"Manifest Destiny" and Tyler and Texas

“Manifest Destiny”

• Texas was one extreme example of a broader pattern:

  • its expansion was messy
  • nothing about it was pre-ordained

• “manifest destiny” began as a partisan, political ideology

  • the term originated in an 1845 newspaper editorial written in support of Texas annexation

  • came to refer to a loose set of ideas and beliefs:

  • Anglo-Americans superior institutions and values entitled them to lead the hemisphere

  • Anglo-Americans were destined to spread their people and/or culture across North America (or farther)

    1. remaking the rest of the continent in their own image
    2. disagreements about how this should happen

  • the spread of American republicanism would save the world

• drew upon old ideas, but added new elements:

  • millenarianism of the 2nd Great Awakening
  • millenarianism: belief by a religion, social, or political group or movement in a coming fundamental transformation of society, after which “all things will be changed”
  • happening soon/now, not in some vague future
  • racialized: many of them believe the “Anglo-Saxon Race” was superior to other people in its path

Tyler and Texas

• William Henry Harrison dies a month into office, 1841
  • died from a pneumonia
• Vice President John Tyler becomes the new president and turns on the Whigs
  • Whigs: members of the British reforming and constitutional party that aimed for the supremacy of Parliament and was eventually succeeded by the Liberal Party in the 19th Century
  • John Tyler was not a good or well-liked president
• he tries to annex Texas via a treaty which was rejected by Congress