Included are Robert Fulton, developer of the first successful steamboat and Samuel F. Morse, developer of the first successful electromagnetic telegraph and of Morse code. Minerva presides over these inventors, her arm outstretched appearing to impart her gift of knowledge. What symbolic significance to American history or culture do they hold?
Moving in a clockwise motion, we see Neptune, Roman god of the sea, and behind him an ironclad warship — an innovation which revolutionized the American navy. The goddess Venus emerges from the sea holding the first transatlantic cable, which was being laid at the time this work was painted. Stretching nearly 2, miles across the Atlantic Ocean, the cable enabled telegraph communication between the U.
S and Britain. Continuing around the circular composition, in the next figure group Mercury, the Roman god of commerce, holding the caduceus — his traditional symbol of a winged staff intertwined with two snake. In his other hand he extends a bag of money to Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolutionary War and the founder of the Bank of the United States.
The next figure group features Vulcan, Roman god of the forge, who was the creator of the weapons and armor of the gods. Here we see parts of a cannon at his feet and a massive steam pipe looming behind him. Both the cannon and steam engine are devices associated with American progress and military might. The Roman goddess Ceres appears at the center of the last figure group. Ceres, the goddess of the harvest, is identified by her cornucopia, the horn of plenty.
She is seated on the McCormick Reaper a machine that was patented in and replaced the handheld scythe. It revolutionized the harvesting process by mechanizing the cutting, threshing, and harvesting of grain. Flora, the goddess of flowering plants and springtime, gathers flowers nearby. An apotheosis is the process of elevating someone to divine status, or showing how they are god-like. When you consider that this study, and the final dome painting, were created during the height of the Civil War, another layer of context is added.
This image presents a hopeful scene to the nation that although we are divided now, we were once great and can be great once again. The eies [ sic ] of all people are upon us. This ideology served as justification for the violent displacement of native peoples and the forceful takeovers of land by military means.
The European settlers who came to America in search of a new life believed that land acquisition was crucial to their future prosperity. The Louisiana Purchase, which tripled the size of the young country, effectively started a chain reaction for U. The next fifty years of American history saw the nation increase its land holdings exponentially: in Texas was incorporated into the U.
Then there is California, on the way to which lovely tract lies Santa Fe; how long a time will elapse before they shine as two new stars in our mighty firmament? The surging crowd of figures in the painting records the births, deaths, and battles fought as European Americans settled the continent to the edge of the Pacific. Yet actual pioneers made the overland trek, either by wagon or train, only to discover that the so-called Promised Land at the end of their journey was a lonely, inhospitable place.
We reached the town of which we had read such glowing accounts before leaving the East. Traveling an average of fifteen miles a day, the pioneers usually took between five and six months to reach Oregon or California. During the journey they faced skirmishes with Native Americans and diseases such as cholera and typhoid fever. Yet his image remains a glorifying account of westward migration. In order to achieve the realism of the Pacific Coast Mountains, Leutze made the decision to make the arduous journey out west in order to sketch the views from life.
Without a wish to date or localize, or to represent a particular event it is intended to give in a condensed form a picture of western emigration, the conquest of the Pacific slope. Writing to the engineer of the Capitol, Montgomery C. Meigs , Leutze stated that he believed he had seen more of the West in his trip to Colorado than he would have had he gone as far as California.
Download PDF. The design process for the composition of the dome painting went through several stages before Brumidi developed the final study, which resides in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The artist made two prior studies before coming to the third and final composition. In the third and final study, Washington is placed just below the center. The allegorical group of the original thirteen states provides a counterbalance on the opposite side of the dome, so at dead center is a golden-bathed sky.
The figural groups that form the edge of the canvas are more fully developed in this third and final study, with all continuing to highlight American achievements in innovation, technology and agriculture, among others.
Study for the Apotheosis of Washington. Brumidi would have been acquainted with the concept of an apotheosis from his time studying classical art in Europe.
Yet the dome painting presented significant differences and challenges for Brumidi not encountered by any previous artists; namely, the scale of the artwork and the difficulty of executing a painting on a concave surface that made sense to the viewer no matter where they stood on the floor below the dome.
