A New Destiny

When I learned about Manifest Destiny in my high school history class, I took away the patriotic notion that America was a promised land. A place, as the phrase implied, where there was a grand purpose of divine origin that would yield success and prosperity to those who took bold actions, who pursued a vision of economic growth, and who would be rewarded for the risks they took. Simply put, I was taught that the acquisition of new territories was a natural progression of the development of the American experiment in the New World. I thought little about the indigenous peoples who already lived in the frontier expanse or of the impact on the pristine environment by unfettered industrialists, who were the primary beneficiaries of the annexation of new lands and resources. I was taught, incorrectly, that manifest destiny was a sort of nationalist religion, a rallying focus that celebrated the territorial expansionism of the nineteenth century. Something that promoted ambition as a social value to the exclusion of others. I was not taught that by the end of the nineteenth century, the idea of a manifest destiny became a contentious social, political, economic, and even legal issue. I did not know (or do not recall considering) that there was vocal opposition to the idea of a manifest destiny. I did not know that the author of the original phrase reportedly meant it as a sarcastic snipe, a criticism of those who would bulldoze their way across the frontier with the self-serving intent to acquire and exploit vast new land tracts for their own private control and profit.