Day 2

A People's History of the United States Lesson Plan

Discussion of Thought Questions

  1. 1

    Discuss the role of "manifest destiny" in the thinking of those who supported a war with Mexico in the years before the Mexican-American War.

    Zinn quotes several newspaper articles from this time period, but it is John O'Sullivan, editor of the Democratic Review, who actually uses the phrase "manifest destiny": "Our manifest destiny is to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." Zinn's primary point is that members of the already-corporatized media were begging for war at the behest of the moneyed interests that owned them, using their power to invent and otherwise give credit to the opinion that...

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