when addressing the electorate .
This belief in the "manifest destiny" of the United States to expand ever-westward was fueled by the constant in America's 19th Century population growth: immigration. Untouched by the fratricidal psychosis of the Civil War, every year hundreds of thousands more immigrants, primarily from Europe, ventured into the American "frontier" (or at least, for those immigrants staying in the settled eastern regions of the United States, they were "pioneers" in their minds). Hand-in-glove with this sense of manifest destiny on the frontier was that other constant of the American Dream: rugged individualism, a term so constantly used to this day as to seem almost the centerpiece of the national identity. This frontier mindset is an important element in the next facet of post-Civil War expansion we will examine, the transition from "laissez faire" mercantilism to corporate capitalism, because it was so firmly believed by the majority of parties involved.
You are already the great continental power of America. But does that content you? I trust it does not. You want the commerce of the world... The nation that draws most from the earth and fabricates most, and sells the most to foreign nations, must be and will be the great power of the earth.
Did everyone believe the United States could leap forward in unbridled expansion? Even from the earliest years of the nation, the answer is - no: the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the 1846-47 Mexican War, numerous Indian wars - these were policy decisions to push the nation's borders ever-wider than the status quo. As early as the 1850s, government policymakers were looking to Asia as the ultimate "western shore" the United States needed to exploit in order to maintain her expansionist momentum; "Seward's Folly," the 1867 purchase of Alaska, was another forward-looking policy aimed at relieving pressure on the continental limitations of the nation. But t...