Manfest Destiny - Make-up (Please Type and use evidence!)

Was manifest destiny justified?

1- Define manifest destiny 

2- use text and quotes below to explain if it was justified

The Case for Manifest Destiny

Supporters of Manifest Destiny were motivated by two beliefs: the nation's God-given destiny to expand its civilizing influence across the continent and the practical need to expand the nation's borders. Most advocates of Manifest Destiny believed that American society, being predominantly white northern European, or "Anglo-Saxon," and Christian, was more advanced and enlightened than other cultures. American novelist Herman Melville summed up that belief when he stated, "We Americans are the chosen people—the Israel of our time."
Adherents to the ideal of Manifest Destiny asserted that, as the chosen nation, the U.S. had an obligation to mankind to expand its reach and spread its culture, bringing God, technology and civilization to the west. O'Sullivan had elaborated on that idea in an 1839 article:

The far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles; to establish on earth the noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High—the Sacred and the True. Its floor shall be a hemisphere—its roof the firmament of the star-studded heavens....

Others stressed a more practical need for expansion. The U.S. was experiencing a big growth in population, they said, and the U.S. needed to expand to accommodate those people. Furthermore, they contended, expansion would make the new nation more secure. Many agreed with author and diplomat George Bancroft when he said: "The acquisition of California by ourselves is the decisive point in the perfect establishment of the Union." Now the nation rested on a "foundation that cannot be moved," he continued. In his inaugural address, Polk laid out further benefits:

None can fail to see the danger to our safety and future peace if Texas remains an independent state, or becomes an ally or dependency of some foreign nation more powerful than herself. Is there one among our citizens who would not prefer perpetual peace with Texas to occasional wars, which often occur between bordering independent nations? Is there one who would not prefer free intercourse with her, to high duties on all our products and manufactures which enter her ports or cross her frontiers? Is there one who would not prefer an unrestricted communication with her citizens, to the frontier obstructions which must occur if she remains out of the Union?

Advocates of fulfilling the nation's Manifest Destiny argued that critics' concerns that expansion would weaken the union by stretching it too far had not been borne out. Polk asserted that the addition of new territories had in fact bolstered the Union:

As our population has expanded, the Union has been cemented and strengthened. As our boundaries have been enlarged and our agricultural population has been spread over a large surface, our federative system has acquired additional strength and security. It may well be doubted whether it would not be in greater danger of overthrow if our present population were confined to the comparatively narrow limits of the original thirteen States than it is now that they are sparsely settled over a more expanded territory. It is confidently believed that our system may be safely extended to the utmost bounds of our territorial limits, and that as it shall be extended the bonds of our Union, so far from being weakened, will become stronger.

Other advocates simply subscribed to the romantic notion of moving west to establish new lives on the frontier. The very idea of Manifest Destinyencouraged men and women to dream about boundless opportunity, supporters said. Senator James Semple (D, Illinois), in debate in the House over Oregon, noted that in 1843, as many as 1,500 settlers traveled to Oregon "to reclaim this vast wilderness, and to unite, by civilization and human intercourse, the shores of the Pacific with the great West of the Union." Indeed, proponents pointed out, Manifest Destiny inspired pioneers to transform plains and fertile valleys into farms and small towns, helping to build up the nation.
The government not only had a divine right to expand its influence, supporters said, it also had a duty to incorporate territories to protect those American citizens who had settled there. Semple asserted that such expansion expressed the will of the nation to expand. "It is impossible for [the government] to overlook the expression of public opinion on this point, so emphatically and universally pronounced. How was it to act? Was it to allow Great Britain to exercise jurisdiction over its citizens?" he asked.
Whatever their reasons for seeking expansion, proponents of Manifest Destiny defended the government's right to acquire new territories, even though the Constitution did not specifically give it the authority to do so. Supporters were sometimes labeled as "loose constructionists," because they interpreted the Constitution "loosely" or broadly enough to say that, under it, land acquisition was an implied power of the federal government.
Overall, for supporters of Manifest Destiny, all factors indicated that the U.S. should push westward. Buchanan perhaps best summed up the national mood regarding expansion when he stated: "Prevent the American people from crossing the Rocky Mountains? You might as well command Niagara not to flow. We must fulfill our destiny."

