how far can manifest destiny go?

Let's assume that the question of slaverly is decided in 1787, leaving no check on manifest destiny either from the slave/free state balance or the civil war how far does it go before it runs its course?
 
I don't doubt that America wants to go to the Pacific, but how much land besides that is up for debate. A less expansionistic America, without the need to balance free and slave land, may annex less of Texas (and if there's even a war at all over it), compromise further on the Oregon Country, feel less need to make the Gadsden Purchase (due to lack of a need for a Southern-routed railroad to the Pacific to keep the sections 'equal' in that respect) etc.
 
The all-Mexico movement might succeed. Many people thought that the best way to have a safe southern border was to just annex our southern neighbor. :p The reason it failed was due to Southern racism and Northern opposition to the expansion of slavery.

If we remove the latter, then annexing the entire country would likely have more support. We'd only have to contend with the racism issue rather than the slavery issue, and its possible that a slave-less USA would be more tolerant (though obviously not by today's standards).
 
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To the Pacific?

Seriously though, that's what Manifest Destiny was; overrrunning the "savages" all the way to the West Coast and beating the other powers to it, not conquering or fighting with the other "civilized" powers on the continent. That would be something else. The US managed to take the northernmost territories from Mexico only because they were very sparsely populated with Spanish/Mexican settlers.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Polk wanted all of Mexico and may have gotten it had it not been for the offices of a less-ambitious American diplomat.

America annexing all of Mexico is going to be very, very ugly.
 
Many people assume that America would have annexed Mexico, but really the issue was far greater than just slavery (which in itself is a major one - majority of people in Mexico were very anti slavery). Annexing a nation of different nationality, religion, and language with a population not-that much smaller would not have ended well for anyone.
 
Polk wanted all of Mexico and may have gotten it had it not been for the offices of a less-ambitious American diplomat.

America annexing all of Mexico is going to be very, very ugly.

I thought it was just all of Mexico north of Tampico he wanted.

Anywho, if we want to get the USA as large as possible, I could see the OTL borders, Mexico north of Tampico, Vancouver island, some more pacific islands, the Philippines, and maybe Taiwan. I may be pushing it though.
 
Let's not forget "54-40 or fight"

It was not out of the question that America would seek its additional land up in Canada, after all.
 
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