Transcription
Hey guys, welcome to Hipu History. We're going to do Manifest Destiny in 5 minutes, so stick around. Here we go, giddy up for the YouTube Learning.
Manifest Destiny, so Manifest Destiny is a term that you're going to have to know something about if you're in a US History course, and certainly if you're walking around on the planet. It's part of a historical route you should know about.
Manifest Destiny isn't really a "what." It's a "huh" in the sense that it was really never written down. There's no written policy, there's no law, there's no amendment, there's nothing in the Constitution that really says anything about Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny is actually a word that originates from a reporter. It's always the reporters. John O. Sullivan, I think, in the 1840s, basically writes about Manifest Destiny as it relates to, I believe, the Mexican War, kind of this idea.
And there are really kind of three parts of Manifest Destiny. Number one is really this sense of kind of privilege, of kind of like, uh, thinking as white European Americans in the early 1800s that we were somehow kind of on an adventure that was kind of Providence, that was kind of God's light on Earth. And, uh, if you see the picture, you can see it quite clearly in the painting that, uh, there's like an angel hovering over us because we're special in that sense.
There's also, I think, this drive. It's like Jacksonian Democracy or maybe it's Old Europe, but this kind of idea that we are kind of spreading democracy and really in an agrarian way that we're going to be able to kind of revive Old Europe before kind of this big city life and really kind of have like a democracy on the farm and bring that across the, uh, uncivilized barbarian fringes out west. Yeah, okay.
And I think the third one is that it's inevitable, that it's in the cards, that's the Destiny part, that there's no stopping it. There's no stopping us now. I'm not singing for you. And I think you blend those three, and I think that it's just kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I mean, you have to realize that it's, it's not universally supported in the country. It's really a democratic idea, maybe it's the expansion of slavery, but the Whigs and Northerners were always a little hesitant about moving out west, and I think really, I don't know why, but they were.
If you're looking at concrete examples, you're going to have to YouTube other stuff or read, for God's sake. But definitely look into, uh, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. I call the legs of Manifest Destiny the process for expanding. Mama get pregnant, that's what I call it sometimes. Definitely the Louisiana Purchase and the doubling of the United States under Thomas Jefferson when he adopts this kind of loose interpretation of the Constitution in order to get that land, really bypassing Senate approval and taking executive action. Who says presidents never use executive action?
Definitely the, the annexation of Texas is a big deal. The Mexican, um, secession from the Mexican War. We birthed seven babies out of that sucker eventually. I'm not going to list all seven. Let me see if I can do it really quick. You got California, you got Nevada, you got Utah, you got New Mexico, you got parts of Colorado, you got parts of Wyoming, and maybe Arizona. Maybe I said one twice, but that's definitely a big win. The Oregon Treaty up in the Northwest. You could do Oregon Trail, you could do the, the Native American Wars, the Dawes Act. There's tons of vocab and events in there that are kind of like the lifeblood of Manifest Destiny.
But people will even take it further. Manifest Destiny can also include like imperialism and kind of this idea going from the Monroe Doctrine and kind of being the protectorate of the Western Hemisphere, like very paternalistic kind of thing. And that we're civilized and they're not civilized, and that goes to Hawaii, it goes to Cuba, violating the Teller Amendment with the Platt Amendment, definitely in the Philippines. There's evidence of it all around the world. And then definitely you could even argue like the space race and the moon, and we have a car on Mars, and all of this is kind of this Manifest Destiny idea.
Whatever it is, it definitely led to the Civil War. You don't want to forget the effects of Manifest Destiny. Go into the idea of it. It brings the issue of slavery out west, which is going to lead to what? Missouri Compromise, Compromise of 1850, Fugitive Slave Act, all this nonsense that is going to have to get served up in the Civil War to solve that. Kansas-Nebraska, popular sovereignty, John Brown. We could talk forever.
But definitely know that Manifest Destiny is controversial, that, uh, not all Americans were behind it, but it's definitely something that occurs in the mind of, I guess, nationalism or spirit, whatever you want to call it, and it's definitely going to draw blood. You know, Manifest Destiny leads directly to, uh, the dismantling of the Native Americans and putting them on reservations. Uh, uh, the Mexican War. We could talk like that forever.
Manifest Destiny, hopefully you got it. You got the major idea, and, uh, now you're going to go learn and do some more of that on the YouTubes. There you go, guys. Click my face. There we go. That's Hipu History for you, and we'll check you out next time when we do some of those teachings on the internets. All right, guys, gotta go. Where attention goes, energy flows.