American Leaders In The 19th Century

According to John O’Sullivan, an editor of United States Magazine and Democratic Review, Manifest Destiny means that “that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity.” What does Manifest Destiny mean? American leaders in the nineteenth century believed that it was America’s destiny to expand the nation’s civilization and spread the idea of democracy across the continent. The United States was growing in numbers and economically as a nation. As the colonies are growing, land expansion was much needed. More land meant more income opportunities. So America wanted to expand their nation more western towards the pacific coast. The white, Protestant American in the mid-nineteenth century defined this progress as a mission to extend their limitations of freedom by opposing their beliefs of self-government and Protestantism. There were certain kinds of people that America saw as being incapable of self-government so they excluded them, such as the Native Americans, immigrants from Mexico, and immigrants from Chia. America had an issue with the Native Americans because it was trying to expand as a nation, but the Native Americans owned the land it wanted. America fixed this problem by placing the Indian Removal Act upon the Native Americans in 1830 forcing them to move out of their homelands so that
Americans started to inhabit on the Mexican territory and felt like they were a better fit to govern the land instead of the Mexicans. This interaction between the Americans and the Mexicans on land possession lead to the Mexican-American War, which lasted from 1835-1845. In the end America, won which allowed them to have ownership of New Mexico and California. This war inspired many painters to paint pictures to portray the events that happened. Carl Nebel was one of these painters who painted The Battle of Monterrey, which showed American troops marching on