Manifest Destiny Word Search

Print 15 Manifest Destiny words in one grid, from Frontier and Annexation to Gold Rush, with the answer key.

Name Date

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0 of 15 words found

ANNEXATIONQLTGL

HOJIOLNOFLWLEBT

CONTINENTOETRBN

RQIRGOLDRUSHRDR

AEXIOSAMOITMKHH

RPACIFICASWWBRB

TSKSLRITAIAFZNT

EIRYCOEOVARTCSD

KEXPANSIONDLILR

TERRITORYAOTEUT

LDESTINYIORDQEE

MANIFESTIYIIIRX

EEGPURCHASETHEA

OREGONCOUNTRYYS

ZNOTSETTLERIENN

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

ManifestMANIFEST
DestinyDESTINY
ExpansionEXPANSION
WestwardWESTWARD
ContinentCONTINENT
AnnexationANNEXATION
TerritoryTERRITORY
FrontierFRONTIER
LouisianaLOUISIANA
PurchasePURCHASE
TexasTEXAS
Oregon CountryOREGON COUNTRY
PacificPACIFIC
SettlerSETTLER
Gold RushGOLD RUSH

15 words from the Manifest Destiny list.

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Answer key: Manifest Destiny Word Search

ANNEXATIONQLTGL

HOJIOLNOFLWLEBT

CONTINENTOETRBN

RQIRGOLDRUSHRDR

AEXIOSAMOITMKHH

RPACIFICASWWBRB

TSKSLRITAIAFZNT

EIRYCOEOVARTCSD

KEXPANSIONDLILR

TERRITORYAOTEUT

LDESTINYIORDQEE

MANIFESTIYIIIRX

EEGPURCHASETHEA

OREGONCOUNTRYYS

ZNOTSETTLERIENN

MANIFEST, DESTINY, EXPANSION, WESTWARD, CONTINENT, ANNEXATION, TERRITORY, FRONTIER, LOUISIANA, PURCHASE, TEXAS, OREGON COUNTRY, PACIFIC, SETTLER, GOLD RUSH

Next step Make a puzzle from your own unit's words Scramble these Manifest Destiny words

All 103 words

The Idea and the Argument 28

Annexation Adding a territory to a country. Also the title of the 1845 essay that first used the phrase.
Belief Something held to be true. The phrase names one, not a law or a treaty.
Conquest Taking land by force. Whig critics called expansion 'schemes of' it.
Continent The 1845 essay said the nation was meant 'to overspread' this.
Democrats The party most of whose members backed expansion in the 1840s.
Destiny A fate thought to be certain. The second word of the 1845 phrase.
Editor The newspaper job of the New Yorker most historians credit with coining the phrase.
Election The one for president in 1844 made expansion a leading issue.
Essay A short piece of writing. One of 1845 in the Democratic Review first used the phrase.
Expansion The growth of a country's territory, which the phrase was used to defend.
Frontier The outer edge of settlement, which kept moving west.
Hemisphere Half of the globe. The warning of 1823 spoke for the Western one.
Manifest Plain to see. The first word of the phrase coined in 1845.
Mission A task one is called to. Believers said the nation's was to spread republican government.

Show all 103 words (89 more)

The Idea and the Argument, continued

Monroe Doctrine The 1823 warning that the Western Hemisphere was closed to new European colonies.
Morning News The New York paper that used the phrase about Oregon on December 27, 1845.
Obvious What the first word of the phrase means.
Painting American Progress, of 1872, is one that shows the idea as a figure leading settlers on.
Providence Divine care. The 1845 essay said it had allotted the continent to the nation.
Proviso A condition added to a bill. One of August 8, 1846, tried to bar slavery from land won from Mexico.
Republic A state with no monarch. Texas was an independent one before 1845.
Slavery Each new territory raised the question of whether this would be allowed there.
Slogan A catchy political phrase, such as 'The whole of Oregon or none'.
State What a territory hoped to become. Texas became one on December 29, 1845.
Territory Land under a country's rule. In the United States, land not yet made a state.
Virtue Moral goodness. The idea assumed that the United States had a special share of it.
Westward Toward the Pacific: the way settlers were said to be destined to spread.
Whigs The party many of whose members opposed expansion. Their attacks made the phrase well known.

