Manifest Destiny and the Growth of America: Cheap Energy and Spending Natural Capital

Abstract

Manifest Destiny is the sine qua non of American history. At one time almost every American child was toilet trained on this idea of inevitable expansion of European settlement to blanket the continent. In 1833, the author Horace Greeley is reputed to have said “Go west young man.” He expressed the widespread feeling at the time that America was a land of limitless possibilities, that if a person worked hard, especially on the fertile lands of the west (referring to the land of the Ohio Valley and the Midwest) he or she could succeed and prosper.