On September 8, Brumidi submitted his design to Thomas U. As this picture will be seen at a height of ft. It will cover sq. Walter attempted to convince Brumidi that although his initial price had not been accepted, there were other merits to completing the job for a lower price:. I am aware, as you have expressed to me in conversation that there is no picture in the world that will compare with this in magnitude and in difficulty of execution.
Being painted on a concave surface, and I am also aware that it covers about eight times more surface that Mr. Should you execute this work it will be the great work of your life: it will therefore be worth on your part some sacrifice to accomplish so great an achievement. On March 11, , Thomas U. Manifest Destiny summary: In the 19th century US, Manifest Destiny was a belief that was widely held that the destiny of American settlers was to expand and move across the continent to spread their traditions and their institutions, while at the same time enlightening more primitive nations.
And the American settlers of the time considered Indians and Hispanics to be inferior and therefore deserving of cultivation. The settlers considered the United States to be the best possible way to organize a country so they felt the need to remake the world in the image of their own country. Many Americans believed that God blessed the growth of American nation and even demanded of them to actively work on it.
Since they were sure of their cultural and racial superiority, they felt that their destiny was to spread their rule around and enlighten the nations that were not so lucky.
The settlers firmly believed in the virtue of American people and the mission to impose their virtuous — mainly Puritan — way of life on everybody else. This rhetorical background served to explain the acquisition of territories or reasons to go to war, such as the war with Mexico in s. Outside the United States, the effects of manifest destiny were being seen in U. This was an expansion of U. The author, John L. Courtesy of U. Naval Historical Center. Flanked by Spanish batteries on the islands of Caballo and El Fraile and tense with fear of mines thought to litter the channel, the American sailors were grateful for the darkness and the clouds that blocked moon and starlight.
Then, just as the ships passed El Fraile, flames flared from the funnel of the revenue cutter Hugh McCulloch. Soot from the soft coal accumulated in the funnel and periodically burst into flame. Sailors cursed McCulloch as muzzle flashes marked a Spanish battery on El Fraile, and shell splashes stirred the waters of Boca Grande. Four of the American warships opened fire and quickly smothered the enemy battery with shells as the column broke from the passage into the bay proper.
Asiatic Squadron and leader of the column, Commodore George Dewey watched. Orders already given, he spent long minutes waiting for gun flashes or dawn to reveal an enemy squadron.
Born in Montpelier, Vt. Julius and Mary Perrin Dewey, George was the youngest of three boys. Mary died before George turned 6, so his upstanding and hardworking father became the central figure in his life.
Other male figures also shaped Dewey, from public school teacher Z. Pangborn to his teachers at Norwich University and the professors and officers of the U. Naval Academy, to which he received an appointment in George appeared to love neither the discipline nor the academics at Annapolis, as he piled demerits atop poor grades in his first year.
Despite ranking just two places from the bottom of his class, he survived for a second year. Then, somehow, Dewey found a measure of maturity. Perhaps it was in the Bible classes he taught to local youths, in the letters he exchanged with his father or in the growing threat of civil war that haunted his nation.
Whatever the reason, in June George and 14 others all that remained of the 59 appointees of graduated. He, proudly, stood fifth in his class. Following a two-year cruise on the steam frigate USS Wabash , flagship of the Mediterranean Squadron, Dewey took his examination for lieutenancy and was commissioned in the dark month of April Mere weeks later, he paced the deck of the steam frigate Mississippi , a year-old executive officer untested in battle and assigned to blockade a rebellious Gulf coast.
Protected by a large garrison, the heavy guns of two forts and other batteries, and a small Confederate fleet that included the ironclad ram CSS Manassas —plus the Mississippi River currents, twists and treacherous snags—New Orleans seemed impregnable. He also learned the import of decisive action when Manassas tried to ram Mississippi.
Only a quick command from Dewey to the helmsman turned a potentially deadly direct hit into a glancing blow. Over the course of the Civil War, Dewey was executive officer on six ships, eventually reaching the rank of lieutenant commander. She became nationally known as a frontierswoman, with the Associated Press covering a later trip. After a series of skirmishes with Mexico, the Republic of Texas won independence in and was annexed into the United States in Examine the economic motivations behind the Mexico and Texas war and the subsequent annexation of Texas by the United States.
