Do you think Manifest Destiny helped shape the United States?

Manifest Destiny was the nineteenth-century concept that the United States had the right and "destiny" to expand its borders to encompass everything west to the Pacific. The phrase, first used by journalist John O'Sullivan, connoted American racial and cultural supremacy, and trumpeted the uniqueness of American democracy. It was a powerful ideology that drove the rapid expansion of the United States in the 1830s and 1840s, a period that witnessed the annexation of Texas, the settlement of a border dispute with Great Britain in the Oregon Territory, and the conquest of a vast expanse of land controlled by Mexico. Clearly, Manifest Destiny shaped the physical expanse of the United States. In many ways, though, it was one iteration of a persistent idea in American history—the idea of American exceptionalism. This concept was influential in promoting American imperialism and in U.S. global leadership during World War II and beyond. The ambition and the self-confidence central to Manifest Destiny have remained important in American history.