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References: Manifest Destiny and Antebellum Reform (1828–1848)

  1. Manifest Destiny - Wikipedia - Traces the ideology of continental expansion, its religious and racial justifications, and how the phrase itself was coined and used to rationalize wars, treaties, and dispossession.

  2. Seneca Falls Convention - Wikipedia - Details the 1848 convention, the drafting of the Declaration of Sentiments, its key organizers (Stanton, Mott), and its significance as the founding moment of the organized women's rights movement.

  3. Mexican–American War - Wikipedia - Covers the war's contested causes, major battles, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which transferred roughly half of Mexico's territory to the United States and intensified the slavery crisis.

  4. Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (2007) - Oxford University Press - Pulitzer Prize-winning history covering the Market Revolution, Manifest Destiny, and reform movements with particular attention to communications technology as a force for change.

  5. John Mack Faragher, Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1994) - Yale University Press - Brings together Turner's original frontier thesis alongside revisionist critiques, giving students both the classic argument and the historiographical response.

  6. Digital History: Manifest Destiny - University of Houston - Primary source documents and essays on western expansion, the Mexican-American War, and the antebellum reform movements that challenged the era's contradictions.

  7. Gilder Lehrman Institute: Antebellum Reform - Gilder Lehrman Institute - Scholarly essays and primary sources on abolitionism, temperance, and women's rights, covering the Second Great Awakening's role in energizing reform activity.

  8. Avalon Project: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) - Yale Law School - Full text of the treaty ending the Mexican-American War, which ceded present-day California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of four other states to the United States.

  9. Khan Academy: Antebellum Period - Khan Academy - Article and video series on Jackson's Indian Removal, the abolitionist movement, women's rights, and the social reform wave of the 1830s–1840s.

  10. Zinn Education Project: Manifest Destiny - Zinn Education Project - Lesson plans and primary sources foregrounding Indigenous and Mexican perspectives on westward expansion, offering a counternarrative to traditional textbook accounts.