...angelic-like figure. I wonder how Manifest Destiny started and what lasting effects it had. Manifest Destiny had many lasting effects on the U.S. Not only did Manifest Destiny shape the territorial expansion the U.S. had in North America, but it also came with the loss of cultural diversity and environmental degradation. When historians or teachers talk about Manifest Destiny, they praise it and only look at the positive things Manifest Destiny did. Manifest Destiny is a dark piece of the United States' history, Manifest Destiny removed Native Americans from their land, sometimes...
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...Manifest Destiny was a nineteenth-century belief that held that the United States was destined to span across the American continent. Manifest Destiny, to a significant extent, played a major role in dividing the Union from the 1830 to 1860. Manifest Destiny stimulated the territorial expansion of the United States from sea to shining sea. The admission of these territories as new states lead to the major divisions and conflicts across the country on the issue of whether they are to be admitted as free or slave states. The American expansionist belief known as Manifest Destiny took decades to develop until solidification in the minds of Americans. During the nineteenth century English-Americans settled in the West starting in Texas and continuing...
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...Critical Analysis of Westward Expansion “Go west, young man”. It was the phrase of the 19th Century advocating for Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny was the idea that settlers were destined to expand to the west. “Americans not only considered Westward expansion a desirable objective but an endowment from God through which they could take their democratic republicanism across North America (Dobson, 2013). There were many factors that urged westward expansion, but the most common reasons for settlers were for the social environment, the natural environment, and the economic opportunities. The social environment of the west included the idea of freedom and the idea of Native American interaction. The natural environment was thriving in the west as gold and other precious minerals were discovered throughout westward expansion. The economic opportunities in the west were almost endless. As settlers took adapted Manifest Destiny, opportunist and businessmen took it towards their advantage...
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...South. From the election of President James Polk in 1845, the North’s and the South’s difference of opinions about westward expansion and the spread of slavery in the west were motivating factors in the start of the Civil War in 1861. The nation was ready to spread from coastline to coastline and President Polk shared this view. In his single term, he secured US authority over the Oregon territory, which included both Oregon and parts of California. As settlers moved westward they brought with them the sectionalist issue of slavery and whether or not it would be allowed in the new territories. Manifest Destiny justified such a massive migration.The North and South shared the idea of Manifest Destiny. The North wanted to spread their way of life. The South’s...
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...to former slaves. * First Reconstruction Act (1867): An act that prevented the former Confederate states from entering the Union until they had ratified the 14th Amendment and written new constitutions that guaranteed black men the right to vote. It also divided the South (with the exception of Tennessee, which had ratified the 14th Amendment) into five military districts and stationed federal troops throughout the region. * Black Codes: Southern state laws passed after the Civil War to limit the rights and actions of newly liberated African Americans. * Freedmen’s Bureau: Federal agency created by Congress in March 1865 and disbanded in 1869. Its purposes were to provide relief for Southerners who had remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War, to support black elementary schools, and to oversee annual labor contracts between landowners and field hands. * Ku Klux Klan: A group of Tennessee war veterans who became a white supremacist terrorist organization promoting violence and intimidation against freed people who dared to resist the demands of white planters and other employees. * 1877 Compromise: Informal, unwritten agreement made by members of Congress that ended the era of Reconstruction. * “Redeemers”: White, post-Reconstruction Democrats in the...
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...Minorities in America have been subject to many hardships and discrimination throughout the history of our nation. So much so, the political status and system for minorities used to be referred to as a separate system of law compared to that of white Americans. The most obvious reference of “minority” I refer to is the experience of black Americans, but other examples of separate systems of law are the political hardships experienced by Native American Indians and Asian (specifically Chinese) immigrants in America. In this paper I will talk about three specific factors that have separated the gap between equality in the political and social system for minorities in the United States: the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), the Black Civil Rights Movement (specifically Brown v. Board of Education, 1954), and the presidency of Andrew Jackson and the resulting fate of American Indians. Instead of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the main factor of why the immigration of Orientals in the West became an issue could be the California Gold Rush in 1849. This led to mass migration to the Western U.S., and we began importing Chinese laborers to fulfill the need for cheap work. The number of Chinese in the U.S. rose from 25,000 in 1850 to over 300,000 by 1880 and 77% of that number went to California. This led to a debate about the status of the Chinese in America. In 1878 the Supreme Court ruled that Orientals, who were seen as “not white”, were also seen as unfit for self-government because Asia...