Land Added to the Map 38

Acres Units of land. The 1803 deal covered 530,000,000 of them.
Alaska Bought in 1867, where some scholars end the age of the phrase.
Arizona With New Mexico, a future state that took in the land bought in 1854.
Astoria A fur trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River that backed the American claim.
Boundary A dividing line between lands. The Oregon one was settled by treaty in 1846.
California Given up by Mexico on February 2, 1848. Gold had been found there on January 24.
Cede To give up land by treaty, as Mexico did in 1848 and Spain in 1819.
Claim To say a land is yours. Four powers once did so for the Pacific Northwest.
Columbia The river Britain wanted as the border in the Pacific Northwest.
Debts Money owed. In 1848 the United States took on up to $3.25 million of Mexico's to American citizens.
Dispute A disagreement. The one over the Oregon border was put off in 1818 and settled in 1846.
Envoy A government's messenger abroad. One sent to Mexico in November 1845 to buy land got no deal.
Fifty-four Forty The latitude, in degrees and minutes, in the slogan that ended 'or fight'.
Florida Transferred from Spain to the United States by a treaty of 1819.
Gadsden The 1854 purchase of 29,670 square miles from Mexico carries this envoy's name.
Guadalupe First word of the name of the treaty, signed on February 2, 1848, that ended the war with Mexico.
Latitude Distance north or south of the Equator, in degrees. The 1846 border follows a line of it.
Louisiana The territory bought from France in 1803 for $15 million.
Mesilla The valley both the United States and Mexico claimed after 1848.
Mexican Cession The land Mexico gave up in 1848, about 55 percent of its territory.
Mexico The republic that broke off relations with the United States over the annexation of Texas.
Mississippi The river that was the eastern edge of the land bought in 1803.
Nevada A future state inside the land Mexico gave up in 1848.
New Orleans The port the President's envoys were sent to buy in 1803. They were offered far more.
Nueces The river, farther north, that Mexico said was the border of Texas.
Oregon Country The Pacific Northwest region shared with Britain from 1818 and divided in 1846.
Pacific The ocean the nation reached, so that it stretched 'from sea to shining sea'.
Parallel A line of latitude. The 49th became the border west of the Rockies in 1846.
Purchase A buying. The one of 1803 doubled the size of the United States.
Railroad The 1854 purchase was made to give a southern one a route.
Ratify To approve a treaty. The Senate did so for the Oregon treaty on June 18, 1846, by 41 votes to 14.
Rio Grande The river Texas claimed as its border, which the 1848 treaty recognized.
Rocky Mountains The range between the land bought in 1803 and the Oregon Country.
Russia One of four powers that once claimed the Pacific Northwest.
Senate The chamber that approved the 1848 peace on March 10, by 38 votes to 14.
Spain The country that gave up Florida, and its claim to Oregon, in a treaty of 1819.
Texas A republic annexed in 1845. Its disputed border led to war the next year.
Vancouver The island left whole to Britain when the 1846 border was drawn.

Trails West and the Gold Rush 19

Emigrant A person who leaves home to settle elsewhere. The wagon route was a trail of them.
Fort Hall The Idaho post that a wagon road had reached by 1836.
Forty-Niner A gold seeker, named for the peak year of arrivals.
Gold Rush The race to California that began with a find on January 24, 1848. It drew about 300,000 people.
Golden Spike Driven at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869, to finish the railway across the continent.
Homestead A farm claimed from public land. The first act named for it was signed on May 20, 1862.
Missouri The state where the first migrant wagon train formed, at the town of Independence.
Mountain Men Fur trappers who found the routes that wagons later used.
Mules Draft animals that cost about three times as much as oxen.
Oregon Trail A wagon route of 2,170 miles from the Missouri River to the valleys of the Pacific Northwest.
Oxen Draft animals of the wagon trail that could live on prairie grass and cost far less than mules.
Promontory The place where the railway across the continent was finished in 1869.
Settler A person who makes a home in a new region. About 400,000 people used the Oregon Trail.
Sierra Nevada The mountain range of the California goldfields.
South Pass The wide and easy crossing of the Continental Divide, in Wyoming.
Sutter's Mill The place at Coloma, California, where gold was found in 1848.
Utah The future state where the railway across the continent was finished in 1869.
Wagon Train A company of emigrants traveling west together. The first was organized in 1836.
West The direction the wagons went.

