What are the basic ideas behind Manifest Destiny?

My answer here contains portions of a much longer answer I wrote in reply to an earlier Quora question about manifest destiny and the fate of the South during the Civil War. read more

The basic idea of the phrase was to obscure the underlying purpose of conquering someone else's land and to cover over the intention and plan to do so with a justification - and one that more than suggested this was no one's doing but rather was just being 'manifested' - a rising up of destiny - the implication being that it was 'destiny' - not a deliberate decision made by policymakers. read more

was asked by Shelly Notetaker on May 31 2017. 187 students have viewed the answer on StudySoup. View the answer on StudySoup. read more