This great advance began because the Americans now had control of the lands west of the Appalachians, and which the revolutionaries had promised to the soldiers who had served in the Continental Army their own property once the nation had won the war. In addition to soldiers wanting to own their own land, more and more Americans came to want the economic power that property brings, from ownership of land to the resources it can hold. Besides the economic benefits that moving west would bring to the United States, "Manifest Destiny" also found itself used as a religious ideology, a political ideology, and a racist ideology.