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About This Drill
AP U.S. History — Period 4 (1800–1848) — Drill 24 is a Multiple Choice practice drill covering Period 4: 1800–1848. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.
This AP U.S. History Period 4 drill is based on John L. O'Sullivan's essay 'Annexation' (1845), which coined the phrase 'Manifest Destiny.' Questions analyze O'Sullivan's use of metaphor, his dismissal of competing territorial claims, and the ideology of westward expansion in the antebellum United States.
Passage
The following is adapted from 'Annexation,' an essay by journalist John L. O'Sullivan published in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review in July 1845, coining the phrase 'Manifest Destiny.'
It is our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of Liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us. It is a right such as that of the tree to the space of air and earth suitable for the full expansion of its principle and destiny of growth. It is in our future far more than in our past or in the past history of the Spanish race, that our greatest achievements wait. Away, then, with all these cobweb tissues of rights of discovery, exploration, settlement, prior history. Away with them, all! They are not suited to the bench of a Nineteenth Century, sitting in judgment or foreclosing on the case of wandering tribes.
Questions in This Drill
- O'Sullivan's comparison of American expansion to 'the right of the tree to the space of air and earth' most directly serves to
- O'Sullivan's declaration 'Away, then, with all these cobweb tissues of rights of discovery, exploration, settlement, prior history' most directly reveals his attitude toward
- The ideology of Manifest Destiny expressed by O'Sullivan most directly shaped which of the following political developments of the mid-1840s?
- Which of the following groups most directly used arguments similar to O'Sullivan's to justify American territorial expansion in the 1840s?
- O'Sullivan's dismissal of Indigenous peoples as 'wandering tribes' most directly reflected which of the following broader American cultural attitudes of the 1840s?