<P> The phrase "manifest destiny" is most often associated with the territorial expansion of the United States from 1812 to 1860 . This era, from the end of the War of 1812 to the beginning of the American Civil War, has been called the "age of manifest destiny". During this time, the United States expanded to the Pacific Ocean--"from sea to shining sea"--largely defining the borders of the contiguous United States as they are today . </P> <P> One of the causes of the War of 1812 may have been an American desire to annex or threaten to annex British Canada in order to stop the Indian raids into the Midwest, expel Britain from North America, and gain additional land . The American victories at the Battle of Lake Erie and the Battle of the Thames in 1813 ended the Indian raids and removed one of the reasons for annexation . The American failure to occupy any significant part of Canada prevented them from annexing it for the second reason, which was largely ended by the Era of Good Feelings, which ensued after the war between Britain and the United States . </P> <P> To end the War of 1812 John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and Albert Gallatin (former Treasury Secretary and a leading expert on Indians) and the other American diplomats negotiated the Treaty of Ghent in 1814 with Britain . They rejected the British plan to set up an Indian state in U.S. territory south of the Great Lakes . They explained the American policy toward acquisition of Indian lands: </P> <P> The United States, while intending never to acquire lands from the Indians otherwise than peaceably, and with their free consent, are fully determined, in that manner, progressively, and in proportion as their growing population may require, to reclaim from the state of nature, and to bring into cultivation every portion of the territory contained within their acknowledged boundaries . In thus providing for the support of millions of civilized beings, they will not violate any dictate of justice or of humanity; for they will not only give to the few thousand savages scattered over that territory an ample equivalent for any right they may surrender, but will always leave them the possession of lands more than they can cultivate, and more than adequate to their subsistence, comfort, and enjoyment, by cultivation . If this be a spirit of aggrandizement, the undersigned are prepared to admit, in that sense, its existence; but they must deny that it affords the slightest proof of an intention not to respect the boundaries between them and European nations, or of a desire to encroach upon the territories of Great Britain...They will not suppose that that Government will avow, as the basis of their policy towards the United States a system of arresting their natural growth within their own territories, for the sake of preserving a perpetual desert for savages . </P>

Which group supported western expansion and economic development