The focus of this paper is on slavery. This is a tough subject with many burning issues stemming back from the early days of Southern slavery. Although always and inevitably tagged along with the burning issue of slavery in those years preceding the American Civil War, expanding American territory would redound to the best advantage of its people and further enhance its economic and political objectives and gains. The principle of manifest destiny could be invoked, whereby the people of those days had the power and duty "to overspread and to possess the whole of (the Northern American) continent, which Providence has given (them) for the development of the great experiment of liberty." This tenet, introduced and made popular by journalist John L. Sullivan in 1845, which maintained that it was the American nation's destiny as well as duty to conquer the West and to expand its limits "in the name of God, nature, civilization and progress."
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