For Two Centuries, Americans Had Been Progressively Taking Over And Es

For two centuries, Americans had been progressively taking over and establishing a continent. People felt that westward expansion between the 17th century and the 1840s was ?golden', but dangerous. People felt it was feasible only through patient work and timorous calamities. With each year of national growth, the confidence and power of the people was magnified, and every step forward divulged a broader horizon. Americans began to feel that the whole continent was to be theirs to do as they please with. It was theirs to exploit and theirs to make into a great, unified nation. This was a land of opportunity, a showcase to manifest the goodness of democratic institutions, tangible proof that the Americans were God's chosen people. John L. O'Sullivan, a journalist, summed America's new atmosphere up in a sentance in 1845. "The fulffillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent alloted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions". Manifest destiny was the belief of nineteenth-century Americans that their nation's territorial expansion was inevitable and ultimately a good thing, even for those being conquered. This conviction helped Americans justify the aggressive acquisition of new territories in the 1840s and later in the 1890s. Due to manifest destiny, politicl boundaries became insignificant and expansion was occuring rapidly.