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John Louis O'Sullivan

1813–1895

 

If there is one phrase that sums up the ambitions of many Americans in the nineteenth century for the future of their young republic, it is 'manifest destiny'.  That highly influential idea was the original concept of John Louis O'Sullivan.  He came from a long line of Irishmen involved in the struggle for Irish freedom, a lost cause in the eyes of many sensible men.  O'Sullivan saw that the future lay in America, but he espoused it with all the enthusiasm of his ancestors for their native land.

      His great-grandfather, John O'Sullivan, who had been born in Kerry, was an adjutant general in the army of Prince Charles that invaded England in 1745, and was lucky to escape from the field of Culloden when the Jacobite cause was finally defeated.  His grandfather, T.H. O'Sullivan, had been a member of the Irish Brigade in the service of France, but during the American Revolution he had fought with the British in New York.  His father had settled in America as merchant and sea captain, and served in Francisco de Miranda's expedition of 1806 to liberate Venezuela.

      According to family tradition (not always a reliable source), John Louis was born on a British warship in the harbour of Gibraltar in November 1813.  He was educated at a military school in France, then at Westminster School in London, and finally entered Columbia University.  He received law degrees in 1831 and 1837 and practised law in New York City until 1837.

      In that year he began publishing the United States Magazine and Democratic Review in Washington, D.C., with S.D. Langtree.  Later they moved the journal to New York City.  O'Sullivan's aim, so he claimed, was 'to strike the hitherto silent string of the democratic genius of the age and the country.'  America was in an expansionist and nationalist mood, and the westward course of empire excited him and his friends.  They saw it as enclosing not only the whole North American continent (including Canada), but also Cuba.  It was in an article he wrote in the summer of 1845 for the July issue of the magazine that O'Sullivan coined the phrase 'manifest destiny'.  No words could better have exemplified the nationalist spirit of the day.  Dealing with the annexation of Texas the year before, which had basically been seized from Mexico by America, he wrote of 'our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions'.

      Soon the terms gained wider currency in the dispute with Britain over the Oregon Territory and the border with Canada.  It was also made use of by those interested in seizing Cuba from Spain.  To many Europeans, the 'freedom-loving' Americans were merely on a course of colonial occupation, leading to the creation of an American empire.

      There was another side to the journal, for it had contributions from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, William Cullen Bryant, and many others.  This was a splendid gallery of talent.  Among his other interests were the New York Morning News, which he edited from 1844 to 1846.  He was also a member of the New York state legislature, in which he advocated for the abolition of capital punishment, a novel and progressive idea for that day and age.

      He married a daughter of Dr Kearney Rodgers in 1846, and from 1849 to 1851 supported Narisco Lopez on his expeditions against Cuba, then a Spanish colony.  Twice he was charged with violation of the neutrality laws.  Though he was not convicted, he later claimed that through these schemes he had 'been ruined for Cuba'.

      However, in February 1854 he was made chargé d'affaires in Portugal and later resident minister.  He stayed there until 1858, expounding the doctrines of American expansion and manifest destiny.  In 1858 he resigned and lived first in Lisbon, then in London, and finally in Paris, until 1871.

      O'Sullivan's last years were spent in obscurity in New York.  Julian Hawthorne, the son of his old friend the novelist, knew him during these years.  He described O'Sullivan as 'handsome, charming, affectionate and unlucky, but an optimist to the last'.  He died in New York City on 24th February 1895.  By that time, the idea of manifest destiny had returned again to inspire the American imagination.  The United States had already taken California and the south-western states from Mexico, and a large part of Oregon from Britain.  Alaska had been bought from the Russians.  Part of Samoa was placed under American control in 1889.  In 1898 the United States annexed Hawaii (American settlers having overthrown the native government of Queen Liliuokalani in 1893 with the assistance of three hundred US marines).  At the end of the Spanish-American war in 1898 the United States seized Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain.  Cuba was liberated under American domination, while Spain assumed its national debt.

      Many Americans were appalled.  The steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie even offered to buy the Philippines for $20 million and give the people their freedom.  But other Americans invoked John Louis O'Sullivan's heady concept of manifest destiny.  This was the beginning of imperial America as a world power, which would eventually see the decline of the other imperial powers, including the British, from whose grasp the O'Sullivans had fled.

      Later still, America would hold further territories in the Pacific and seek to maintain its influence in China before the Communist revolution, and later in Laos and Vietnam.  What began with ambition in 1845 ended in tragedy in 1975 with the fall of Saigon.  John Louis O'Sullivan's manifest destiny was a concept that changed the course of world history.