50 Fun Facts About Manifest Destiny

At which San Antonio mission did Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie die during the Texas Revolution?

The Alamo fell on March 6, 1836, after a 13-day siege by Mexican troops. Weeks later "Remember the Alamo!" was the Texan battle cry in the fight that won independence.

What name is given to the 1838 forced march west from Georgia on which roughly 4,000 Cherokee died?

The Trail of Tears uprooted about 60,000 people of five southeastern nations over two decades. Gold found on Cherokee land in Georgia had sharpened the push to remove them.

Which French leader, facing renewed war with Britain, sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States?

Napoleon Bonaparte dropped his plans for a New World empire after France failed to crush the slave uprising in Saint-Domingue. The $15 million sale nearly doubled the size of the United States.

Which wagon train, snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in 1846–47, saw its survivors resort to cannibalism?

The Donner Party lost weeks on an untested shortcut, the Hastings Cutoff, and reached the mountains too late in the year. Of its 87 members, 48 survived.

What nickname was given to the fortune seekers who rushed to California after gold was found there in 1848?

Forty-niners took their name from 1849, the peak year of the rush. About 300,000 people came to California, roughly half of them by sea.

From which empire did the United States buy Alaska in 1867 for $7.2 million, roughly two cents an acre?

Russia, beaten in the Crimean War, doubted it could defend the remote colony against Britain in any future conflict. Secretary of State William Seward negotiated the sale.

Which disease, spread by fouled water at crowded campsites, swept the Oregon Trail in epidemics from 1849 to 1855?

Cholera killed up to 3 percent of all travelers in those epidemic years. Disease was the trail's main killer, and travelers had no idea that contaminated water carried it.

Workers from which country made up the great majority of the Central Pacific Railroad's workforce by 1868?

China supplied some 12,000 of the laborers who drove the line over the Sierra Nevada. Unlike white crews, they had to pay for their own food out of their wages.

Which mail service of 1860–61 cut delivery from Missouri to California to about 10 days, then went bankrupt?

The Pony Express lasted only 18 months, its riders switching to fresh horses at relay stations all the way to Sacramento. It closed two days after the transcontinental telegraph was finished in October 1861.

Which animal, the Plains tribes' main source of food, was hunted almost to extinction by the late 1880s?

The bison once numbered in the tens of millions. General William T. Sherman reportedly called shooting the herds the quickest way to make Plains tribes settle down.

According to the 1845 essay that coined 'manifest destiny', who or what had given Americans the whole continent?

Providence, the essay said, had allotted the continent "for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions". Expansion was cast as a God-given mission to spread republican democracy.

Which New York editor is credited with coining 'manifest destiny' in an 1845 essay urging the annexation of Texas?

John L. O'Sullivan first used the phrase in an essay titled "Annexation" in the Democratic Review. It caught on only after his political opponents criticized it.

In John Gast's painting American Progress, what does the giant figure of Columbia lay across the plains?

Telegraph wire runs from one of Columbia's hands, and she carries a school book in the other. She leads settlers, stagecoaches and steam trains from the settled East toward the West.

Which 'dark horse' Democrat won the presidency in 1844 on a pledge to annex Texas and claim all of Oregon?

James K. Polk pledged to serve only one term and kept his word, one of the few presidents to make and keep such a promise. He left office in 1849.

Which 1840s slogan demanded the whole Oregon Country, also claimed by Britain?

"54°40′ or Fight" named the latitude of the disputed region's far northern limit. Often described as an 1844 campaign slogan, it actually appeared only by January 1846.

Which line of latitude did the 1846 Oregon Treaty fix as the US border from the Rockies to the Pacific?

The 49th parallel had marked the border east of the Rockies since 1818, and the treaty simply ran it on to the coast. Britain kept the whole of Vancouver Island.

Which New-York Tribune editor is often credited with the advice 'Go West, young man, and grow up with the country'?

