Get Polk And Manifest Destiny Justifiable Policy Or National Disgrace Form

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.

Polk eventually achieved all his goals. He was a champion of manifest destiny—the belief that the United States was fated to expand across the North American continent—and by the end of his four years in office, the nation extended, for the first time, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.

Some see it as being for the good of the country. There was a widespread belief that western expansion was for the good of the country and was the right of the American people. Manifest Destiny was what Americans believed they were meant to do. Other historians view Manifest Destiny as an excuse to be selfish.

The term "Manifest Destiny" was, in part, an expression of a genuine ideal on the part of Americans. But it was also a justification, in that they wanted territory and needed an excuse or justification for a push into territory that they did not control.

Albert Gallatin opposed "Manifest Destiny" because he believed it conflicted with the idea of democracy. Many who supported the movement insisted that Americans possessed hereditary superiority. ing to Gallatin, democracy is founded on the principle that no man is born with the right of governing another man.

US President James K. Polk (1845-1849) is the leader most associated with Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny inflamed sectional tensions over slavery, which ultimately led to the Civil War.

Manifest Destiny was the idea that the United States had a clear national purpose to spread across the continent of North America, carrying the ideas of liberty, equality, and democracy into new territory that would provide homes and livelihoods for its rapidly growing population.