During the Mexican War, Americans radically transformed their ideas about Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. The Mexican War offered itself up as the first of such interactions between the neighboring republics. The Mexican during the War was met largely with criticism from the American public, a criticism aided by the work of the press. While a vast majority of the presses disparaged the Mexican populace on a variety of subjects, not all papers denigrated the Mexicans as some inferior population in need of assistance from the United States in order to survive and reach a proper level of civilization. Papers such as the Catholic and abolitionist presses sought to portray the Mexican in a more positive light. Analysis of these spheres of influence of the various presses offers up a genesis of the Mexican within the American imagination.

This thesis examines the experience of the Mormon Battalion, a group of five hundred Mormon soldiers commissioned by President James K. Polk to enlist in the U.S. military and aid in the newly declared war against Mexico in 1846. The war was a result of a belligerent and aggressive form of territorial expansion justified by the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Polk and many other Americans believed it was their Manifest Destiny to dominate a continental nation, and the Mormon Battalion was assigned to march to California to conquer Mexican territory for the United States. An examination of the Mormon soldiers' journals and letters, as well as official Mormon Church records and correspondence, reveals that, despite participating in a war that promoted aggressive expansion, the Mormons' understanding of Manifest Destiny contained unique perspectives regarding racial hierarchies and displays of masculinity, key elements of that popular ideology. The peculiar approach that the Mormons' had to Manifest Destiny was directly influenced by their history as a persecuted body of believers. Ultimately, the Mormon soldiers agreed to volunteer for the war not because they wanted to express patriotism, but because they had a firm dedication to their church and resolved obedience to their leader, Brigham Young. Additionally, an examination of popular contemporary media outlets and their responses to the enlistment of the Mormon Battalion, as well as the relevant historiography, is included to demonstrate the evolution of the Mormon Battalion in historical memory, both inside and outside the Mormon Church. The treatment of the battalion by popular media outlets reflected changing attitudes regarding the implications of promoting a martial and aggressive society, while the role of the battalion in Mormon history evolved in tandem with Mormons' fluctuating identities as U.S. citizens.

My work explores the complex social geography of modern society and the intricate relationship between mankind and the environment. Through this work I explore the past and present lineage of manifest destiny, from its beginnings in Europe to western expansion in America, to forms it has takes in contemporary America. These ceramic forms serve as the conceptual grounds to explore the romanticizing of the western landscape especially from an individual and group perspective. I simultaneously celebrate the history of the pastoral life while questioning the authenticity, and motivations of that lifestyle, and use this platform as a jumping off point to ask questions about humanities complicated relationship with nature. Through hand-labor, contemplative making, and a reverence for tradition, I explore both interrelated and divergent human perceptions using clay as my primary medium.

Between 1845 and 1848, the United States doubled the size of its land holdings in North America, as Texas, Oregon, California, New Mexico, and other western regions were placed under the umbrella of U.S. sovereignty. Echoing John L. O’Sullivan’s famous phrase, historians have deemed these acquisitions “Manifest Destiny,” and have assumed that U.S. expansion – whether for good or ill – was foreordained. Yet this understanding fundamentally fails to take into account the history of the decade prior to 1846, when Americans throughout the continent believed that it was more likely that the United States would not expand beyond its borders. Examining five groups of Americans operating at the nations geographic and/or social margins, this dissertation argues that these groups hoped to achieve sovereignty outside of the United States. Nurtured by Jacksonian rhetoric that celebrated local government and personal ambition, and wary of – and at times running from – a United States mired in depression and uncertainty, these Americans were, in effect, forming their own “breakaway republics.” To validate their goal of self-sovereignty, breakaway republicans looked to the independent Republic of Texas, often referring to Texas to explain their objectives, or looking to Texas as an ally in achieving them. Between 1836 and 1845 – what this dissertation defines as “the Texas Moment” – Texas’ independent existence presupposed a different map of North America, where peoples of the northern, southern, and western borderlands carved out polities for themselves. With Texas in mind, even Americans who did not share the goals of breakaway republicans believed that independent American-led polities on the continent were likely, acceptable, and perhaps even desired. However, to a cabal of Democratic expansionists and James K. Polk in particular, this future was unacceptable. After winning the presidency after an unlikely series of contingencies in 1844, Polk and his allies laid the groundwork for a dramatic expansion of the U.S. state – and thereby a dramatic expansion of U.S. territory. Their actions ended the Texas Moment, thereby subsuming the actions of breakaway republicans and hiding their collective existence from later historians. Ultimately, the events of the mid-1840s were hardly the logical culmination of America’s expansionist destiny, but a profound rupture of the status quo. / History

