Reviewed by:

• A Failed Vision of Empire: The Collapse of Manifest Destiny, 1845–1872 by Daniel J. Burge
• Alice L. Baumgartner (bio)

Perhaps no term from the nineteenth century is as familiar in the twenty-first as manifest destiny. At times, the phrase is a source of national pride. At a Fourth of July speech at Mount Rushmore in 2020, then President Donald J. Trump congratulated Americans for having “pursued our Manifest Destiny across the ocean, into the uncharted wilderness, over the tallest mountains, and then into the skies and even into the stars.”¹ But manifest destiny has also been a cause for collective reflection and perhaps even repentance, driven as the rhetoric was by virulent anti-Catholicism, the flagrant disregard for the rights of other nations, and the deeply racist conviction that Anglo-Saxons had a providential mission to spread “civilization.” In 2019, the A.P. United States History exam asked test-takers to analyze the frontispiece of Frank Triplett’s Illustrated History of the United States (1883), which showed a wagon train making its way west toward the setting sun. According to the scoring guidelines, credit would be given to answers that connected the image to “Manifest Destiny” and its association with “white male settlers” and “ideas of racial superiority”²

For all of the debates over whether to interpret manifest destiny in a positive or negative light, the definition of the term is mostly uncontested. A shorthand for the westward expansion of the United States, manifest destiny is often described as both wildly popular and ultimately successful. Drawing on newspaper articles, popular culture, congressional debates, and the papers of political heavyweights like Daniel Webster, Daniel J. Burge’s important book challenges this definition, and, in the process, deepens our broader understandings of U.S. empire.

The term “manifest destiny” first appeared in an unsigned article published in the United States Magazine, and Democratic Review in 1845, in the midst of debates over whether Congress would sign a joint resolution to annex the Republic of Texas. The author, likely the Democratic Review’s editor, John L. O’Sullivan, championed annexation with the argument that it would fulfill [End Page 23] “our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions” (p. 3). All of this talk of multiplying millions and overspreading the continent was wishful thinking. O’Sullivan was writing at a time when sectional controversy threatened to derail the annexation of Texas.³ Expanding on the work of Thomas Hietala, who argued in Manifest Design (2003) that manifest destiny served to reassure Americans who feared for the future of their country, and Stephanie LeMenager, who showed in Manifest and Other Destinies (2004) that authors like James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving turned to fiction because they lacked a shared vision of what the future would bring, Burge makes the convincing case that this term was coined in order to assuage fears about the destiny of the United States (p. 14).

This uncertainty did not make the rhetoric any less grandiose. Reaching the Pacific was not ambitious enough for O’Sullivan. Instead, he predicted that the United States would “overspread the continent.” Building on the work of Lois Bannister Merk and Frederick Merk, Burge shows that to nineteenth-century Americans, manifest destiny was not synonymous with westward expansion. Rather it involved a much more capacious vision of a republic spanning the entire continent. Some proponents of manifest destiny had even broader ambitions, setting their sights beyond the continent. In 1875, the New Orleans Bulletin wrote that it was “a prevalent opinion, a fixed idea, with a numerous class of American citizens that the Republic of the United States is of necessity bound, forced, and obligated and compelled to expand her boundary lines until they shall be made to embrace all of North and South America and the neighboring islands” (p. 169).

While expansionists disagreed over whether their republic should extend across the continent or the entire hemisphere...

审阅者：

• 《帝国的失败愿景：昭昭命运的崩溃，1845-1872》丹尼尔·J·伯吉 (Daniel J. Burge)
• 爱丽丝·鲍姆加特纳（简介）

也许十九世纪的术语在二十一世纪是最熟悉的，就像昭昭命运一样。有时，这句话是民族自豪感的源泉。2020 年，在拉什莫尔山举行的国庆节演讲中，时任总统唐纳德·J·特朗普 (Donald J. Trump) 祝贺美国人“跨越海洋，进入未知的荒野，越过最高的山脉，然后进入天空，甚至进入太空，追求我们的昭昭命运”。星星。” ¹但昭昭天命也引发了集体反思，甚至可能是悔改，其驱动因素包括恶毒的反天主教主义、公然无视其他国家的权利，以及盎格鲁-撒克逊人肩负天意使命的深刻种族主义信念。传播“文明”。2019 年，AP 美国历史考试要求考生分析弗兰克·特里普利特 (Frank Triplett) 的《美国历史插图》 (1883)的卷首插画，该卷展示了一辆马车向西驶向夕阳的景象。根据评分指南，将图像与“昭昭命运”及其与“白人男性定居者”和“种族优越思想”联系起来的答案将获得好评²

对于所有关于是否以积极或消极的角度解释昭示命运的争论，该术语的定义大多没有争议。作为美国向西扩张的简写，昭示命运常常被描述为既广受欢迎又最终成功。丹尼尔·J·伯吉（Daniel J. Burge）的这本重要著作借鉴了报纸文章、流行文化、国会辩论以及丹尼尔·韦伯斯特（Daniel Webster）等政治重量级人物的论文，挑战了这一定义，并在此过程中加深了我们对美帝国的更广泛理解。

“昭昭命运”一词首次出现在1845年发表在《美国杂志》和《民主评论》上的一篇未署名文章中，当时正值国会是否会签署吞并德克萨斯共和国的联合决议的争论之中。作者很可能是《民主评论》的编辑约翰·L·奥沙利文 (John L. O'Sullivan)，他支持吞并，理由是这将实现[完第 23 页] “我们的明确命运是遍布普罗维登斯为我们每年的自由发展所分配的大陆”。数以百万计”（第 3 页）。所有关于增加数百万人并遍布整个大陆的言论都是一厢情愿的想法。奥沙利文写作之际，局部争议威胁着德克萨斯州的吞并计划。³托马斯·希塔拉 (Thomas Hietala) 在《宣言设计》(Manifest Design ，2003)中提出，昭示命运可以安抚那些担心国家未来的美国人，而斯蒂芬妮·勒梅纳格 (Stephanie LeMenager) 在《宣言与其他命运》(Manifest and Other Destinies ) (2004) 中表明，像詹姆斯这样的作者费尼莫尔·库珀 (Fenimore Cooper) 和华盛顿·欧文 (Washington Irving) 转向虚构，因为他们对未来缺乏共同的愿景，伯奇令人信服地证明，创造这个术语是为了缓解对美国命运的担忧（第 14 页）。

这种不确定性并没有让这些言辞变得不那么宏大。对于奥沙利文来说，到达太平洋还不够雄心勃勃。相反，他预测美国将“遍布整个非洲大陆”。伯格以路易斯·班尼斯特·默克和弗雷德里克·默克的著作为基础，表明对于 19 世纪的美国人来说，天命并不等同于向西扩张。相反，它涉及到一个横跨整个大陆的更广阔的共和国愿景。一些天命论的支持者有着更广阔的野心，他们将目光投向了非洲大陆之外。1875 年，《新奥尔良公报》写道，这是“许多美国公民阶层的普遍观点和固定观念，即美利坚合众国必须受到约束、被迫、有义务和被迫扩大其边界线，直到他们被迫接受所有北美和南美以及邻近岛屿”（第 169 页）。

尽管扩张主义者对于他们的共和国是否应该扩展到整个大陆还是整个半球存在分歧......