Since 1845, the phrase "manifest destiny" has offered a simple and appealing explanation of the dramatic expansionism of the United States during the late Jacksonian era. In this incisive book, Thomas Hietala reassesses the complex factors behind American domestic and foreign policy-making during this distinctive period of U.S. history. This thorough study argues that late Jacksonian policies seeking territorial and commercial gains were based more on a desire for increased national stability than on any response to demands by individual pioneers or threats from abroad. Hietala describes the political, social, and cultural concerns that influenced policymakers during the 1840s and shows the extent to which those vital concerns prescribed the course of American expansionism. He discusses the crucial impact that anxiety over racism, industrialization, population growth, and international competition for colonies and trade had on the Tyler and Polk administrations. Expansion, he maintains, was largely an attempt to counteract challenges to internal harmony and national security. By redefining the rationales behind the domestic and foreign policies of the 1840s, Hietala demonstrates a striking continuity in national ambitions and anxieties that persisted throughout the nineteenth century and continued will into the twentieth. Based on extensive primary source research, this book offers important new insights in to the political and cultural climate of the Jacksonian era. It will interest historians and students of American foreign relations, particularly those who try to assess the impact of domestic developments upon foreign policy. - Dust jacket.