Horace Greeley favored westward expansion, but nobody has proven who first put the line in print. A rival claim credits an 1851 Indiana editorial by John Soule, though no 1851 issue of that paper contains it.

Which Kentucky statesman, known as the Great Compromiser, lost the 1844 election after wavering on annexing Texas?

Henry Clay conspicuously waffled on Texas, and it cost him. In New York the small anti-slavery Liberty Party drew more votes than the margin by which he lost the state.

Which major party of the 1840s, the Democrats' chief rival, tended to oppose the Mexican–American War and new territory?

The Whigs did not survive the quarrel that expansion opened: within a decade of the war, the dispute over slavery in the new territories had torn them apart.

Which 1823 policy, revived by expansionists in 1845, warned Europe against founding new colonies in the Americas?

The Monroe Doctrine was written chiefly by John Quincy Adams. In 1845 it was reinterpreted to tell European nations not to interfere with American expansion westward.

Who led the Texan army to victory at San Jacinto and became the first president of the Republic of Texas?

Sam Houston won the battle in a fight that lasted just 18 minutes. He is also the only person ever elected governor of two different US states, Tennessee and Texas.

Which Mexican general and president, captured the day after San Jacinto, signed treaties pulling his army out of Texas?

Santa Anna took Mexico's presidency some eleven times, by one historian's count. A decade after losing Texas he was commanding the Mexican army again when the United States invaded.

Which outgoing president signed the joint resolution annexing Texas in March 1845, three days before leaving office?

John Tyler had watched the Senate reject his annexation treaty in 1844. A joint resolution needed only simple majorities in each house, so he asked Congress for one instead.

Which river did the United States claim as Texas's southern border when Mexico insisted on the Nueces, farther north?

The Rio Grande claim took in a broad strip that Mexico regarded as its own. When Mexican cavalry attacked a US patrol there in April 1846, Congress declared war.

The 1848 treaty that ended the Mexican–American War, costing Mexico over half its territory, is named for which town?

Guadalupe Hidalgo, where the treaty was signed, is now part of Mexico City. The United States paid $15 million and took on $3.25 million in debts that Mexico owed to American citizens.

Which first-term congressman and future president demanded to be shown the 'spot' where the Mexican–American War began?

Abraham Lincoln submitted eight "Spot Resolutions" asking whether the first blood had really been shed on American ground. The House never acted on them.

Which Massachusetts writer spent a night in jail for refusing a poll tax in protest at the Mexican–American War?

Henry David Thoreau turned the experience into the essay "Civil Disobedience". It went on to influence Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Which general, nicknamed 'Old Rough and Ready', rode his Mexican–American War victories to the presidency in 1848?

Zachary Taylor had never held political office, or even voted, before he ran. He died just 16 months into his term.

Which future president, a lieutenant in the Mexican–American War, later called it one of the most unjust ever waged?

Ulysses S. Grant wrote in his memoirs that the Civil War was "largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war", adding that nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions.

What name is given to the 1846 uprising in which American settlers at Sonoma declared California a republic?

The Bear Flag Revolt produced a breakaway republic that lasted from June 14 to July 9, 1846. It ended when a US Navy officer arrived in Sonoma with the Stars and Stripes.

Which explorer, called 'the Pathfinder' for his western expeditions, was the first Republican presidential candidate?

John C. Frémont lost the 1856 election to James Buchanan. Less than a decade earlier he had been court-martialed after a quarrel over who was the rightful military governor of California.

Which 1853 deal bought a strip of southern Arizona and New Mexico from Mexico as a route for a southern railroad?

The Gadsden Purchase cost $10 million and added the land south of the Gila River. The flatter route it offered was finally used for a transcontinental line completed in the early 1880s.

Which 1846 proposal by a Pennsylvania congressman would have banned slavery in all land taken from Mexico?

The Wilmot Proviso passed the House twice and failed in the Senate both times. The votes split North against South instead of along party lines, foreshadowing the conflict to come.

