removal acts, and economic promise. Pioneers traveled to Oregon and California using a network of trails leading west. In 1893 historian Frederick Jackson Turner declared the frontier closed, citing the 1890 census as evidence, and with that, the period of westward expansion ended.
Explore these resources to learn more about what happened between 1810 and 1893, as immigrants, American Indians, United States citizens, and freed slaves moved west.
Home / Essay Samples / History / History of The United States / Westward Expansion
Westward Expansion Essay Examples
Westward expansion as a cause of the civil war.
The American Civil War, a defining moment in U.S. history, was a complex and multifaceted conflict with a range of underlying causes. While slavery is often identified as the primary cause of the war, westward expansion played a significant and intertwined role in escalating tensions...
The Features of Westward Expansion from 1860 to 1890
The human civilization is known to have been marked by various events that influenced the social, economic as well as political growth throughout the world. One such event is the Westward Expansion, which comprises a collection of events that took place in the Western Territories...
Manifest Destiny - as the Careless Attempt to Expand Own Territory
Before Europeans came to invade the Americas, the country as a whole was a peaceful place filled with all sorts of natural wealth and where natives have settled. Here, we would find many different civilizations and empires settled in places like Mesoamerica and the Andes....
The Influence of Civil War, Reconstruction and Westward Expansion on America
Throughout history, events, whether big or small, have changed the fate of humanity in some way, shape or form. This applies to anything, including our country, The United States of America. Throughout its 243 year long run, it has adapted and changed to the world...
The Outcomes of Westward Expansion for the United States
In the early 1800’s, as our young country was still forming its ideals and vision, a great movement westward was born from exploration efforts and a large purchase of land from the French known as the “Louisiana Purchase.” As the boundaries of our country broadened,...
Changes in America During the Westward Expansion
The title of this essay is Westward Expansion. That is the westward expansion of America to be exact. It is common knowledge that when these great states were founded, everything went west from there. In 1860 only the east coast was inhabited by the 13...
antebellum Art and Perspectives on Westward Expansion
In this essay I intend to look at American landscape paintings from artists throughout the Antebellum period to better understand how the American view on westward expansion may have played a role in the attitude many Americans had towards landscape paintings. How the artist’s views...
Westward Expansion: Effects of Manifest Destiny on Native Americans
While most people believe that the idea of Manifest Destiny was primarily beneficial for American citizens, it ultimately did more harm than good, as many conflicts with the land, people, and animals arose with Native Americans. White settlers moving west found that the Native Americans...
The Challenges Posed by the Westward Expansion for the American Society
After the Civil War, many individuals decided to move westward in hopes of better economic opportunities as well as their beliefs in the Manifest Destiny. Prior to the Westward Expansion, many settlers believed that the territory in the west was a wasteland and only fit...
The Importance of the Westward Expansion for the United States
The United States were destined to expand westward since the U.S.A was gaining people and the U.S. needed more land to benefit the U.S. As growing population, The Westward expansion connected the U.S. to the “Great Western Ocean' allowing more trade. According to Senator Lewis...
Trying to find an excellent essay sample but no results?
Don’t waste your time and get a professional writer to help!
You may also like
- Harriet Tubman
- French Revolution
- Human Trafficking
- Black Death
- The Protestant Reformation
- Ancient Egypt
- Louisiana Purchase Essays
- Civil War Essays
- Salem Witch Trials Essays
- Industrial Revolution Essays
- The Progressive Era Essays
- Gilded Age Essays
- Benjamin Franklin Essays
- Manifest Destiny Essays
- French and Indian War Essays
- Pearl Harbor Essays
About Westward Expansion
Western Territories of the United States
Westward expansion was the the 19th-century movement of settlers into the American West, which began with the Louisiana Purchase and was fueled by the Gold Rush, the Oregon Trail and a belief in "manifest destiny."
In 1893 historian Frederick Jackson Turner declared the frontier closed, citing the 1890 census as evidence, and with that, the period of westward expansion ended.
samplius.com uses cookies to offer you the best service possible.By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .--> -->