Download Study Guide: Westward Expansion of the United States of America

Study Guide:
Westward Expansion of the United States of America
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I. New Territories added to the United States between 1801 and 1848
Louisiana Purchase – 1803
Texas - 1845
Florida - 1819
Oregon – 1846
California – 1848
1. Louisiana Purchase 1803
 In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson bought land from France, the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled
the size of the United States.
Events that led French leader, Napoleon, to sell the Louisiana territory:
 The Mississippi River was a hugely important waterway for shipping and transportation. The city of New
Orleans, situated where the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, was a major port. When Spain
controlled New Orleans they agreed to allow Americans to use that port
 Later France took control of the city. In 1802 Napoleon closed New Orleans to Americans.
 President Jefferson sent James Monroe to France to try to buy New Orleans from the French.
 In the early 1800’s there had been a massive slave revolt and revolution in Haiti against the French
colonial government there. The Haitians defeated a large French there, Napoleon’s wars in Europe
required his attention, and he decided to sell the Louisiana Territory and end French involvement in
America.
 President Jefferson was pleased to buy all of the Louisiana Territory when he’d only been trying to get
New Orleans.
 Jefferson arranged the Lewis and Clark expedition. Beginning in 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William
Clark explored the Louisiana Purchase from the Mississippi River, up the Missouri River to the Pacific
Ocean.
 Two important members of the expedition were York, an African American who was a slave, and
Sacagawea, a Native American woman. Each made major contributions to the group’s success.
2. Removal of Native Americans from the East:
 After gaining the Louisiana Territory, President Jefferson wanted to relocate Native Americans from
east of the Mississippi River into an Indian Homeland in what is today Oklahoma.
 Andrew Jackson continued the political and military effort for the removal of the Native Americans from
these lands with the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
 By the late 1830’s this “land swap” had taken place with many tribes removed from rich land in the
East, particularly in the South, and sent to the dry and inhospitable land in Oklahoma.
 The removal is called the “Trail of Tears.” Members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole,
Chickasaw, and other Native Americans suffered from exposure, disease and starvation on forced
marches to their new destinations.
 Many died, including 4,000 of the 15,000 relocated Cherokee.
 Some native Americans hid and avoided the removal and have descendents still living the US
Southeast.
 This removal transferred 25 million acres of land from Indians to white settlers.
3. Florida 1819
 The first permanent European settlement in American was St. Augustine in Florida, settled in 1565 by
the Spanish.
 There were many Spanish settlements in South America and across North America from Florida to
California.
 By 1819 Spanish colonies in South America were revolting and fighting against Spain.
 Under great pressure from these conflicts Spain decided to give Florida to the United States through a
treaty in 1819.
4. Texas 1845

By 1821 Mexico had fought for and gained its independence from Spain. The area that is now Texas
had been part of Mexico when it was a colony of Spain.
 Mexico got its independence from Spain and many settlers from USA began to settle in Texas hoping
to establish cotton plantations using enslaved workers.
 Eventually there were more Anlgos (English speaking people) than Mexicans in Texas. Mexico didn’t
allow slavery and a conflict developed between the Anglos and the Mexicans.
 The Texan settlers fought Mexico and after many battles, including a big loss at the Battle of the Alamo,
in 1836 Texas became an independent country, the Republic of Texas.
 In 1845 Texas joined the USA and became a state.
5. Oregon 1846
 The Oregon Territory was divided between the United States and Great Britain in 1846.
 The part that Britain took became part of Canada.
 The area that became part of the US included the dangerous Oregon Trail, important because it was
one of the few trails that allowed settlers to get past the Rocky Mountains and settle regions west of the
Rockies.
 The Oregon Territory was eventually divided into several states.
6. California 1848
 In 1846 the USA went to war with Mexico over a border dispute.
 Expanding America’s territory to the Pacific coast was the goal of President James K. Polk, however
many Americans were opposed to the war and considered it a war of aggression.
 There were heavy American casualties; the high cost of the war was also criticized.
 The USA won the war and as a result California and the southwest territory became part of the United
States in 1848.
7. Geographic and Economic Factors That Influenced Westward Movement
 Population growth in the eastern states; many Virginians, both Black and white, moved west in the
1830’s and 1840’s
 Plenty of cheap, fertile land was available. In 1862 The Homested Act allowed settlers to get free land
in some western areas.
 Freedom for freed or runaway slaves
 Economic opportunity: farming, gold in California, and lumber in the Oregon Territory (needed to build
railroads)
 The California Gold Rush: beginning in 1848 over 300,000 people flocked to California hoping to get
rich. Few got rich but many of these people, called 49ers, stayed in the west
8. Other factors that influenced people to go west
 Improvements in transportation made it cheaper and faster to go west, including new canals,
steamboats and railroads
 steamboats were developed that could navigate rivers against the current
 Information about overland trails encouraged settlers to go west.
 The Santa Fe Trail led to the Southwest USA
 The Oregon Trail led to Northwest USA
 The Erie Canal connected Albany, NY on the Hudson River with Buffalo, NY on Lake Erie, thus
creating a waterway from the Atlantic, to New York City, up the Hudson, through the Erie Canal to Lake
Erie and on to the other Great Lakes. This waterway led to NYC becoming a huge port and opened
areas from Chicago to NewYork for development.
9. Factors that encouraged expansion:
 Belief in the right of “Manifest Destiny” - the idea that expansion was for the good of the country and
therefore was a right of the country.
 Manifest Destiny: the USA must stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.
 Idea that this “right” to expand dominated concerns about Native Americans or other countries.
 In Polk’s Presidency: the USA reached the Pacific.
II. New Technologies and inventions bring changes: The cotton gin, reaper, steamboat, steam
locomotive
10. The Cotton Gin Invented by Eli Whitney
It increased the production of cotton and thus increased the desire for slave labor to cultivate and pick the
cotton.
11. The Reaper
 Cyrus McCormick and Jo Anderson (a slave) worked together to invent the reaper.
 The reaper separated the grain from the stem.
 The reaper increased the productivity of the American farmer.
12. The Steamboat
 Robert Fulton improved the steamboat.
 The steamboat provided faster river transportation that connected Southern plantations and farms to
Northern industries and Western territories.
 The steamboat could go upstream as well as downstream.
13. The Steam Locomotive
 The steam locomotive provided faster land transportation.
 Railroad were developed in the East starting slowly in the 1820’s and 1830’s and increasing rapidly in
the 1850’s. Expansion to the West took longer with the first transcontinental railroad opening from NY
to San Francisco in 1869.
14. Growth of the USA:
 Throughout the first half of the 1800’s the USA grew.
 There were many new immigrants from all parts of Europe and some from other parts of the world
 We started that century with a population of just over 5 million people living in13 colonies.
 By 1855 the country stretched to the Pacific Ocean and had a population of nearly 30 million.
15. Two Major National Conflicts:
 Two difficult major conflicts continued throughout this time:
 the conflict over enslaved
workers
 the conflict over land
rights of Native
Americans.
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