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...During the period of 1861-1865 that is commonly known as the Civil War, both the northern and the confederate states exhibited variegated forms of what it means to be civilized. At the bottom of it, the Civil War exhibited the most bloodshed on American soil at a singular point in time. For this reason it must be stated that both The Union and The Confederates both acted out bloodthirsty and carnal impulses. The difference that was displayed was that the liberalism and regard for expanded civil rights that was the basis for The Union’s war stance was countered by a stalwart reactionary ideological platform that The Confederacy clung to. Essentially, civility was at an all-time low during the bloodshed of the Civil war. Over 500,000 lives were claimed, however the etiquette and ideological platforms of both sides proved to be The old world charm of the South was encapsulated by John Mosby and his revenge against a Union trooper killing a young child in front of the child’s mother. Mosby exclaimed that revenge was not a primary, or even a secondary motivation. He honestly believed that he had to kill in order to stop the killing (Civil War Times, 31). This etiquette and honor displayed during the bloodshed was in contradistinction to the crass and needless killing committed by the Union soldier. This shows how oftentimes ideologies can mask the deeper, truer feelings and...
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...in the USA. The solution was that Maine was considered as free state, so Missouri continued as slave state. Everything in the north would be free states except Missouri. 11. “Bleeding Kansas” Bleeding Kansas was a period of violence during the settling of Kansas territory seeking to decide whether if Kansas was going to be a free state or a slave state. 12. Manifest destiny Many Americans felt that the United States should expand from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. We did not care who owned the land before us; whether it was the Native Americans or the Mexicans/Spanish. The United States thought that Manifest Destiny meant that they had the God-given right to take the land, which could have some relation with the providential history. 13. Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 Enacted by Congress in 1793 and 1850, these laws provided for the return of escaped slaves to their owners. The North was lax about enforcing the 1793 law, which irritated the South to no end. The 1850 law was tougher and was aimed at eliminating the underground railroad. 14. Nueces River Border between Texas and Mexico was disputed--Mexico said that the border lied on the Nueces River, Polk and Slidell said the border lied further south on the Rio Grande; The Mexican War was started when Mexicans crossed the Rio Grande and attacked American soldiers killing some of them, which was the perfect excuse for the USA to attack Mexico. A version of this is that the actual president of the USA sent this...
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...Final Exam The First World War was one of the most important events in history. It bared witness to sheer carnage not seen before or after in history. From one shot of a Serbian assassin came forth one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history, and one of the most world-shattering. Although the First World War is mainly noted for its connections to World War Two, it has had more far-reaching effects than that war or any other war in shaping the 20th or 21th century. One of the most important causes of the First World War involved a complex system of alliances and secret treaties which crisscrossed the Major Powers of Europe, making a small conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary into a war involving all the major players in Europe. The alliances of that era were different from what we see today in this ideological age. For instance, France, debatably the most liberal out of all of the Major Powers, and Russia, the most reactionary, were close allies at this point. These two powers which were on very different ends of the political spectrum joined together in politics in a way that would be controversial today. When the war started, all of the Major Powers except for France were monarchists. While only Russia was still absolutist. The Ottoman Empire was destroyed in the First World War as well. Dynasties which were hundreds of years old and monarchies which had dominated European politics for centuries were destroyed in just four years. And in its place rose liberal...
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...Driven by the thought of Manifest Destiny, the United States pushed westbound. Pioneers took after trails to the boondocks conditions of the Midwest, California, and Oregon, looking for a superior life and open doors for area possession. As the country extended its achieve, fringe debate emitted, and the fight over subjection escalated. On a global level, the United States obtained new terrains in the American Southwest through war with Mexico and picked up region in the Pacific Northwest in view of a settlement with Great Britain. Regardless of authoritative endeavors to battle with the servitude issue, every time another state was to be admitted to the Union, another discussion would eject. Authoritative endeavors, for example, the dubious Wilmot Proviso, the thought of mainstream sway, Clay's Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act-planned to strike a harmony between free states and slave states. Sectional clashes kept on heightenning, nonetheless, spelling inconvenience for the isolated country. Taking after the decision of Republican Abraham Lincoln, seven Southern states reacted by voting to withdraw from the Union, reporting the formation of the Confederate States of America. The Civil War would soon take...
