The eclipse of Manifest Destiny: The ideology of American expansion, 1844-1860.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the relationship between the ideology of republicanism and expansion. Chronologically the thesis runs from the effort to annex Texas in 1844 to the secession of the South from the Union. It explores the origin, force, and effect of the territorial issue on the Jacksonian political system. The analysis begins by rooting Manifest Destiny in the variant Democratic and Whig concepts of republicanism. The thesis demonstrates the manner in which expansion into the West and overseas sectionalized American politics and shaped the changing nature of the ideologies of republicanism through the late 1840s and 1850s. Territorial expansion rested on the fundamental principles of individual freedom and liberation and constituted the necessary context for a virtuous citizenry of independent yeomen and aggressive entrepreneurs. Expansion, therefore, resonated with the basic premises of Jacksonian America. Because it was such an intense force, expansionism meant that the political source of the Civil War would come to be anchored in the meaning of national expansion. Northerners and southerners viewed the events of these years through the same ideological prism: the American Revolution. The random factor that made consensus on that heritage ultimately impossible was slavery. At each step from Texas to Fort Sumter, the nation had to deal with the Americanness of that institution. The territorial issue became for the Americans of the 1840s and 1850s what the Bank War was for the Jacksonians: a way of identifying the subversive elements in American democracy. As soon as slavery was taken up in the territorial question, the tragedy was foretold. For unlike the Bank divisions that were interparty and class-specific, the territorial issue divided Americans along sectional lines. The dissertation, based on multiarchival research as well as a wide array of official, printed primary and periodical sources, lies at the intersection of diplomatic, political and intellectual history. It asserts the important interplay between belief and behavior and argues for the pervasive influence of republicanism on public discourse. By recreating the mental world of the historical actors, the thesis provides a new perspective on the political culture of the 1840s and 1850s.