The historian Frederick Merk, in Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation (1963), argued that the failure of the All of Oregon and All of Mexico movements indicates that manifest destiny had not been as popular as historians have traditionally portrayed it to have been. Merk wrote that belief in the beneficent mission of democracy was central to American history, but aggressive "continentalism" was an aberration supported by only a minority of Americans, mostly Democrats, but opposed by Whigs and some Democrats. Thus, Louisiana Democrats opposed the annexation of Mexico,[4] while those in Mississippi supported it.[5]