Week 11 — Primary Source Workshop · "Manifest Destiny and Its Critics: O'Sullivan (1845) & Lincoln (1847)"

Course: U.S. History to 1877 (HIST 1301) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Hartwell
Objective: Objective 6 — westward expansion, Manifest Destiny, and the slavery-in-the-territories question · SLO A (historical thinking & source analysis)
Worth 50 points · Primary Source Workshops group = 15% of the grade · Workshop 11
Format: a guided analysis of two real documents — you'll run the four moves on each, then corroborate them against each other, and finally catch the AI's mistakes when it interprets the sources.

This is the course's signature weekly component. Every instructional week has one Primary Source Workshop. This week's pair gives you the ideology and the dissent, side by side: the essay that named Manifest Destiny and the congressional resolution that questioned the war it justified. All sources are links to external archives — nothing to buy or download.

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Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you've learned that "Manifest Destiny" was both a cultural ideology and a political program — and that not everyone in 1845–47 accepted its framing. The historian's job is to read sources for what they say, who says them, and what they leave out.

The guiding question:

"What did Manifest Destiny claim to justify, and what did contemporaries who questioned it reveal about what the ideology obscured?"

Two documents. One voice names a destiny; another asks exactly where that destiny drew blood — and whether the ground it drew blood on was really "ours." Reading them together is corroboration in action.

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Part 2 — The Sources (read both first)

Source A: John L. O'Sullivan, "Annexation" (1845)

Document: John L. O'Sullivan, "Annexation" — published in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, 1845.
Author: O'Sullivan was the founding editor of the Democratic Review, an ardent Democratic partisan and advocate of westward expansion and Texas annexation.
Type: a political essay (a primary source), written to argue for the annexation of Texas and to articulate the ideology of continental expansion.
Historical note: The phrase "Manifest Destiny" first appeared in print in this 1845 essay. (O'Sullivan returned to the idea later that year in a New York Morning News editorial about the Oregon boundary dispute; but the famous formulation about overspreading "the continent allotted by Providence" originates here, in "Annexation.")

Read the full essay at an authoritative archive (links only):
- 🔗 Teaching American History — full text: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/annexation/
- 🔗 Bill of Rights Institute — excerpt with context: https://billofrightsinstitute.org/activities/john-osullivan-annexation-1845/
- 🔗 The American Yawp Reader — excerpt: https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/manifest-destiny/john-osullivan-declares-americas-manifest-destiny-1845/

Two excerpts you'll close-read here (quoted from the essay — verify against the links above):
- Excerpt A1: "…the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."
- Excerpt A2: "The Anglo-Saxon foot is already on its borders. Already the advance guard of the irresistible army of Anglo-Saxon emigration has begun to pour down upon it, armed with the plough and the rifle, and marking its trail with schools and colleges, courts and representative halls, mills and meetinghouses."

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Source B: Abraham Lincoln, Spot Resolutions (December 22, 1847)

Document: Abraham Lincoln, Spot Resolutions — introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, December 22, 1847.
Author: Lincoln was a first-term Whig congressman from Illinois, serving his only term in the House (1847–49). He was not yet the national figure he became — but the Spot Resolutions are a window into his early political thinking.
Type: a legislative resolution (a primary source), introduced to demand information from President Polk about the geographic and legal circumstances of the war's beginning.
Historical note: Lincoln introduced eight resolutions demanding Polk identify the "spot" where American blood was shed, to determine whether it was truly American soil. The resolutions attracted little attention at the time; Lincoln's January 12, 1848 speech elaborating on them is a companion document.

Read the document at authoritative archives (links only):
- 🔗 National Archives — lesson with document: https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lincoln-resolutions
- 🔗 DocsTeach — document image and transcript: https://docsteach.org/document/lincolns-spot-resolutions/
- 🔗 Library of Congress — Lincoln papers: https://www.loc.gov/resource/mal.0007000/?st=text

The key excerpt you'll close-read here (verified from the Congressional record / Library of Congress):
- Excerpt B: "this House desires to obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot of soil on which the blood of our citizens was so shed, was, or was not, our own soil, at that time."

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Part 3 — Source-Analysis Scaffold (fill this in)

Complete each box in a sentence or two. Run the four moves on BOTH documents, then corroborate them against each other.

