Chorus:This land is your land, this land is my landFrom California, to the New York IslandFrom the redwood forest, to the gulf stream watersThis land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highwayI saw above me an endless skywayI saw below me a golden valleyThis land was made for you and me

Chorus

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footstepsTo the sparkling sands of her diamond desertsAnd all around me a voice was soundingThis land was made for you and me

Chorus

The sun comes shining as I was strollingThe wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rollingThe fog was lifting a voice come chantingThis land was made for you and me

Chorus

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign thereAnd that sign said - no tress passin'But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steepleNear the relief office - I see my peopleAnd some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'If this land's still made for you and me.

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND words and music by Woody Guthrie

Saturday at the GalleriaImagine this scenario…

You and your friends are at the Galleria. You decide to get some lunch at the food court. You all get your food and decide to sit at an empty table. As a matter of fact, every table at the food court is empty. Another group a little while later come and sit down at a nearby table. While you and your friends are eating, a member of the other table comes up to you and asks you to leave. You explain that there is plenty of room for everyone. The same person who has asked you to leave continues to explain that all of the tables in the food court belong to him and his group of friends and are asking you to leave.

What do you do? Explain your reasons.

Indian View of the Land

Land owned by all

No individual boundaries

Land & Religion mixed - all part of nature have a spirit

Settler view of landIndividual ownership - so be bought & sold

Clear boundaries

Land & religion - no connection

Land is meant to be developed & used

John Gast - 1872“American Progress”

John Gast - 1872“American Progress”

Symbols in Gast’s Painting

“Star of Empire” on forehead

Leaving Mississippi behind

Book in hand represents - Enlightenment

Telegraph wires & Train - Progress

Symbols in Gast’s Painting

Animals and Native Americans flee West to Pacific

“the light of civilization dispels the darkness of ignorance and barbarity”

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Manifest Destiny:The term manifest destiny originated in the 1840s. It expressed the belief that it was America’s mission to expand their civilization and institutions across the breadth of North America. This expansion would involve not merely territorial aggrandizement but the progress of liberty and individual economic opportunity as well.

The phrase was first employed by John L. O'Sullivan in an article on the annexation of Texas published in the July of 1845. It was, O'Sullivan claimed, "our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."

Do some Americans today feel “God” has a special role for us in the world today?

This belief was taken up by those desiring to take the Oregon Territory, California, Mexican land in the Southwest, and, in the 1850s, Cuba. By the end of the century, expansionists were employing quasi-Darwinist reasoning to argue that because its "Anglo-Saxon heritage" made America supremely fit, it had become the nation's "manifest destiny" to extend its influence beyond its continental boundaries into the Pacific and Caribbean islands.

Pre-Visit Worksheet for “How the West was . . .” Grade 7-8 Montana Historical Society

Manifest Destiny Define the term “Manifest Destiny”: True or False: To understand Manifest Destiny, it's important to understand the United States'need and desire to expand. Answer true or false to whether the following points illustrate someof the economic, social and political pressures promoting U.S. expansion: __________ The United States was experiencing a periodic high birth rate and increases in population due to immigration. And because agriculture provided the primary economic structure, large families to work the farms were considered an asset. The U.S. population grew from more than 5 million in 1800 to more than 23 million by 1850. Thus, there was a need to expand into new territories to accommodate this rapid growth. __________ The United States suffered two economic depressions -- one in 1818 and a second in 1839. These crises drove some people to seek their living in frontier areas. __________ Frontier land was inexpensive or, in some cases, free. __________ Expansion into frontier areas opened opportunities for new commerce and individual self-advancement. __________ Land ownership was associated with wealth and tied to self-sufficiency, political power and independent "self-rule." __________ Maritime merchants saw an opportunity to expand and promote new commerce by building West Coast ports leading to increased trade with countries in the Pacific. ------------------------------------------------------------------------Page 2“The painting “Columbia” by John Gast is an interesting symbolic portrayal of Manifest Destiny. It shows the great American angel or woman, floating over the plains. Ahead of her, in the West, is a great darkness populated by wild animals. There are bears and wolves and Indian people, who are fleeing her light. In her wake come farms, villages and homesteads and in the back are cities and railroads. As the figure progresses across the land, the light of civilization dispels the darkness of ignorance and barbarity. In this painting, American Indian people are portrayed along with the animals and the darkness. They have to be removed before Columbia can bring the prosperity promised to the United States. It's an interesting portrayal and very symbolic of the thinking of many Americans during the mid-19th century.” From “Native American Displacement Amid U.S. Expansion” by R. David Edmunds. Select one of the people in the painting. Image you are that person. What are you thinking? Feeling?Why are you doing what you are doing? Write a story from the point of view of the person about what is happening and answer the questions.

Manifest DestinyAuthor   John L. Sullivan

Annotation   In 1845, an editor named John L. O'Sullivan referred in a magazine to the nation's "manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." Acquiring Texas, New Mexico, and California for the benefit of white Americans, O'Sullivan argued, would leave Latin America as "the only receptacle capable of absorbing that [African American] race whenever we shall be prepared to slough it off--to emancipate it from slavery and, simultaneously necessary, to remove it from the midst of our own."

One of the most influential slogans ever coined, the phrase manifest destiny expressed the emotion that led Anglo-Americans to settle the Far West. Manifest destiny inspired twenty-nine-year-old Stephen F. Austin to talk of grandly colonizing the Mexican province of Texas with "North American population, enterprise and intelligence." It led expansionists--united behind the slogan 54° 40'--to demand that the United States should own the entire Pacific Northwest, all the way to Alaska. Aggressive nationalists invoked the idea to justify war with Mexico and American expansion into Cuba and Central America.

Manifest destiny provided a convenient rationale for a variety of interests. The most obvious beneficiaries were proslavery forces. Many Southerners believed that once the free states outnumbered the slave states, it would only be a matter of time before the peculiar institution was abolished. In the 1840s, many Southerners were determined to acquire as much of the Southwest as possible, including Texas and the Mexican borderlands, for future slave states. Trading interests coveted the Pacific coast. The port of San Francisco was a major goal of many merchants, manufacturers, and traders, since it promised ready access to Asian markets.

These selections present two opposing perspectives on Manifest Destiny: one by the man who coined the phrase, the other by a critic, José María Tornel y Mendívil, Mexico's secretary of war during the Texas Revolution.

Year  Text   It is wholly untrue, and unjust to ourselves, the pretence that the Annexation [of Texas] has been a measure of spoliation, unrightful and unrighteous--of military conquest under forms of peace and law.... If Texas became peopled with an American population, it was by no contrivance of our government, but on the express invitation of that of Mexico itself; accompanied with such guaranties of State independence, and the maintenance of a federal system analogous to our own, as constituted a compact fully justifying the strongest measures of redress on the part of those afterwards deceived in this guaranty.... She was released...by the acts and fault of Mexico herself, and Mexico alone.... It was not revolution; it was resistance to revolution....

California will, probably, next fall away from the loose adhesion which, in such a country as Mexico, holds a remote province in a slight equivocal kind of dependence on the metropolis. Imbecile and distracted, Mexico never can exert any real governmental authority over such a country.... Already the advance guard of the irresistible army of Anglo-American emigration has begun to pour down upon it, armed with the plough and the rifle, and marking its trail with school and colleges, courts and representative halls, mills and meeting-houses. A population will soon be in actual occupation of California, over which it will be idle for Mexico to dream of dominion. Source: John L. O'Sullivan, Democratic Review, XVII (July-August, 1845), 5-6, 9-10.