Empire on the Pacific: A Study in American Continental Expansion

In this stimulating volume, which was originally published in 1955, Professor Norman A. Graebner argues that historians have exaggerated the role played by the spirit of manifest destiny in the expansionism of the 1840s. In his view, neither the overland migrations nor eastern public opinion had any direct bearing on the diplomacy that won Oregon and California for the United States. Instead, the principal objective of every statesman from Jackson on was maritime: the acquisition of the har...