Prologue to Manifest Destiny: Anglo-American Relations in the 1840's

The authors of this book predicated their work with a claim that the Webster-Ashburton and Oregon treaties of the 1840's have too long laid in the shadows of the Mexican-American and the Civil War, but they were important because they laid the foundations for the concept of Manifest Destiny that came of age during the Polk Administration. Howard Jones and Donald Rakestraw devote roughly equal coverage to the two major international crises between America and Great Britain in the 1840's - the Maine-Canada border crisis and the Oregon border question. As part of these overarching crises, individual events that led to greater prospects for war, such as the Creole slave mutiny and the destruction of the ship Caroline, are discussed in the work. The authors of the text have done a good job of explaining why such major incidents were settled by diplomacy, thus avoiding a third military conflict between the two Atlantic nations. To accomplish this, the largest focus is on diplomacy between the countries, but diplomatic exchanges are skillfully interwoven with stories of events that could have led to armed hositilities. The section on the Oregon treaty is not populated with so many perilous adventures that could have led to war; instead, it focuses largely on the political endeavors undertaken to negotate a settlement of the disputed boundary. It is this section where the concept of Manifest Destiny is truly introduced. The idea that Manifest Destiny is spawned from the American desire to incorporate Oregon into the Union may not be a novel concept, but the authors have done a solid job in explaining why this particular territory was the stepping stone to further ambitious territorial grabs by Polk. Overall, I found the book to be well written and interesting - it does not deal specifically with Manifest Destiny, but, as the title suggests, it addresses the period leading up to this mad rush to govern all of the land from sea to shining sea.