Transcript Chapter 17: Manifest Destiny & Its Legacy

William Henry Harrison: “Gone in
30 days”
 “Tippecanoe and
Tyler too”



Portray candidate as
“common man”
Log cabin, poor
farmer, hard cider
Democrats (states’
rights, restrained fed.
Govt.) & Whigs
(Bank, tariffs, internal
improvements)
Chapter 17: Manifest Destiny
&
“Nationalism”?? No
such word in my
Its Legacy
vocabulary!

The South v. The North


Subtext for issue: Slavery
Territorial Expansion → Slavery
extension??:
Southern view: losing
power?
 Northern view: Southern
conspiracy to expand
slavery (Caribbean,
Central & Southern
America)


John Tyler: “His
Accidencey”
Henry Clay
Daniel Webster
The most successful president?



In & out of a war
Major acquisition of territory
Accomplished all of his goals:
 One term
 Settled Oregon question
 Acquired California
 Reduced tariff
 Re-established the Ind.
Treasury
James Polk
The 1840’s
Annexation of Texas, conquest of
California & SW from feeble
Mexico
Texas
* Democrats endorse annexation
* more slave territory
* Polk: expansionist ticket
Americans wanted Texas:
1)
Duty to extend
2)
Texans were Americans
3)
Great Britain might intervene
4)
Economics: expand markets for
northern goods, increase
cotton production
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny: Oregon Territory


Treaty of 1818: unresolved
Oregon Trail:


fur traders
missionaries

“a pioneer paradise where pigs are running
around the acorn trees, round and fat and
already cooked, with knives and forks
sticking in the so that you can cut off a slice
whenever you are hungry.”
“Great Emigration” 1840’s
 The Overland Trail: 4 month. terrifying
journey
 Democratic platform in ’44: American
claim to Oregon is unquestionable.
 War? “54 40 or fight!”

Oregon & Manifest Destiny
“The Whole or None!”
 JQ Adams: “The US, not
Britain, was the nation
bound to make the
wilderness blossom as
the rose, to establish
laws, to increase,
multiply, and subdue the
earth, at the first behest
of God Almighty”


Resolved peacefully:
Treaty of 1846: 49th P.
Mexican War

The Poison?

Will slavery expand??
South: YES—southern
survival dependent on
extension
 North: NO
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The United States will
conquer Mexico, but it will be
as the man swallows
arsenic…Mexico will poison us”
Manifest Destiny &
The Mexican War
Remote Cause: increasing distrust
between 2 nations
Mexico: fear of American expansion
US: Mexico owes $ to US citizens,
Alamo, disdain for dark skinned
people
Immediate Cause: Boundary dispute

Mexican War
The two factors for an
American War?
 The enemy takes the
first shot
 Moral Issue
 Mexico would be
improved by
extending freedom.
 Mexico was engaged
in a bloody civil war
Origins of Mexican War: The Mexicans
attack 1st (?)

Border dispute



Mexico: Nueces River
USA: Rio Grande
Polk sent Zachary Taylor to the
disputed territory
“We take nothing by
conquest, Thank God!”
From the diary of an American Army
Colonel stationed in this area:
“ I have said from the first that the United
States are the aggressors… We have
not one particle of right to be here… It
looks as if the government sent a small
force on purpose to bring war, so as to
have a pretext for taking California and
much of this country as it chooses”







Ulysses Grant: “We were
sent to provoke a fight, but
it was essential that Mexico
commence it.”
Polk: Purchase CA? ($25
million)
Mexico refuses
US troops killed—May 1846
“American blood has been
shed on American soil!”
Polk: “war exists by the act
of Mexico herself…the cup
of forbearance had been
exhausted”
Lincoln: "Spot Resolutions”

exact spot where blood had
been shed?
The Wilmot Proviso
Slavery had ENDED in Mexico
 “God forbid that we should be the
means of planting this institution upon
it.”
 Vote in Congress?

Passes the House
 Blocked in Senate

Chapter 18
The War
 Sectionalism:
Whigs in the North against
Taylor marches to heart of
Mexico City
Winfield Scott commands 1st
amphibious operation,
marches to Halls of

Montezuma
Polk: War aims?
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo:
Mexico ceded California,
New Mexico; gave up claim
to Texas; US pays $15Chapter 18