Native Nations and Removal 18

Cherokee The nation that fought removal in the courts and was forced west in 1838.
Chickasaw A southeastern nation pressed, like its neighbors, to trade its land for land in the West.
Choctaw A southeastern nation named with the Creek, Cherokee and Chickasaw in accounts of removal.
Displace To force people from their home. Treaties were one means used to do it.
Faction A small group inside a larger one. One signed the 1835 treaty, not the Cherokee majority.
Georgia The state whose laws the Cherokee challenged in court.
Homeland The place a people comes from. Removal treaties took these in the Southeast.
Native Nations The peoples already living on the land the United States claimed.
New Echota The 1835 treaty of this name gave up the Cherokee homeland.
Oklahoma The removed nations were sent to what later became the eastern part of this state.
Protest A public objection. Two noted senators made one against the 1835 treaty.
Removal The 1830 act of this name offered land west of the Mississippi for homelands in the East.
Seminole The Florida nation that resisted removal in two more wars, from 1835 and from 1855.
Southeast The region most Native nations had been forced to leave by the 1840s.
Sovereign Self-governing. In 1832 the highest court ruled that Native nations were this.
Supreme Court It ruled in 1832 that Georgia's laws did not bind the Cherokee. The President ignored it.
Trail of Tears The name of the forced journey of the Cherokee to the West in 1838.
Treaties Agreements between nations. Almost seventy removal ones were signed under one President.

How this list was compiled: Own work: the 103 words and every meaning were written for this page. Dates, prices and treaty terms were checked on October 16, 2026 against the U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Milestones pages for 1801 to 1860 (https://history.state.gov/milestones) and English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny and the articles Oregon Trail, California gold rush, Homestead Acts, Oregon Treaty and Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Licence: own work

How it works

This Manifest Destiny word search hides 15 words: Manifest, Destiny, Expansion, Westward, Continent, Frontier, Annexation, Territory, Louisiana, Purchase, Texas, Oregon Country, Gold Rush, Settler and Pacific. Four more lists cover the idea, the land, the trails and removal.

Read the full guide

Four lists, from the 1845 essay to the golden spike

Start from a list splits the 103 words: The Idea and the Argument (28) has Whigs, Proviso and Monroe Doctrine; Land Added to the Map (38) runs from Louisiana in 1803 to Alaska in 1867; Trails West and the Gold Rush (19) has South Pass and Forty-Niner; Native Nations and Removal (18) has Cherokee, Sovereign and Trail of Tears.

Dates and prices sit in the meanings

"The territory bought from France in 1803 for $15 million." is Louisiana. "The latitude, in degrees and minutes, in the slogan that ended 'or fight'." is Fifty-four Forty. No person is a puzzle word. To add one from your unit, type Polk, Jackson or Sacagawea on the last line of the list.

Easy Manifest Destiny keeps to 14 words of 4 or 5 letters, such as Texas, Whigs, Cede, Oxen and Utah.
The grid drops spaces, hyphens and apostrophes, so look for OREGONCOUNTRY, FIFTYFOURFORTY, SUTTERSMILL and TRAILOFTEARS.
Manifest and Destiny are hidden as two separate words.

Questions and answers

What was Manifest Destiny?

A belief, common in the 19th-century United States, that American settlers were destined to spread west across North America. It was an idea used in arguments over Texas, Oregon and the war with Mexico, not a law or a treaty.

Who coined the phrase Manifest Destiny?

Most historians credit John O'Sullivan, a New York newspaper editor. The phrase first appeared in 1845 in an unsigned essay, Annexation, in the Democratic Review. Some historians think the journalist Jane Cazneau wrote it, Wikipedia's article on the phrase notes.

What land did the United States gain in the Manifest Destiny years?

Texas was annexed in 1845. The Oregon Country was divided with Britain at the 49th parallel in 1846. Mexico gave up about 55 percent of its territory in 1848, the State Department's history says, and the Gadsden Purchase followed in 1854.

How did Manifest Destiny affect Native Americans?

Expansion went with removal. Under the Removal Act of 1830 and almost seventy treaties, nearly 50,000 people of eastern nations were moved west of the Mississippi, the State Department's history says. The Cherokee were forced west in 1838, on the Trail of Tears.

All 103 words

The Idea and the Argument 28

The Idea and the Argument, continued

Land Added to the Map 38

Trails West and the Gold Rush 19

Native Nations and Removal 18

How it works

Four lists, from the 1845 essay to the golden spike

Dates and prices sit in the meanings

Questions and answers

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