John O’Sullivan and America’s Manifest Destiny

John O’Sullivan and America’s Manifest Destiny

When leaders wish to conquer foreign lands, they invariably put forth a list of 

justifications. In America in the 1840s, politicians and others invoked the phrase 

“manifest destiny” to optimistically explain continual territorial expansion by the United 

States. In modern terms, manifest destiny might be described as something that is 

“obvious and certain”. In short, leaders in the 1840s were arguing that American 

expansionism was quite natural and good, determined by fate. 

The term seems to have been coined mid-decade by journalist John O’Sullivan. In an 

essay entitled “Annexation”, O’Sullivan urged the US to annex Texas from Mexico. Not 

only was this justified because of Texans’ own wishes, O’Sullivan contended, but also 

because it was America's “manifest destiny to overspread the continent”. 

In a second and more widely-read column in New York Morning News, O’Sullivan 

reiterated his phrase when advocating for the US claim to “the whole of Oregon”. This 

time, he added the notion of a pro-expansion God:

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.

By invoking “Providence”, the journalist was suggesting that the highest moral authority 

actually supported the US annexation of the Oregon Country; since the British were not 

spreading democracy, their claims had lower moral status in the eyes of God. 

Ironically, O’Sullivan did not condone the violence that his phrase eventually supported. 

He had expected territorial expansion to be truly “natural”, coming about through 

settlements and voluntary annexation by residents. After all, residents of Texas actively 

sought to become the Union’s twenty-eighth state, and thousands of Americans had 

already migrated to the Oregon Country via the Oregon Trail. What could be more 

obvious and certain?

The actual process of expansionism entailed violence and suppression that a kindly god 

would not condone. The idea of “Indian Removal” garnered a following. Native 

Americans were removed from lands by force, and at the same time, some lands were 

desired solely for African American slave labor. This was clear to Henry David Thoreau, 

who asked:

How does it become a man to behave toward this American 

government today? I answer that he cannot without 

disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant 

recognize that political organization as my government 

which is the slave's government also.

Ironically, O’Sullivan’s term was not popularized until seized upon by Whig opponents. 

Whigs in particular contested what “Providence” would desire; the “mission” of the 

United States, they maintained, was simply to behave as a virtuous (non-conquering) 

example for the rest of the world. 

In 1846, a Whig representative named Robert Winthrop ridiculed O’Sullivan’s concept 

when speaking before Congress. Observing the notion’s self-interest and chauvinism, he 

commented:

I suppose the right of a manifest destiny to spread will not 

be admitted to exist in any nation except the universal 

Yankee nation.

Despite this public criticism, the Polk Administration and other expansionists quickly 

embraced the phrase. The era of US history encompassing the War of 1812 through the 

Civil War is often called the Age of Manifest Destiny. During this time period the United 

States were expanded to the Pacific Ocean, and borders began to look much as they do 

today.