Manifest Destiny

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Manifest Destiny is an ideology the Democratic Party in the US under president Jefferson invented in order to cross the Frontier into unknown land for expension of the United States. Both the Republican party and the Federal party of New England were opposed to it. At first Columbia, who was symbolic for Manifest Destiny, was based on the appearance of an Indian princess (or at least Europeans called her that) but later they decided to make her look more European and resemble some Greek goddess.

This painting by John Gast called "American Progress" illustrates how people believed that Indians and wild animals were fleeing from the expension of the railways. It was customary for Europeans at the time to speak of the "taming the land" that they occupied when the surrounding land used to be called "wilderness".

Once Indians and white people had agreed on a Frontier that the whites had promised never to violate or cross, but somehow Manifest Destiny was a way to make this possible. Crucial to Manifest Destiny was the famous Lewis and Clark expedition. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were army soldiers who's task it was to map the then still unknown territories and discover tribes of Indians and study them in order to aid western expension of the United States.

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Lewis and Clark

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