Anglo-Americans, primarily from the southern United States, began emigrating to Mexican Texas in the s at the request of the Mexican government, which sought to populate the sparsely inhabited lands of its northern frontier and mitigate attacks from American Indian tribes in the region. Anglo-Americans soon became a majority in Texas and quickly became dissatisfied with Mexican rule.
The soil and climate were conducive to expanding slavery and the cotton kingdom. To many whites, it seemed not only their God-given right but also their patriotic duty to populate the lands beyond the Mississippi River, bringing with them American slavery, culture, laws, and political traditions. They were also dissatisfied with the Mexican legal system, which was markedly different from the representative democracy and jury trials found in the United States.
Most US settlers were from southern states, and many had brought slaves with them. Mexico tried to accommodate them by maintaining the questionable assertion that the slaves were indentured servants. However, American slaveholders in Texas distrusted the Mexican government and wanted Texas to be a new US slave state.
The great dislike for Roman Catholicism coupled with a widely held belief in American racial superiority led to a generally racist and discriminatory view toward Mexicans. Fifty-five delegates from the Anglo-American settlements in Texas gathered in with demands including creation of an independent state of Texas separate from Coahuila.
When ordered to disband, the delegates reconvened in early April to write a constitution for an independent Texas. The Consultation delegates met again in March of They declared their independence from Mexico and drafted a constitution calling for a US-style judicial system and an elected president and legislature. Notably, they also established that slavery would not be prohibited in Texas. Many wealthy Tejanos supported the push for independence, hoping for liberal governmental reforms and economic benefits.
Mexico had no intention of losing its northern province. Santa Anna and his army of some 4, troops had besieged San Antonio in February Hopelessly outnumbered, its defenders fought fiercely from their refuge in an old mission known as the Alamo. The Battle of the Alamo, as it came to be called, lasted from February 23 to March 6, This was a pivotal event in the Texas Revolution.
Following a day siege, Mexican troops under Santa Anna launched an assault on the Alamo Mission, and all of the Texian defenders were killed. Buoyed by a desire for revenge, the Texians defeated the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, , ending the revolution. Sam Houston became the first president of the Republic of Texas, elected on a platform that favored annexation to the United States. Battle of the Alamo : The Fall of the Alamo, painted by Theodore Gentilz fewer than 10 years after this pivotal moment in the Texas Revolution, depicts the assault on the Alamo complex.
Mindful of the vicious debates over Missouri that had led to talk of disunion and war, US politicians were reluctant to annex Texas or, indeed, even to recognize it as a sovereign nation. Annexation would almost certainly trigger war with Mexico, and admission of a state with a large slave population, though permissible under the Missouri Compromise, would once again bring the issue of slavery to the fore. Texas had no choice but to organize itself as the independent Lone Star Republic.
To protect itself from Mexican attempts to reclaim it, Texas sought and received recognition from France, Great Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The United States did not officially recognize Texas as an independent nation until March , nearly a year after the final victory over the Mexican army at San Jacinto. Uncertainty about its future, however, did not discourage Americans committed to expansion, especially slaveholders, from rushing to settle in the Lone Star Republic.
Between and , its population nearly tripled. By , American slaveholders had brought nearly 12, enslaved Africans to Texas. In keeping with the program of ethnic cleansing and white racial domination, Americans in Texas generally treated both Mexican Tejano and American Indian residents with contempt, eager to displace and dispossess them.
In August , Memucan Hunt, Jr. After the election of Mirabeau B. Lamar, an opponent of annexation, as president of Texas in , Texas withdrew its offer.
While John Tyler had a difficult time with domestic policy during his presidency — , he oversaw many accomplishments in foreign policy, especially in the areas of westward expansion. He had long been an advocate of expansion toward the Pacific, and of free trade, and was fond of evoking themes of national destiny and the spread of liberty in support of these policies.
He applied the Monroe Doctrine to Hawaii, told Britain not to interfere there, and began the process toward eventual US annexation of Hawaii. By the mids, US expansionism was articulated in the ideology of manifest destiny. Major events in the western movement of the US population were the Homestead Act, a law by which, for a nominal price, a settler was given a title to acres of land to farm.