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...and culture to reach past the popular vision of America's westward expansion and settlement--a vision shaped and colored by hundreds of Western movies and their depictions of death without blood, and solitary heroic cowboys vanquishing ultimately cowardly villains--in an attempt to recover the true history of the American West, to remove the romantic and heroic veneer from a past of violence and prejudice, of dreams shattered as much as hopes fulfilled. Cormac McCarthy's novel All the Pretty Horses concerns itself with the meeting place between realism and romanticism. All the Pretty Horses is set in 1949 and 1950. The opening of the novel shows John Grady Cole, a sixteen-year-old Texan who wants badly to be a cowboy, at the funeral of his grandfather. The driving economic force in Texas, it becomes clear to John Grady, is oil rather than cattle: after the funeral, John Grady's mother will sell the ranch the grandfather owned, and on which John Grady was raised. It is a ranch built by John Grady's great-grandfather in the formative years of the cowboy culture, the years immediately after the Civil War, and its passing out of the family is a symbol of the passing of the old West, the...
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...American Realism The Civil War tore the country apart. Once America was reunited in 1865, there was a lot of healing that needed to take place to correct the wounds Americans had suffered at the hands of their kin. In these years there were still a lot of questions to answer and still a lot of truth to be found out about the nation itself. The questions of the place of African-Americans, white Americans, political Americans and every other kind of American out there was a source for constant frustration and violence. This is the background and the huge dust storm that American Realism rose out of. Prior to the Civil War, America was knee deep in the Romantic Movement which included writers such as Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, Poe and Whitman. Their writings focused on the puritan aspects of their ancestors or of the dark romance and psychological perspectives writers such as Poe and Melville used. However, after the war, this movement began to fade and Realism increased as the choice reading of the people. This was due to multiple events and changes in culture that led to Americans looking for something better to relate to. The first event was the end of the Civil War. The Civil War showed the violent intentions men had towards each other and also showed the vulnerability of men and the nation and how ungodly man actually was. However, Realism did not begin immediately after the Civil War but rather took off in the 1880’s. So what happened in the 1880’s then? The 1880’s...
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...Through the course of American history a ubiquitous theme of seceding oppression and holding true to one’s rights and beliefs is accentuated, however this sweet tea of American values has been brewed by an otherwise tart source, the tea leaves of tension. In the debate over slavery which consumed nineteenth century America, proponents and opponents of free labor clashed ceaselessly. The ensuing Civil War was caused by a self-preservation instinct that each side used to substantiate their discord. Foremost, beginning with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, the South began to resort to outcrying against the government, as they saw their future potentially dwindle away. Thereafter, through the repercussions of the growing sectionalism and...
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...Rodjanét Williams History 101 Professor Saul Panski April 22, 2013 To Justify War or Not to Justify War? That is the Question On May 11, 1846, James K. Polk delivered his address to Congress requesting a Declaration of War on the Republic of Mexico. President Polk justified his war by saying in his message that Mexico had attacked American troops and invaded the United States. He also brought up the issue that initially brought about all of the tensions between the U.S. and Mexico, which was the Mexican government had not been cooperative in negotiations over the Texas boundary. Polk, as well as most of the rest of Americans at this time, saw the declaration of war as a legitimate and natural expression of America’s Manifest Destiny, which will be later explained. The question remains, however, was Polk’s declaration of war on Mexico really necessary, let alone justified? Was peace what he really wanted, or was his true intention just to acquire more land and expand the U.S. westward as fast as he could? President Polk did appear to have taken several steps to try to avoid an armed conflict with Mexico. First, Polk tried to reopen diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Mexico by sending an envoy, Mr. John Slidell of Louisiana, invested with full powers to make adjustments to the current state of affairs between the two countries. He sent this envoy, seemingly, as evidence that he did not want war, but peace and harmonious engagements between the U.S. and Mexico from there...
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...western route to Asia. Instead they discovered the Americas and found unlimited fertile lands and natural resources, and they competed fiercely for domination of the Americas. Many persons of European descent came to settle in the New World for varied reasons, i.e. religious freedom, land ownership, opportunity for a better life. When American colonist decided to fight for independence from Britain, they probably had no idea that this would lead to the formation a democratic government unlike any seen previously in modern history. The founding document, the Constitution of the United States of America has become a model for democratic republics all over the world. After the Revolutionary War, the United States of America would have another encounter with the British military in the War of 1812. The...
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