The Case Against Manifest Destiny

Critics of Manifest Destiny rejected the idea that it was God's will or even a good thing for the country to expand when it resulted in warfare and the subjugation and mistreatment of native peoples. Expansionists used the concept to justify their cruel treatment of those peoples, critics asserted. ManifestDestiny, with its talk of the need to "civilize" the "savages" who occupied the west, was also blatantly racist, they asserted.
Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing, in a letter written to former Senator Henry Clay (Whig, Kentucky) about the annexation of Texas, described the impact of Manifest Destiny:

[T]the Indians have melted before the white man, and the mixed, degraded race of Mexico must melt before the Anglo-Saxon. Away with this vile sophistry! There is no necessity for crime. There is no fate to justify rapacious nations, any more than to justify gamblers and robbers, in plunder ... We talk of accomplishing our destiny. So did the late conqueror of Europe [Napoleon Bonaparte]; and destiny consigned him to a lonely rock in the ocean, the prey of ambition which destroyed no peace but his own.

Critics grew particularly incensed when the concept was used to justify wars of expansion. God would not destine a nation to kill and subjugate people, they argued. If the "war be right then Christianity is wrong, a falsehood, a lie," Congregationalist minister Theodore Parker asserted in opposition to the war with Mexico.
Many in particular portrayed the Mexican-American War as a land grab, aimed at the conquest of a vulnerable neighbor with little ability to defend itself. Critics argued that Manifest Destiny was used to justify imperialism, and that the U.S. would never have tolerated being treated the way it was treating other countries. Senator Thomas Corwin (Whig, Ohio) was a particularly strong critic of the war with Mexico. According to him: [See Senator Corwin Criticizes Concept of 'Manifest Destiny' (Excerpts) (primary document)]

Had one come and demanded Bunker Hill of the people of Massachusetts, had England's lion ever showed himself there, is there a man over 13 and under 90 who would not have been ready to meet him; is there a river on this continent that would not have run red with blood; is there a field but would have been piled high with the unburied bones of slaughtered Americans before these consecrated battlefields of liberty should have been wrested from us? But this same American goes into a sister republic and says to poor, weak Mexico, 'Give up your territory—you are unworthy to possess it—I have got one-half already—all I ask of you is to give up the other!'....

Furthermore, critics asserted, overexpansion was a threat to the country; it risked spreading the nation's institutions too thin, they warned. "Possessed of a domain, vast enough for the growth of ages, it is time for us to stop in the career of acquisition and conquest," Channing wrote to Clay. "Already endangered by our greatness, we cannot advance without imminent peril to our institutions, union, prosperity, virtue, and peace."
Other critics echoed Channing's belief that the U.S. already had enough land, and should stop seeking more. Supporters of Manifest Destiny exaggerated the stresses of a growing population, they asserted. Corwin argued that the U.S. had enough land, and that it was not worth waging war for "room." He asserted:

Look at your country, extending from the Alleghany Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, capable itself of sustaining in comfort a larger population than will be in the whole Union for one hundred years to come. Over this vast expanse of territory your population is now so sparse that I believe we provided, at the last session, a regiment of mounted men to guard the mail from the frontier of Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia; and yet you persist in the ridiculous assertion, 'I want room.' One would imagine, from the frequent reiteration of the complaint, that you had a bursting, teeming population, whose energy was paralyzed, whose enterprise was crushed, for want of space.

Opposition to Manifest Destiny was also strong among the "Conscience Whigs," a small group mostly from the New England states who saw expansion as facilitating the spread of slavery. That would only increase the tension between a precariously balanced North and South, they warned. In opposing war with Mexico, Corwin presciently claimed, "Should we prosecute this war another moment, or expend one dollar in the purchase or conquest of a single acre of Mexican land, the North and the South are brought into collision on a point where neither will yield. Who can foresee or foretell the result!"
Not only was Manifest Destiny morally wrong, critics argued, but its realization through territorial expansion was unconstitutional. Those critics, called "strict constructionists," maintained that the Constitution never expressly gave the country a right to acquire new lands, so the government did not have the right to acquire territory. That view had also been expressed by opponents of the Louisiana Purchase.
In short, opponents questioned both the ideal of Manifest Destiny and its practical consequences. "I spurn the notion that patriotism can only be manifested by plunging the nation into war or that the love of one's country can only be measured by one's hatred to any other country," declared Representative Robert Winthrop (Whig, Massachusetts) in congressional debate in January 1846. He warned of the "danger of fixing our views so exclusively on our own real or imagined wants as to overlook the rights of others."