However, its members were not ready to receive him. He knew that with little chance of re-election, the only way to salvage his presidency and legacy was to move public opinion in favor of the Texas issue, and he formed his own political party to lobby the Democratic Party in favor of annexation.
Ballot after ballot, Democratic candidate Martin Van Buren failed to win the necessary super- majority of Democratic votes and slowly fell in the ranking. It was not until the ninth ballot that the Democrats discovered an obscure pro-annexation candidate named James K.
They found him to be perfectly suited for their platform, and he was nominated with two-thirds of the vote. Tyler considered his work vindicated and implied in an acceptance letter that annexation was his true priority, rather than re-election. President Tyler entered negotiations with the Republic of Texas for an annexation treaty, which he submitted to the Senate. On June 8, , the treaty was defeated 35 to 16, well below the two-thirds majority necessary for ratification.
Of the 29 Whig senators, 28 voted against the treaty with only one Whig, a southerner, supporting it. The Democratic senators were more divided on the issue; in the north, six opposed while five supported the treaty, while one opposed and 10 supported it in the south.
Tyler was unfazed, however, and he felt annexation was now within reach. He called for Congress to annex Texas by joint resolution rather than by treaty. Former President Jackson, a staunch supporter of annexation, persuaded presidential candidate Polk to welcome Tyler back into the Democratic party, and ordered Democratic editors to cease their attacks on the him.
Satisfied by these developments, Tyler dropped out of the presidential race in August and endorsed Polk for the presidency. After the election, the Tyler administration consulted with President-elect Polk and set out to accomplish annexation via a joint resolution. On February 26, , 6 days before Polk took office, Congress passed the joint resolution, and Tyler signed the bill into law on March 1, just 3 days before the end of his term.
On July 4, , the Texan Congress endorsed the American annexation offer with only one dissenting vote, and began writing a state constitution. The citizens of Texas approved the new constitution and the annexation ordinance on October 13, , and President Polk signed the documents formally integrating Texas into the United States on December 29, Prior to annexation there was an ongoing border dispute between the Republic of Texas and Mexico.
Texas claimed the Rio Grande as its border, while Mexico maintained it was the Nueces River, and did not recognize Texan independence. President Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to garrison the southern border of Texas, as defined by the former Republic. Taylor moved into Texas, ignoring Mexican demands to withdraw. The Mexican government regarded this action as a violation of its sovereignty. The Republic of Texas never controlled what is now New Mexico, and the failed Texas Santa Fe Expedition of was its only attempt to take that territory.
El Paso was only taken under Texas governance by Robert Neighbors in , over 4 years after annexation. In addition to sponsoring the western expedition of Lewis and Clark of , Jefferson also set his sights on Spanish Florida , a process that was finally concluded in under President James Monroe. But critics of that treaty faulted Monroe and his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams , for yielding to Spain what they considered legitimate claims on Texas , where many Americans continued to settle.
Nonetheless, there were still more Anglo settlers in Texas than Hispanic ones, and in , after Texas won its own independence , its new leaders sought to join the United States.
The administrations of both Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren resisted such calls, fearing both war with Mexico and opposition from Americans who believed calls for annexation were linked with the desire to expand slavery in the Southwest.
But John Tyler , who won the presidency in , was determined to proceed with the annexation. An agreement concluded in April made Texas eligible for admission as a U.
Despite opposition to this agreement in Congress, the pro-annexation candidate James K. Polk won the election, and Tyler was able to push the bill through and sign it before he left office. By the time Texas was admitted to the Union as a state in December , the idea that the United States must inevitably expand westward all the way to the Pacific Ocean had taken firm hold among people from different regions, classes and political persuasions.
An treaty between Great Britain and the United States partially resolved the question of where to draw the Canadian border, but left open the question of the Oregon Territory, which stretched from the Pacific Coast to the Rocky Mountains over an area including what is now Oregon, Idaho , Washington State and most of British Columbia. But as president, Polk wanted to get the issue resolved so the United States could move on to acquiring California from Mexico.
In mid, his administration agreed to a compromise whereby Oregon would be split along the 49th parallel, narrowly avoiding a crisis with Britain. By the time the Oregon question was settled, the United States had entered into all-out war with Mexico, driven by the spirit of Manifest Destiny and territorial expansion.
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