Manifest Destiny Vocabulary

The following vocabulary should be used in your Free Response Question Essay. Incorporate each term into the essay in accordance with its correct historical context.

Manifest Destiny

The definition of Manifest Destiny is firmly established by the idea that The United States should occupy all the land between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Territory

an area of land under the jurisdiction of a ruler or state.

Great Plains

The Great Plains is the name of a high plateau of grasslands that is located in parts of the United States and Canada in North America and has an area of approximately 1,125,000 square miles (2,900,000 square km). Also called the Great American Desert, the Great Plains lie between the Rio Grande in the south and the delta of the Mackenzie River at the Arctic Ocean in the north and between the Interior Lowlands and the Canadian Shield on the east and the Rocky Mountains on the west. Some sections are extremely flat, while other areas contain tree-covered mountains. Low hills and incised stream valleys are common.

Mississippi River

The Mississippi River is the longest river that flows from the north to the south and separates the east from the west of the United States. It is the second-longest river in the United States.

Missouri River

It is the longest river which flows into the Mississippi, and is part of the upper midwest and west of the United States river system.

Continental Divide

In North America, the Continental Divide is a series of mountain ridges stretching from Alaska to Mexico, marking the separation of drainage basins that empty into the Pacific Ocean or Bering Sea from those that empty into the Arctic or Atlantic Oceans or the Gulf of Mexico.

Expansionism

Is the policies and practices of the United States of invading foreign lands to expand territory, political influence, or ideology.

American Exceptionalism

It is the belief that America occupies a special place among the countries of the world.

Sectionalism

It is the idea that individual communities of people, sharing a set of cultural, economic and geographic realities, create individuated sections and loyalties within a larger polity, and it existed long before and continued long after the Civil War. Sectionalism beliefs continue until World War II when the United States becomes more unified in its culture, economics, and politics.