America Was Not Destined to Move West

America used Manifest Destiny as a way to justify genocide with the fact that they had more land. To the people who supported Manifest Destiny, everything was all right as long as they had more land.

During the Indian Removal Act, the white settlers took land that was rightfully the Native Americans. The Native Americans then took a trail, nicknamed The Trail of Tears. On The Trail of Tears, twenty-five percent of the Indians who took the trail passed away. The act was ordered by Andrew Jackson, the president at the time, and I think that he was doing it not for the country's good but his own.

One reason I think this is because he didn't have the best relationship with native Americans. Andrew Jackson fought in a battle against Native Americans. This would lead me to believe that he didn't like them.

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If he did issue the act for himself then that would mean he was killing people just because he didn't like them. Because of the Indian Removal Act, the Native American population was severely decreased. The Indian Removal Act is similar to what happened in 1986-1989 when Saddam Hussein issued the killing of hundreds of thousands of Kurds. Saddam's reason for killing all of those, innocent, people was simply just because he didn't like them.

After Texas was annexed and made a state, Mexico and Texas were still disputing where the border was. Because Mexico did not agree with the border that Texas wanted, that meant America was not getting its way.

Surprisingly America did not immediately go to war. Polk attempted to avoid war by sending John Slidell and offering $30 million for Texas, California, and New Mexico. When Mexico still did not agree America went to war with them. A lot of lives ended up being lost, and that's when Mexico ended up giving Texas the border they wanted. This to me was an example of America being greedy. They went to war and lost American lives just to get more land.

Another example of America being greedy is the Gold Rush. There was gold found and once word got out, people flocked to where it was found. Miners weren't very lucky, they usually only found around $10 per day. This wasn't enough money to pay for the extremely high priced goods. The prices were so high that a single egg typically cost one dollar. Another hardship that occurred was that most miners would stand in knee-deep icy water all day. The national minimum wage is $7.25 per hour so if you think about it they were making a little more per day than what most people make per hour. The miners would have found more gold and made more money had there not been so many miners that went to the area. One other thing that occurred was that a lot of California residents ended up losing their land because of the Gold Rush. Most of the people who lost their land were not able to prove that it was their land. This was mostly because of boomtowns that would pop up on people's land. This resulted in either more people becoming miners or people completely losing their homes and land.

My final reason as to why America was not destined to move west is because Manifest Destiny led to a great surplus of slaves. More states were entering the Union and that meant that there were more slave states. More slave states meant slavery increased. Slavery was one way, in my opinion, of showing how greedy people were. Some plantation owners measured their wealth by the number of slaves they owned. This was one of the best examples of greed there is. They were treating people badly just because of their skin color and then bragging about that. Slavery was probably a main cause of the Civil War to happen. This wasn't good of course because it divided the country. I say this because there were states that were considered "free" states, which didn't allow slaves. They didn't want slavery, but some states did. I'm sure this was somewhat dividing because some people wanted one thing and others wanted the complete opposite.