Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation, With a New Foreword by John Mack Faragher

by Frederick Merk, John Mack Faragher (Foreword)

Before this book first appeared in 1963, most historians wrote as if the continental expansion of the United States were inevitable. “What is most impressive,” Henry Steele Commager and Richard Morris declared in 1956, “is the ease, the simplicity, and seeming inevitability of the whole process.” The notion of inevitability, however, is perhaps only a secular variation on the theme of the expansionist editor John L. O’Sullivan, who in 1845 coined one of the most famous phrases in American history when he wrote of “our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” Frederick Merk rejected inevitability in favor of a more contingent interpretation of American expansionism in the 1840s. As his student Henry May later recalled, Merk “loved to get the facts straight.”
― From the Foreword by John Mack Faragher

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction

278 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 1963

Reviews

[Frederick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those well-written treasures with prose that is easy to follow underpinning the ideas it attempts to express. Merk explained how many leaders in American history saw America's government and rule as the will of God and that the task of spreading our ideas and principles was the divinely assigned duty of the United States. America's conquest of Mexican territory under false pretenses was merely the removal of land from, "unhallowed hands," for use by the American people. Merk's thoroughness is part of the attraction of this book, as well as how he overturns some myths of Manifest Destiny and who exactly had to gain from the Mexican War. Information like John C. Calhoun's opposition to the Mexican War and this great Southern Democrats opposition to taking much if any Mexican territory argues against William Jay's thesis in his 'A Review of the Causes and Consequences of the Mexican War' of that war as being only the result of a drive to increase slave-holding territory. Fascinating book.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

In his book, Frederick Merk considers and rejects a comparison between the Mexican-American and the Spanish-American Wars in order to demonstrate the role of two different themes in foreign policy, expansionism and exceptionalism. Merk's concept of Mission is essentially what diplomatic historians today would call exceptionalism. It is described by Merk as an unselfish desire to spread the benefits of American-style democracy to the benighted peoples of the globe, a time-honored American principle of self-sacrifice in the name of the "City on the Hill". Merk claims that Mission represents the true majority opinion of the "American people".

"Manifest Destiny," on the other hand, was a self-serving justification for the acquisition of territory. Touted by the aggressive minority that (unfortunately) so often makes policy, Manifest Destiny succeeded in the 1840s because it contained elements of Mission. Advocates of Manifest Destiny countenanced the integration of conquered peoples within the American system.

In the tradition of the "Pratt School", Merk.'s account sees the coming of the Spanish-American War as the work of instigators, such as the "yellow press". Thus he explains the reason for intervention:

"A frenzy of interventionism was whipped up. It was not shared by McKinley, who was attentive to the voice of business and opposed intervention on the ground that it would lead to war with Spain and retard the return to prosperity so eagerly desired by all." (p. 249)

Merk claims that historians have incorrectly tried to find parallels between the two wars by claiming that Manifest Destiny informed both conflicts. In the 1890s expansionism moved beyond Manifest Destiny. The acquisition of the Philippines was an exercise in what Merk calls Insular Imperialism, with imperialism defined by the intent to rule over a subject people in the form of a colony. The imperialists of the 1890s did not seek to integrate the populations of annexed territories
into the citizenry of the U.S., as had been the case with proponents of Manifest Destiny in the Mexican-American War.

One is struck by the essential asymmetry of the terms Manifest Destiny and Mission. Should the book not be entitled Expansionism and Mission in American History? Merk believes that both expressions of expansionism, Manifest Destiny in the form of Continentalism and bone fide imperialism in the form of Insular Imperialism, were unfortunate expressions of an expansionist tendency limited essentially to the 19th century. This conclusion constitutes Merk's happy ending. American involvement in 20th century wars is devoid of the selfishness of expansionism. What remained in the Cold War was the overwhelmingly popular sense of American Mission. It is important to note, however, this book was written in 1963.

[Brady Postma · Rating 4 out of 5]

This survey of public opinion of the US territorial expansion of the 1840s and 1850s contrasts that era's territorial expansion and the rationale behind it with the imperialism of the 1890s and the broader American mission of exemplifying and spreading good governance as a foreign policy objective. A good three quarters of the book offers the story of Manifest Destiny's appearance, meaning to its advocates, faults as seen by its critics, its fading from prominence, and its interrelations with related political issues like slavery, race, federalism, consent, and the Civil War that followed.

There are some unexpected revelations in the details of manifest destiny. Most interesting to me was the revelation that the annexation of Mexico was restrained to the sparsely populated areas because of a bizarre synchronicity of racist southern Democrats opposed granting US citizenship to non-white Mexicans and anti-slavery northern Whigs who opposed expanding slavery into Mexican states where slavery was abolished. Racism and anti-slavery as allies in a cause. Who would have thought?

I wish it had more material about the Mexican perspective on the Mexican-American War, and I wonder what new perspectives have developed since this book was published in the 1960s. But I found it informative, compelling, and persuasive. Lots of good stuff about the 1840s and the 1890s, and about the real substance of what being American is all about. For those who like American history, this is my endorsement: go read it.

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Politicians gather harvests from fancies." (225)

"The imperialism of the 1890's is regarded by some historians as a variant merely of Manifest Destiny of the 1840's. This is an error. It was the antithesis of Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny was continentalism. It meant absorption of North America. It found its inspiration in states' rights. It envisaged the elevation of neighboring peoples to equal statehood and to all the rights and privileges which that guaranteed. Expansionism in 1899 was insular and imperialistic. Its inspiration was nationalism of a sort. It involved the reduction of distant peoples to a state of colonialism." (256-7)

[Mark Valentine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Merk has done us a service by tracing the origins of our hubris. "Manifest destiny" or "natural dominion" or "rapid expansion" or such phrases become jingoist tags to fly on banners of hegemony over the cultural, political steamroller. He traces the Divine Wind of the European expansion that consumed and assimilated (or placed on reservations) any peoples or cultures in its path: Mexico, Great Britain, and Russia for other Empire building nations, but also the Indigenous Peoples. Sometimes the expansion was benign, but most of the time it was aggressive and malicious.

What remains after the reading of this study for me is how insidious piety has become in being a golden ticket for expansion and aggrandizement.