Manifest Destiny - Alternative Interpretations

Alternative Interpretations

Not all Americans who believed that the United States was a divinely favored nation thought that it ought to expand. Whigs opposed territorial expansion. Many in the party "were fearful of spreading out too widely", and they "adhered to the concentration of national authority in a limited area". Expansionists, such as President James Polk were criticized by Congressional Whigs. In one famous speech Alexander H. Stephen, after the war with Mexico, denounced the President's interpretation of America's future as "mendacious" of the United States was only to serve as virtuous example to the rest of the world. If the United States was successful as a shining "city on a hill", people in other countries would seek to establish their own democratic republics. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, which doubled the size of the United States, Thomas Jefferson set the stage for the continental expansion of the United States. Many began to see this as the beginning of a new mission.

Some, such as Thomas Jefferson, made explicit that Manifest destiny was not only a belief that the United States was a rejection of the monarchist traditions of Europe in favor of republicanism but Europe's social conditions from its densely packed population. The view was not universally shared, especially in later years as big cities began to dominate the political landscape of America.

In the mid‑19th century, expansionism, especially southwards, faced opposition from those who opposed slavery. As more territory was added to the United States in the following decades, whether or not "extending the area of freedom" also meant extending the institution of slavery became a central issue in the continental expansion of the United States.

During the Civil War both sides claimed that America's destiny were rightfully their own. Lincoln opposed Southern sectionalism, anti-immigrant nativism, and the imperialism of Manifest Destiny as both unjust and unreasonable. He believed each of these disordered forms of love threatened the inseparable moral and fraternal bonds of liberty and Union that he sought to perpetuate through a patriotic love of country guided by wisdom and critical self-awareness. Lincoln's "Eulogy to Henry Clay", June 6, 1852 provides the most cogent expression of his reflective patriotism. Henry Beecher Stowe identified the South as only doing "the Devil's work" while the North was left "to do the work of God". Alternatively, men like Benjamin Morgan Palmer, minister of the First Presbyterian Church in New Orleans, were championing the destiny God had made for the Confederate States. Palmer delivered a sermon in New Orleans that described the God's mission was inseparable from the South's.