Page 328 - American Stories, A History of the United States

tAbLe 13.2 tHe eLectiON OF 1844
13.1
candidate Party Popular vote electoral vote
Polk Democratic 1,338,464 170
clay Whig 1,300,097 105 13.2
birney Liberty 62,300 —

the Doctrine of Manifest Destiny
The expansionist mood that accompanied Polk’s election and the annexation of Texas
was given a name and a rationale in 1845. John L. O’Sullivan, a proponent of the
Young America movement and editor of the influential United States Magazine and
Democratic Review, charged that foreign governments were conspiring to block the
annexation of Texas to thwart “the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread
the continent allotted by providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying
millions.”
Besides coining the phrase Manifest Destiny, O’Sullivan pointed to the three main
ideas that lay behind it. One was that God favored American expansionism. This notion

Read the Document John O’Sullivan, The Great Nation of Futurity (1839)

mAnifeSt deStinY john O’sullivan was editor of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review. He
advocated the view that the United states was destined to expand. in the process, he coined the phrase “Manifest
Destiny.” His vision caught the imagination of the immigrant nation searching for its identity and meaning as well
as a definition of success.
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