Manifest Destiny: Texas and Oregon

By the 1840s, many Americans believed in "Manifest Destiny," a phrase coined by a newspaper writer in 1845 to describe the widely held belief that the United States was destined to expand all the way across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. This belief fueled rapid expansion, though it is honestly worth remembering how directly that expansion connected to the displacement of Native nations described last week. Texas showed one path to expansion: American settlers, invited into Mexican Texas in the 1820s, grew increasingly at odds with the Mexican government over cultural and political differences, including slavery, which Mexico had outlawed. Texans declared independence in 1836 after the defeat of Texan defenders at the Battle of the Alamo, which became a rallying cry, "Remember the Alamo," and won independence weeks later at the Battle of San Jacinto. Texas existed as its own independent republic for nearly a decade before joining the United States as a state in 1845.

Oregon showed a very different path. The United States and Britain both claimed the Oregon Territory in the Pacific Northwest, but rather than going to war over it, an 1846 treaty peacefully divided the land near the 49th parallel, extending the United States border to the Pacific in the north without a single shot fired. One more conflict, the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, would soon add California and the rest of the Southwest to the United States as well -- the very land Spain and Mexico had ruled for so long, and the setting for next week's discovery at Sutter's Mill.