AFP SECTION WRITING 2/7

Writing on Graebner's Manifest Destiny: A Realist Critique
Graebner's article highlighted some extremely interesting points made previously in lecture, but which bear repeating here. One of the main arguments made was that the very idea of "manifest destiny" was made possible by what essentially amounts to an accident of history and geography. America was able to expand 'from sea to shining sea' simply because nobody had gotten there first (at least nobody with a substantive presence), and as such took it into its national psyche to do so. All of the ideas of manifest destiny follow from this basis- from continentalism to '54 40 or fight.'
The 'path of least resistance' was another interesting concept not quite mentioned in the article but alluded to strongly, such as on page 202 where the 'fact' that none but natively American people are able to prosper under American law is quoted as an argument against the annexation of all of Mexico, since there are more ethnic Mexicans there than would be palatable to annex. As mentioned in lecture, the Mexicans are 'too white to enslave, but too dark to give full rights to' and as such pose a problem that is best simply ignored at that point in American history.
The American system of annexation (again, as alluded to in previous lectures) shows through especially strongly in this article. The system of Americans moving in first, becoming a decent portion of the population, revolting against the previous government, and petitioning to the United States for annexation seems to me to be a tremendously efficient method of territorial expansion for the United States, requiring little to no input from the federal government. Actually, if I were to imagine a perfectly efficient system of territorial expansion, it would be something like this, with the desire for expansion coming from within the countries themselves. Unfortunately, I can't see this working too well with any even marginally more populated areas (such as basically any present-day country or territory), due to the fact that the American population would have to effectively outnumber the indigenous population, but it worked well enough for a time.