Source A — O'Sullivan, "Annexation" (1845):

Move	The question it asks	Your analysis
① Sourcing	Who wrote this, for whom, when, and why? What was O'Sullivan's purpose and point of view?	______
② Contextualization	What was happening in 1845 that made this essay timely? (Think: Texas independence since 1836; the Democratic Party's expansionist platform; debates about whether to admit Texas as a slave state.)	______
③ Close reading	In Excerpts A1 and A2, what exact words show the ideological work the essay is doing — what does it claim, and what does it assume?	______
④ Initial corroboration	What does this one source leave out — whose perspective is absent, and what would complicate O'Sullivan's framing?	______

Source B — Lincoln, Spot Resolutions (1847):

Move	The question it asks	Your analysis
① Sourcing	Who wrote this, to whom, when, and why? What was Lincoln's purpose and point of view?	______
② Contextualization	What was happening in December 1847 that shaped this resolution? (Think: the war was effectively won — Mexico City fell September 1847 — but the treaty wasn't signed yet; the Wilmot Proviso battle was raging.)	______
③ Close reading	In Excerpt B, what exactly is Lincoln asking, and what does the word "spot" imply about his argument?	______
④ Corroboration	How does Lincoln's resolution corroborate, complicate, or challenge O'Sullivan's Manifest Destiny framing? What does the gap between these two documents reveal?	______

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Part 4 — Analysis Questions

Answer in a few sentences each:
1. Purpose and ideology (Source A): Using Excerpt A1, what did O'Sullivan claim the United States' right to the continent rested on? What work do the words "manifest destiny," "Providence," and "allotted" do — and why is grounding a claim in Providence so powerful, and so hard to argue against?
2. Racial and ideological language (Source A): Excerpt A2 mentions "the Anglo-Saxon foot" and "the irresistible army of Anglo-Saxon emigration … armed with the plough and the rifle." Who is the "we" in O'Sullivan's vision, and whose presence on the land is implicitly erased or treated as an obstacle?
3. Lincoln's legal argument (Source B): Lincoln is asking about the "spot" of the initial clash. What was the broader implication of this question for the war's legitimacy — and what does his framing reveal about the gap between Polk's claim and the geographic reality?
4. Corroboration payoff: O'Sullivan (1845) and Lincoln (1847) are both primary sources from the same era. What does reading them together tell you that neither document tells you alone?
5. Significance: O'Sullivan's phrase became one of the most repeated in American history; Lincoln's Spot Resolutions were largely ignored at the time. What does that asymmetry in historical reception tell you about how national ideologies take hold — and what gets suppressed?

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Part 5 — AI-Critique Moment (required — this is the BYOAI step)

Now bring in your approved chatbot (Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT) and be the historian who checks its work.

1. Ask it: "Give me an exact quotation from John L. O'Sullivan's 1845 essay 'Annexation' that contains the phrase 'Manifest Destiny.' Include the exact words, the publication name, and the year."
2. Check everything it says against the real document linked in Part 2 (Source A):
   - Did it give the exact phrase that appears in the essay? (The verified phrase is: "our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.") Or did it invent a shorter, cleaner-sounding paraphrase — or blend in a line from O'Sullivan's other 1845 writing on Oregon — and present it as a direct quote from "Annexation"?
   - Did it correctly name the publication (the United States Magazine and Democratic Review) and the year (1845)? Or did it misname the journal, misdate the essay, or confuse it with O'Sullivan's earlier 1839 essay ("The Great Nation of Futurity")?
   - Did it invent a second, different O'Sullivan quote that doesn't appear in the essay?
3. Write 2–3 sentences reporting what the AI got right and at least one thing you had to correct or verify against the source. (If it happened to get everything right, explain how you verified each claim against the document — that's the skill.)

The habit all term: the tool drafts, you verify against the archive. Chatbots are especially prone to shortening or paraphrasing 19th-century political language into something that sounds more aphoristic than the original — and then presenting that paraphrase as a direct quotation. Catching it is the point.

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Part 6 — What to Submit

Submit a single document (or text entry) with: your completed Part 3 scaffold (both four-move tables), your Part 4 answers, and your Part 5 AI-critique paragraph (naming the specific thing you checked). Due Sunday, Nov 15, 11:59 p.m. (50 points).

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Instructor answer key & model responses — REMOVE BEFORE PUBLISHING TO STUDENTS

Every fact and quotation below is verified against the historical record, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, Teaching American History, and the Bill of Rights Institute sources.

Part 3 scaffold — Source A (model):
- ① Sourcing: O'Sullivan was the Democratic editor of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, writing in 1845 to advocate for the annexation of Texas and to articulate an expansionist ideology; purpose = to make westward expansion feel divinely inevitable, not a political or military choice. Point of view: partisan Democratic booster of expansion.
- ② Contextualization: 1845 — Texas had been an independent republic since 1836; Congress was debating a joint resolution to annex it; the Democratic Party ran on expansion in 1844; the question of whether Texas would enter as a slave state made annexation politically volatile. O'Sullivan wrote to reframe the debate as providential rather than political.
- ③ Close reading: A1 grounds the claim in "Providence" and "manifest destiny" — the continent is "allotted by Providence" for the "free development of our yearly multiplying millions," making expansion feel divinely ordained and self-evident rather than a political choice. A2 introduces racial language ("Anglo-Saxon foot," "irresistible army") and mixes peaceful imagery (plough, schools, colleges) with military imagery (rifle) — framing conquest as civilization.
- ④ Initial corroboration: Missing: any perspective from Mexican citizens (who would lose land and nationality), Native peoples of the Southwest (whose sovereignty is erased), or enslaved people (whose labor the "free development" relied on). Also missing: the legal justification Lincoln later questioned.

