American Progress

John L. O'Sullivan coins the phrase "Manifest Destiny" in the following 1845 editorial in which he commended the addition of Texas into the Union and hopefully looked further west to California as a site for future expansion.

This is an excerpt from "Annexation," printed in O'Sullivan's The United States Magazine and Democratic Review17 (July 1845): 5-10

[1] It is time now for opposition to the Annexation of Texas to cease . . . . It is time for the
common duty of Patriotism to the Country to succeed;—or if this claim will not be recognized, it
is at least time for common sense to acquiesce with decent grace in the inevitable and
irrevocable.
[2] Texas is now ours. Already, before these words are written, her Convention has
undoubtedly ratified the acceptance, by her Congress, of our proffered invitation into the Union.
. . . . It is time then that all should cease to treat her as alien . . .
[3] Why, were other reasoning wanting, in favor of now elevating this question of the reception
of Texas into the Union, out of the lower region of our past party dissensions, up to its proper
level of a high and broad nationality, it surely is to be found, found abundantly, in the manner in
which other nations have undertaken to intrude themselves into it, between us and the proper
parties to the case, in a spirit of hostile interference against us, for the avowed object of thwarting
our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our
manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of
our yearly multiplying millions. This we have seen done by England, our old rival and enemy;
and by France, strangely coupled with her against us, under the influence of the Anglicism
strongly tinging the policy of her present prime minister, Guizot. . . .
[4] It is wholly untrue, and unjust to ourselves, the pretence that the Annexation has been a
measure of spoliation, unrightful and unrighteous—of military conquest under forms of peace
and law—of territorial aggrandizement at the expense of justice due by a double sanctity to the
weak. . . . The independence of Texas was complete and absolute. It was an independence, not
only in fact but of right. . . .