The Wild West: Manifest Destiny

Manifest Destiny was a 19th century belief that the United States was destined, or meant, to occupy all land from the Atlantic Ocean to the coast of the Pacic. In this worksheet, children read about the political, geographical, and human consequences of this movement that also helped shape the cultural notion of the Wild West. A thoughtful prompt invites students to consider how they might have felt about the Manifest Destiny movement had they been alive at that time. This worksheet lends well to a fifth-grade social studies and history curriculum.