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But why is the United States always
getting into wars?
Good question!
Two centuries ago, the United States was a collection of thirteen small
colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. Today it dominates the
globe in a way that even the most powerful of past empires could not
have imagined.
The path to world power has not been peaceful.
Chapter 1: Manifest Destiny
The American revolutionaries who rose up against King George in 1776
spoke eloquently about the right of every nation to determine its own
destiny.
"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people
to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,
and assume, among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal
station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them.."
(Thomas Jefferson, from the Declaration of Independence, 1776)
Unfortunately, after they won the right to determine their own destiny
they thought they should determine everyone else's too!
The leaders of the newly independent colonies believed that they were
preordained to rule all of North America. This was so obvious to them
that they called it "Manifest Destiny." [2]
"We must march from ocean to ocean .... It is the destiny of the white
race." (Representative Giles of Maryland)
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