Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion: A Brief History with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture) (Boston & New York: Bedford/ St. Martin's, 2012).
Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2005) ("Was Manifest Destiny gendered? It is the argument of both this image [i.e., John Gast's 1872 American Progress] and this book that it was. Gender concerns shaped both the popular understanding of the meaning of Manifest Destiny and the experience of men and women abroad in the antebellum period. Expansionism in this painting is justified largely because it is domesticated. This illustration resonated with U.S. residents in the post-Civil War era in part because the vision of expansionism as 'progress,' and progress defined as the introduction of domesticity to the wilderness, fit with the hegemonic gender norms of the era. After the upheaval and staggering violence of four years of Civil War, survivors turned away from the heroic individualism and looked toward work and home for meaning. The growth of the country, 'from sea to sea,' in the decades before the war was idealized as an essentially peaceful process, as period when harmony reigned and Americans were unified in pursuit of their destiny. American Progress is a vision of expansion, both domesticated and restrained." "As this study will explore, expansionism didn't always look this way. In the antebellum era, many Americans justified territorial expansion precisely because it was not domesticated. Potential new American territories were embraced by some American men because they offered opportunities for individual heroic initiative and for success in love and war, which seemed to be fading at home. They might not wish to gaze upon an antebellum version of 'American Progress,' featuring a bloody soldier floating over the 'new frontiers' of Central America, the Caribbean, and Hawaii, but the violent implications of such a scene would not be incompatible with their vision of America's territorial future." "While domesticated expansion, as pictured by Gast, had its antebellum proponents, many others embraced a more aggressive expansionism, in which Manifest Destiny would be achieved through the direct and rightful force of arms." Id at 2-3. "This study investigates the meaning of Manifest Destiny for American men and women in the years between the U.S.-Mexican and Civil Wars, based on written accounts from letters and journals to political cartoons and newspapers, " Id. at 5. "This study argues that the American encounter with potential new territories in the antebellum period was shaped by concerns at home, especially evolving gendered ideals and practices. Dramatic changes in American society, economy, and culture reconfigured the meanings of both manhood and womanhood in the 1830s and 1840s. Antebellum Americans lived through an astonishing array of changes, including mass immigration from Europe; the emergence of evangelical Christianity in the Second Great Awakening; the end of bound labor in the North; the beginnings of a 'market revolution,' including specialization in agriculture and dependency on wider markets in even rural areas; changes in print technology; the decline of the artisan workshop; increasing class stratification; and universal white manhood suffrage, All these transformations shaped the ideology and practices of womanhood and manhood, and the meaning of Manifest Destiny, as well." Id. at 6. "This study focuses on what by 1848 had become two preeminent and dueling mid-century masculinities: restrained manhood and martial manhood. Restrained manhood was practiced by men in the North and South who grounded their identities in their families, in the evangelical practice of their Protestant faith, and in success in the business world. Their masculine practices valued expertise. Restrained men were strong proponents of domesticity or 'true womanhood.' They believed that the domestic household was the moral center of the world, and the wife and mother its moral compass. Restrained men worked hard to follow the example of Jesus Christ and to avoid sin. They were generally repulsed by the violent blood sports that captivated many urban working men. They did not drink to excess, and were likely, after the passage of the 1851 Maine temperance law, to support legislation to prohibit the sale of alcohol in other states. [] Restrained men were manly, in the nineteenth-century sense of the term. Their manhood derived from being morally upright, reliable, and brave." Id. at 11-12. "Martial manhood was something else entirely. Martial men rejected the moral standards that guided restrained men; they often drank to excess with pride, and they reveled in their physical strength and ability to dominate both men and women. In a period when economic transformation placed increasing value on expertise, their masculine practices still revolved around dominance. They were not, in general, supporters of the moral superiority of women and the values of domesticity. Martial men believed that the masculine qualities of strength, aggression, and even violence, better defined a true man than did the firm and upright manliness of restrained men. At time they embraced the 'chivalry' of knighthood or other masculine ideals from the past. Martial men could be found in all parties, but the aggressively expansionist discourse of the Democratic Party held a special appeal to these men." Id. at 12. "The gendered culture of Manifest Destiny in the 1850s [] encouraged Northerners and Southerners to turn to violence as a solution to personal and national problems." Id. at 272. "Aggressive expansionism was ultimately a colossal failure. Martial manhood helped turn sectional differences into cause for war. Not only did filibustering [see below for definition of "filibustering."] inflame sectional feelings by introducing the specter of new slave territories at a time when the status of older territories was increasingly contentious, but it also failed to mediate emerging class distinctions, as proponents promised. The men who traveled to Latin America, Cuba, and Mexico failed to locate the magical path to success that eluded them at home. And of course, neither filibustering nor the marital attitudes of travelers helped American interests in Latin America." Id. at 273. "Filibustering referred to private armies invading other countries without official sanction of the U.S. government. Filibusters were men who on their own initiative went to war against foreign nations, often in the face of open hostility from their own governments. The term also was used for the invasions themselves. Although the actions of these mercenaries were clearly illegal, they received the praise and even adulation of aggressive expansionists." Id. at 5.).
