<Li> The mission of the United States to redeem and remake the west in the image of agrarian America </Li> <Li> An irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty </Li> <P> Historian Frederick Merk says this concept was born out of "a sense of mission to redeem the Old World by high example...generated by the potentialities of a new earth for building a new heaven". </P> <P> Historians have emphasized that "manifest destiny" was a contested concept--pre-civil war Democrats endorsed the idea but many prominent Americans (such as Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and most Whigs) rejected it . Historian Daniel Walker Howe writes, "American imperialism did not represent an American consensus; it provoked bitter dissent within the national polity...Whigs saw America's moral mission as one of democratic example rather than one of conquest ." </P>

Where did the idea of manifest destiny come from
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