The concept of manifest destiny is as old as the first New Ewngland settlements. Without using the words, John Winthrop articulated the concept in his famous sermon, the Arbella Covenant (1630), when he said: " ... for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; ..." Winthrop exhorts his listeners to carry on God's mission and to set a shining example for the rest of the world. From this beginning, the concept has had religious, social, economic, and political consequences. The words manifest destiny were first used by editor John L. O'Sullivan in 1845.

Selected Bibliography 1980-1999

Boime, Albert. The magisterial gaze: manifest destiny and American landscape painting, c. 1830-1865. Washington: Smithsonian Institution P, 1991. ND1351.5 .B65

Brown, Charles H. Agents of manifest destiny: the lives and times of the filibusters. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1980. E415.7 .B77

Collin, Richard H. Theodore Roosevelt, culture, diplomacy, and expansion: a new view of American imperialism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1985. E757 .C65

Drinnon, Richard. Facing west: the metaphysics of Indian-hating and empire building. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1980. E98 .P99 D74

Hietala, Thomas R. Manifest design: anxious aggrandizement in late Jacksonian America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1990, 1985. E179.5 .H54

Horsman, Reginald. Race and manifest destiny: the origins of American racial anglo-saxonism. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1981. E179.5 .H69

Hutchison, William R. Errand to the world: American Protestant thought and foreign missions. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987. BV2410 .H87

Jones, Howard, and Donald A. Rakestraw. Prologue to manifest destiny: Anglo-American relations in the 1840s. Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 1997. E183.8 .G7 J64

Morrison, Michael A. Slavery and the American West: the eclipse of manifest destiny and the coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1997. E415.7 .M88

Stephanson, Anders. Manifest destiny: American expansionism and the empire of right. NY: Hill and Wang, 1995. E179.5 .S82

Selected Bibliography 2000-Present  

Cloud, Barbara and Simpson, Alan K. The Coming of the Frontier Press: How the West Was Really Won. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 2008.

Fresonke, Kris. West of Emerson: The Design of Manifest Destiny. Berkeley: U of California P, 2003.

Isaac, Allan P. American Tropics: Articulating Filipino America. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2006.

LeMenager Stephanie. Manifest and Other Destinies: Territorial Fictions of the Nineteenth-Century United States. U of Nebraska P, 2004.

Rivera, John-Michael. The Emergence of Mexican America: Recovering Stories of Mexican Peoplehood in U.S. Culture. NY: New York UP, 2006.

Tinnemeyer, Andrea. Identity Politics of the Captivity Narrative after 1848. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2006.

Tricomi, Albert H. Missionary Positions: Evangelicalism and Empire in American Fiction. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2011.

MLA Style Citation of this Web Page

Reuben, Paul P. "PAL: Appendix T: Manifest Destiny." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. URL:http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/append/axt.html (provide page date or date of your login).