Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism Book

In Race and Manifest Destiny, Reginald Horsman surveys the origins and progression of Anglo-Saxon racial ideology and examines its consequences in American history. Primarily a history of ideas, the book sets the developments of ideologies against the backdrop of the American Revolution and expansion in a cohesive narrative. Anglo-Saxon supremacy allowed for the suppression of other peoples in American history'it justified their enslavement, domination, exclusion, and extinction.

Initially, American scholars were informed by an imported history that lauded the Anglo-Saxon development of free institutions and considered themselves descendants of an institutional ideal, not a bloodline or genetic race. Once they began to seek out tangible differences between peoples, perceived racial difference paved the way for "scientific evidence" of superiority. Religious scholars advocated the equality of man from the story of creation, leading to a compromise racial theory of polygenesis. The advent of racial destiny as a romanticized manifestation of scientific racism spread from the academic disciplines until it was common belief among the American public.

Belief in racial destiny justified territorial expansion and suppression of "lesser" peoples as inevitable (and justifiable). The supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race gave way to the supremacy of Anglo-Americans. This was the justification for the continued enslavement of blacks, the murder of American Indians, American expansion into Mexico, and even the potential eviction of the English from Oregon. By 1850, the American public and politicians believed that the Indians were doomed to extinction due to their inferiority, and that the black population existed safely only under the protection of their superior masters. The American expansion halted, in part, for the same reason it began'racial superiority dictated that the nation not be contaminated with the lesser races it had overcome. Instead, America would recreate the world in its image through economic expansion'not the acquisition of territory.