American Studies 1020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Transcendentalism, Monroe Doctrine, Mexican Americans

• School: Western University
• Department: American Studies
• Course: American Studies 1020
• Professor: Tom Cull

Document Summary

Empire for liberty: manifest destiny, american exceptionalism and the. These topics remain at the core of the mythology that the nation has developed for itself. All of this things help lead to the civil war. He imagined an empire that would take up the entire continent. When he became president, he purchased the louisiana territory from the french in 1803: the louisiana purchase, this doubled the size of the new nation. Expansionist agenda: wanted to make the new united states of america the entire continent. This term is a contradiction: liberty is about freedom whereas the goal of an empire is to establish control. Empire: a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority, especially having an emperor as a chief of state; the territory of such a political unit.