Andrew Menard, Sight Unseen: How Frémont’s First Expedition Changed the American Landscape.

Abstract

How did the idea of America as ‘the nation of futurity’ relate to the need of territorial expansion across the continent in the mid-19th century? How did the notion of Manifest Destiny (first formulated by the journalist John O’Sullivan) come to be firmly connected with the progress across space besides that across time? How did Americans solve the dilemma between the moral imperative (of Puritanical origin) to civilize the continent and the theoretical need (expressed by Thomas Jefferson, am...