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Charles W. Sanders / Americans during the first half of the nineteenth-century were obsessed with expansion. God had bestowed upon them an innate superiority in nearly all things. American settlers were culturally, economically, racially and politically superior to all others. But how accurate are such statements? Did a majority of Americans support such declarations? The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how Americans wrote and read about expansion. Doing so reveals that for every citizen extolling the unique greatness of Americans, one questioned such an assumption. For every American insisting that the nation must expand to the Pacific coast to be successful there was one who disdained expansion and sought to industrialize what territory the nation already possessed. Americans during the first half of the nineteenth century were of many minds about expansion. The destiny of the United States was anything but manifest. Using a wealth of nineteenth century newspapers this dissertation demonstrates that the concept of Manifest Destiny was far less popular than previously imagined. Newspapers were the primary source of information and their contents endlessly debated. Editors from around the country expressed their own views and eagerly published pertinent letters to the editor that further detailed how Americans perceived expansion. While many people have often read John O’Sullivan’s rousing words he was not necessarily indicative of American sentiment. For every article espousing the importance of acquiring Florida to deny it to the British there was one deriding the notion because they felt Florida to be nothing but a worthless swamp filled with hostile Indians. American justification and opposition to territorial expansion followed no grand strategy. Instead, its most fascinating characteristic was its dynamic nature. In the Southwest expansionist proponents argued that annexation would liberate the land from Papist masters, while opponents questioned the morality of such a conquest. Encouraging or discouraging territorial expansion could take on innumerable variations and it is this flexible rhetoric that the dissertation focuses upon. The debate that raged in the public forum over expansion was both heated and fascinating. The voices of both pro and anti-expansionists were crucial to the development of antebellum America.

When creating a current work, artists cannot ignore the images that have preceded theirs. The history of a medium and the related history of subject matter is vital to the meaning of a new art work. Each sign and symbol has a connotation out of the artists’ control. The developed meaning of a symbol is inseparable for the viewer regardless of the acknowledgment of that meaning by the artist. To work with imagery and not address it’s historical context is to perpetuate it’s meaning. The only way to not state what has already been stated is to critically engage with the preexisting meaning of the imagery. An artist can combine symbols to create dual meanings or juxtapositions of meaning, or present the imagery in a way that complicates what it already signifies. “Apparent Fate,”my combined negative, photographic mural, uses imagery from Yosemite National Park to comment on photography’s function or purpose in history and in the current economic, political, environmental, and social conditions in California and society’s current stance on Manifest Destiny. How have the ideas of innate rights over people and places changed over time in American culture?

Thesis (M.A.)--Duquesne University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 120-126) and index.

This thesis is an unbiased attempt to look a Senator Albert Jeremiah Beveridge, a man who made history in his own time in his own way. Moreover, this thesis attempt to objectively present Senator Beveridge in the context of the era in which he lived as a generating force in America's colonial adventure at the turn of the century. Senator Albert J. Beveridge, a Hamiltonian nationalist by inheritance, believed in a strong central government. Furthermore, he believed that the end of government should be the gaining of power and material forces, redeeming the redeemable nations of the world and subjugating the inferior races under American law and American institutions, religious, political, social and economic. Reviving the spirit of manifest destiny at the close of the last century, after it had waned during the Civil War era, Albert Beveridge and other expansionists plunged deeply into the fight to build an American colonial empire.

<p>This is a paper about the process of creating meaning in speeches held by president Bush after the terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001. People need tools to orient and understand the surrounding world. They need to create a meaningful orientation in a chaotic world. Some meaning is favoured due to the prevailing social structures. Thru language discourses are produced that helps us understand how the world is constructed. The national state is a discourse that make the world understandable. The discourse create a natural perception of the world as divided into nations. A grand narrative is a story that explain incomprehensive occurrences in society. In times of war these stories become crucial. It is necessary to demonise the enemy to legitimise ones actions. </p><p>In the US a myth of origin is built around the concept of Manifest Destiny. The myth constitutes that the nation has a unique mission from God to save the rest of the world. In the story retelling the events of September 11th president Bush presents a solution to the problem of terrorists threatening to divide the nation. The nation is constantly on the brink of falling apart. The solution is unity. President Bush recreate the story of USA and the terrorist attacks in a meaningful way, and portrays the nation as a natural entity. The enemy is the evil force that unites the nation.</p>

This is a study of Charles Dickens David Copperfield and Herman Melville Moby Dick from a Marxist perspective, exploring the different manifestations of the capitalist system, with critical reference to the theories of Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton. It will attempt to understand cultural differences, values and moral codes, that the two novels reveal about Victorian England and Antebellum America, at this point in literary history, the decade of time with 1850 at its centre. The thesis will explore how the cultural legacy and ambitions of each nation is represented in each of the novels. By comparing the central themes of each work, the study will attempt to illustrate how capitalism is expressed specifically in each nation.