Which 1854 law scrapped the Missouri Compromise line and set pro- and anti-slavery settlers fighting each other?

The Kansas–Nebraska Act was introduced to open new land and help build a transcontinental railroad. Instead rival settlers flooded in to swing the vote on slavery, and the fighting became "Bleeding Kansas".

Which package of five bills admitted California as a free state while giving the South a tougher Fugitive Slave Act?

The Compromise of 1850 stalled as one package, so Stephen Douglas steered it through Congress as five separate bills. It only temporarily defused the tension between slave and free states.

Which third party ran Martin Van Buren for president in 1848 to keep slavery out of the western territories?

Free Soil candidate Van Buren, a former president, won 10.1 percent of the national vote. No third party in American history had done so well up to that point.

Which enslaved man's 1857 Supreme Court case ended with a ruling that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories?

Dred Scott sued for his freedom after his owners took him to live in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was illegal. The court also held that Black Americans could not be citizens.

Which 1854 document by three US diplomats in Europe urged seizing Cuba if Spain refused to sell it?

The Ostend Manifesto followed an earlier $100 million American offer, which Spain had rejected, saying it would sooner see the island sunk into the ocean.

Which Central American country did the American filibuster William Walker take over, ruling as its president in 1856–57?

Nicaragua's self-made president relegalized slavery there, though he never managed to put it into practice. A coalition of Central American armies forced him out in 1857.

Which president signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, pushing eastern tribes onto land west of the Mississippi?

Andrew Jackson's removal bill squeaked through the House by 101 votes to 97. Tennessee congressman Davy Crockett was among those who spoke out against it.

The Indian Territory set aside for tribes removed from the East lay mostly in which present-day state?

Oklahoma became a state in 1907 by merging Indian Territory with its western neighbor, which ended the promise of a separate territory for Native nations.

At which South Dakota site did the 7th Cavalry kill between 250 and 300 Lakota in December 1890?

Wounded Knee left roughly 200 women and children among the dead by the official count. About twenty soldiers were nevertheless awarded the Medal of Honor for it.

Which cavalry officer, whose 1874 expedition reported gold in the Black Hills, died with his men at the Little Bighorn?

George A. Custer's expedition set off a gold rush onto land that treaties had promised to the Sioux. Two years later he was killed in the war that followed.

Which 1887 law broke up tribal reservations into individual plots and opened the rest to white settlers?

The Dawes Act cut the land owned by Native Americans from 138 million acres in 1887 to 48 million acres by 1934, over the 47 years it stayed in force.

Which Nez Perce leader, surrendering about 40 miles short of Canada, is quoted as saying 'I will fight no more forever'?

Chief Joseph and his people had outmaneuvered the Army for over three months, traveling more than 1,170 miles before they were cornered in northern Montana.

Which president bought the Louisiana Territory in 1803 despite doubting that the Constitution allowed it?

Thomas Jefferson considered asking for a constitutional amendment to justify the deal, but his cabinet talked him out of it.

Which Shoshone woman, carrying her infant son, traveled with Lewis and Clark as an interpreter?

Sacagawea helped the expedition simply by being there. As Clark noted in his journal, a woman traveling with a party of men was taken as a token of peace.

Which 1862 law offered 160 acres of western land to any settler who lived on it and farmed it for five years?

The Homestead Act and its successors gave away more than 160 million acres, nearly 10 percent of the total area of the United States, to 1.6 million claimants.

Which valley, then part of Mexico, did Brigham Young choose in 1847 as the new home of the Mormon pioneers?

Salt Lake became the goal of a trek that about 70,000 people eventually made. The first arrivals entered Mexican territory without authorization, months before it passed to the United States.

Which Pacific island nation, whose Queen Liliʻuokalani was overthrown in 1893, did the United States annex in 1898?

Hawaii was annexed by a joint resolution of Congress, which needed only a majority vote in both houses. Texas had been brought into the Union by the same route half a century earlier.