Part 3 scaffold — Source B (model):
- ① Sourcing: Lincoln was a first-term Whig congressman from Illinois, writing a House resolution on December 22, 1847, to challenge President Polk's claim that the war was defensive ("Mexico shed American blood upon American soil"); purpose = constitutional challenge, not pacifism — Lincoln voted to supply the troops while questioning the war's legal trigger.
- ② Contextualization: December 1847 — General Scott had taken Mexico City in September 1847; the war was effectively won but the peace treaty wasn't signed until February 1848; the Wilmot Proviso debate was raging; Congress was deciding whether the new territory would allow slavery.
- ③ Close reading: "the particular spot of soil" — the word spot is precise and pointed: Lincoln is asking for geographic evidence that Polk's claim ("American blood on American soil") was factually true. The disputed zone between the Nueces and the Rio Grande was exactly that — disputed — which Lincoln implies Polk knew.
- ④ Corroboration: Lincoln's resolution directly contradicts O'Sullivan's framing: O'Sullivan presents expansion as divinely inevitable and frictionless; Lincoln reveals that the very first act of the expansionist war was legally questionable. Together they show that Manifest Destiny was an ideology in contest, not a consensus fact.

Part 4 (expected):
1. O'Sullivan grounds the claim in Providence — the continent is "allotted by Providence" for Americans' "free development." That matters because it removes the claim from the domain of legal or political argument, making it feel unverifiable and unchallengeable: if Providence gave the continent, no human law or prior claim can contest it.
2. The "we" is explicitly Anglo-Saxon — white Protestant American settlers. Mexican citizens, Native peoples, and enslaved Americans are erased or cast as the backdrop against which Anglo-Saxon civilization "marks its trail." The people already on the land appear only as an obstacle the advance guard is moving around.
3. Lincoln's implication: if the blood was shed in disputed territory — the zone between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, which Mexico also claimed — then Polk's justification (Mexican aggression on American soil) was at best premature and at worst a deliberate fabrication to manufacture a pretext for war. The "spot" question is a constitutional argument about executive war power.
4. Reading them together reveals the gap between the ideology and the reality: O'Sullivan's Providence provides no mechanism for resolving disputed claims; Lincoln's legal question exposes that the war's triggering event was itself contested. Neither document can supply what the other lacks — O'Sullivan can't verify his Providence, and Lincoln can't give us the Mexican or Native perspective.
5. O'Sullivan's phrase became canonical because it fit the direction American expansion was moving and gave it a moral vocabulary; Lincoln's resolutions were politically costly (he was called unpatriotic; he lost his seat) and had no institutional resonance. National ideologies take hold when they align with what powerful constituencies want to do; dissent gets buried when the outcome validates the ideology. The asymmetry is itself a historical lesson about how power shapes memory.

Part 5 (AI-critique): full credit for a specific catch — most commonly the AI shortens and paraphrases the O'Sullivan quote into a cleaner phrase (e.g., "our manifest destiny to overspread the continent" omitting the "allotted by Providence for the free development" clause), then presents the paraphrase as a direct quotation; or misnames the publication; or confuses "Annexation" (1845) with O'Sullivan's earlier 1839 essay "The Great Nation of Futurity." Full credit also if the student verified each AI claim against the linked Teaching American History or Bill of Rights Institute text.

Grading rubric — 50 points

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Source A — Sourcing + Contextualization — correct O'Sullivan's identity/purpose + 1845 political context (10)	10	5–8	0–4
Source A — Close reading — identifies the ideological and racial work of both excerpts (8)	8	4–6	0–3
Source B — Sourcing + Contextualization — correct Lincoln's identity/purpose + December 1847 context (10)	10	5–8	0–4
Corroboration (Part 3 table + Question 4) — explains what the two documents together reveal that neither alone tells (12)	12	6–10	0–4
AI-critique (Part 5) — names a specific thing checked and corrected/verified against the source (10)	10	5–8	0–4

Quality gate (self-checked) — Historical-accuracy gate PASS: O'Sullivan's essay "Annexation" (1845, United States Magazine and Democratic Review) verified; the key phrase ("our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions") verified against Teaching American History, the American Yawp Reader, and Bill of Rights Institute sources — and confirmed to be from "Annexation" itself, not O'Sullivan's separate December 1845 New York Morning News editorial on the Oregon boundary; Lincoln's Spot Resolutions dated December 22, 1847 and verified against Library of Congress (Abraham Lincoln Papers) and National Archives; the exact excerpt ("this House desires to obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot of soil on which the blood of our citizens was so shed, was, or was not, our own soil, at that time") verified. No fabricated quotation appears anywhere in this workshop. Both sources are identified with correct author, date, publication/venue, and institutional archive link.