The 1783 United States comprised only the thirteen Atlantic colonies

Evidence

Teaching Native American studies, I always begin with a simple exercise. I ask students to quickly draw a rough outline of the United States at the time it gained independence from Britain. Invariably most draw the approximate present shape of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific—the continental territory not fully appropriated until a century after independence. What became independent in 1783 were the thirteen British colonies hugging the Atlantic shore. When called on this, students are embarrassed because they know better. I assure them that they are not alone. I call this a Rorschach test of unconscious “manifest destiny,” embedded in the minds of nearly everyone in the United States and around the world. This test reflects the seeming inevitability of US extent and power, its destiny, with an implication that the continent had previously been terra nullius, a land without people. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 7

Categorization

• SEED: A vivid classroom exercise that could seed a short explainer on how manifest destiny distorts maps.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 7
• XREF: connects to: An educated propertied Black elite existed in the United States by 1903; North American colonies’ compact geography enabled a continental ‘American’ identity to coalesce. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 240