President Polk's Manifest Destiny

Throughout the 19th century, the United States’ population significantly increased. Mexico looked towards the United State’s booming population and offered Stephen Austin the prospect of colonizing the “old three-hundred” American families in present-day Texas in order to populate the otherwise desolate region. Mexican officials, however, weren’t aware of the implications such colonization would have on the union’s longevity. In spite of Mexican provisions requiring colonists to become “Mexicanized” and be non-slave owning catholics, many Texans did not follow such terms facilitating the development of an independent Texan-American identity ultimately culminating in the Texan Revolution. After the Texan Revolution, Texas applied for statehood in the United States raising questions as to how such expansionism might upset the balance of free to slave states.

Exemplified in John O’Sullivan’s concept of Manifest Destiny, President Polk believed that it was America’s duty to spread American Exceptionalism throughout the entire North American continent. Resultantly, Polk sought to acquire California through peaceful methods at first, and later through more deceptive means. Ultimately, Polk moved troops to a disputed region between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers in order to provoke a war with Mexico, consequently expediting America’s Manifest Destiny. A justifiable war is one which is undertaken for defensive purposes only, and although misguided by the nationalistic, expansionist precepts of Manifest Destiny, and although he first attempted to acquire southwestern territory peacefully, President Polk failed to satisfy this burden, instead choosing to sacrifice “American blood” for the offensive expansion of his