Manifest Destiny

Today in class we watched the beginning of The American Future Part 1: American Plenty (A history by Simon Schama); it reminded me of this term Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny is this belief/concept/Myth that the United States had/has a divine right to spread its values, and its people across North America.
Manifest Destiny was used to justify the Westward expansion and the slaughtering of any people group who got in the United States way. Many people believed in this "Manifest Destiny", they not only believed it was there destiny but that it was righteous or it was the right thing to do. One such person was John L. O'Sullivan (coined the term manifest destiny) in his paper, New York Morning News, he used Manifest Destiny to argued that the United States had the right to the Oregon Territory, "And that claim is by 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." (December 27, 1845) I believe that Manifest Destiny was once (and still maybe) one of the United States most widely believed in myths. Manifest Destiny was (is) the American myth that, we have to expand West, share our values, and most importantly we need to spread and protect DEMOCRACY.

"I think we all realize that the day has come when Democracy is being put upon its final test. The Old World is just now suffering from a wanton rejection of the principle of democracy and a substitution of the principle of autocracy as asserted in the name, but without the authority and sanction, of the multitude. This is the time of all others when Democracy should prove its purity and its spiritual power to prevail. It is surely the manifest destiny of the United States to lead in the attempt to make this spirit prevail." Woodrow Wilson "The world must be made safe for democracy."