O.K. I am trying to sum up the entire oh... I don't know seven years of the Manifest Destiny, but I'm coming up short. I understand the affects it had on the American expansionism, but the build up of it is where it's killing me. Just a little confused I suppose. Any Help?
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Depends on the prompt you are trying to answer - expansionism can be seen as the cause for civil war (debate over slavery in this new territory), can be seen as a sign that America is financially and militarily strong enough to start picking on our neighbors (at least weak ones like Mexico and the Caribbean), and can also be seen as a unifying force that all Americans could support.
Regarding expansionism, US had to set its sights pretty low. The reason we stayed out of wars for so long was because we didn't have the money or the manpower to fight one, but by the 1840s we did, so we risked war with England, sent filibusters to the Caribbean, invaded Mexico, and all that. But we stayed local, what one might call "continentalism". Civil War and Reconstruction put an end to that for a while. Not until the 1880s-90s would we seriously look beyond our borders again (Spanish-American War).
Regarding impact on slavery, Whigs, Democrats, Free-Soilers, Republicans all had views on the status of slavery in the new territories. Whigs actually fought expansionism at times because of the fear that any new territories would have slavery. Wilmot Proviso tried to stop slavery in Mexican Cession, for example. One of the reasons it took 9 years to annex Texas was because once admitted it would mean more slave territory. Very controversial. The compromises over slavery in this period, such as the Compromise of 1850 when California joined, very much contributed to the rising tensions between north and south that would result in a war.
Thanks for the help on the Manifest Destiny. It gave me a new understanding on how and why it occurred and the spirit it established.