according to manifest destiny?

Question

Why was it the right of the federal government of the US to overtake the land that Native Americans lived on and that other countries owned?

Answer 1

1

Answer 2

I looked up the definition because I wanted a clearer briefer notion of what Manifest Destiny was than what I was prepared to write myself. Here is what I found.



A popular slogan of the 1840s. It was used by people who believed that the United States was destined — by God, some said — to expand across North America to the Pacific Ocean. The idea of manifest destiny was used to justify the acquisition of Oregon and large parts of the Southwest, including California. ( See Mexican War.)



Basically what this says is that Manifest Destiny was something granted by God Himself to those living in the United States. The populace took hold of the idea. In effect, it was a religious war. It proclaimed the superiority of one group over another.



Personally, I think two things can be said. One is that the driving force is Might Makes Right. It was done because it could be done. Perhaps that is a little cynical but my second point is even worse. I think it was a belief by many that one people was superior to another, and that the government could enjoy the spoils of the subjugated native population. It took 400 years to completely defeat the Native Americans, so obviously these people did not agree with the Manifest Destiny at all.

Answer 3

It wasn't right they basically took over like a bunch of squatters and kicked out the native Americans. This scenario is as equivalent as what is happening in Gaza

Answer 4

In the 19th century, Manifest Destiny was the widely held belief in the United States that American settlers were destined to expand throughout the continent. Historians have for the most part agreed that there are three basic themes to Manifest Destiny:

The special virtues of the American people and their institutions;

America's mission to redeem and remake the west in the image of agrarian America;

An irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty.[2]



Historian Frederick Merk says this concept was born out of "A sense of mission to redeem the Old World by high example...generated by the potentialities of a new earth for building a new heaven".[3]



Historians have emphasized that "Manifest Destiny" was a contested concept—Democrats endorsed the idea but many prominent Americans (such as Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and most Whigs) rejected it. Historian Daniel Walker Howe writes, "American imperialism did not represent an American consensus; it provoked bitter dissent within the national polity.... Whigs saw America's moral mission as one of democratic example rather than one of conquest."[4]



Manifest Destiny provided the rhetorical tone for the largest acquisition of U.S. territory. It was used by Democrats in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico and it was also used to divide half of Oregon with Great Britain. But Manifest Destiny always limped along because of its internal limitations and the issue of slavery, says Merk. It never became a national priority. By 1843 John Quincy Adams, originally a major supporter, had changed his mind and repudiated Manifest Destiny because it meant the expansion of slavery in Texas.[5]