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What guiding principle of America is highlighted in John L. O'Sullivan's idea of Manifest Destiny?
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John L. O'Sullivan's idea of Manifest Destiny highlights democracy as a guiding principle of America. He argues that the U.S., as a democratic nation, represents progress and is destined to expand across North America, spreading its superior civilization. O'Sullivan links democracy with godliness, suggesting that America's democratic ideals justify territorial expansion. However, his concept of democracy is racially exclusive, emphasizing white supremacy and the inevitability of American dominance over allegedly inferior races.
O'Sullivan establishes and explores the concept of "manifest destiny" in two articles in the United States Democratic Review, one in 1839 and the other in 1845. In both instances, he argues that the United States, as a democratic nation, represents the future and that the Mexican government, as well as the monarchies of Europe, embodies the past. Indeed, his 1839 essay is entitled "The Great Nation of Futurity," and in it O'Sullivan claims that "we [the USA] are the nation of progress, of individual freedom, of universal enfranchisement." The most important principle guiding the United States, then, is democracy. But it should be noted that O'Sullivan views democracy as an exclusively white domain. He does not mean, when he claims that the United States is a nation of "universal enfranchisement," that the nation should be a place where all peoples should have political power irrespective of their race. The...
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United States is a nation governed by white men, an "Anglo-Saxon" race that is "destined" to overcome allegedly weaker races like Mexicans and Native Americans. In his 1845 essay, O'Sullivan makes this point clear, claiming that the United States would soon take California from Mexico:
The Anglo-Saxon foot is already on its [California's] borders. Already the advance guard of the irresistible army of Anglo-Saxon emigration has begun to pour down upon it, armed with the plough and the rifle, and marking its trail with schools and colleges, courts and representative halls, mills and meeting-houses.
Note that O'Sullivan regards the "schools," "mills," and "meeting houses" as markers of civilization and democracy and believes that these were the exclusive province of white people. So while we focus on the rhetoric of "equality" and "democracy" that O'Sullivan celebrates, we should remember two things. First, he used these traits to justify the expropriation of land from other people by military force if necessary; and second, he saw the existence of democracy and modernity in supposedly "Anglo-Saxon" American society as evidence of racial superiority.
References
According to O'Sullivan's idea of Manifest Destiny, the United States needed to spread continuously over the continent of North America. He believed that the land was given by God to the United States for the purpose of spreading its superior civilization and its form of government. According to O'Sullivan, the most important American principle was its commitment to a democratic style of government, and it was this commitment to democracy that made the spread of American government and dominance inevitable. O' Sullivan believed that American democracy was so far superior to other forms of government that American control of the continent would happen on its own without the force of intervention. It was this connection between democracy and godliness that made this idea so powerful in the American mind. Americans came to believe that it was fated for the US to expand—first westward and then abroad.
In this essay, O'Sullivan argues that the most important principle that guides America is the principle of equality. We can see this, among other places, in the following passage.
The American people having derived their origin from many other nations, and the Declaration of National Independence being entirely based on the great principle of human equality...
O'Sullivan is arguing that the fact that the US is based on this principle makes it unique and superior. O'Sullivan argues that other countries have been based on principles that are corrupt and immoral. Because of this, those countries are not great countries like the US is and do not deserve to have a great destiny. He says
What friend of human liberty, civilization, and refinement, can cast his view over the past history of the monarchies and aristocracies of antiquity, and not deplore that they ever existed?
To him, the principle that a country is founded on determines its worthiness. The US was founded on a great principle--that of equality. Therefore, it has a great destiny.