Westward expansion timelime free#

The California Gold Rush was a major factor in expansion west of the Mississippi.

When gold was discovered in California, acquired through the treaty that ended the war with Mexico in 1848, waves of treasure seekers poured into the area.

The question was only settled by the American Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery. sole possession of a portion of the Oregon Territory. The slavery debate intensified after the Republic of Texas was annexed and new lands acquired as a result of the Mexican War and an agreement with Britain that gave the U.S.

Westward expansion timelime free#

When the Dred Scott case prevented Congress from passing laws prohibiting slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska act gave citizens of new states the right to decide for themselves whether their state would be free or slaveholding, a wave of settlers rushed to populate the Kansas-Nebraska Territory in order to make their position-pro- or anti-slavery-the dominant one when states were carved out of that territory. would continue slavery and expand the area in which it existed or abolish it altogether became increasingly contentious throughout the first half of the 19th century. would defend other nations of the Western Hemisphere from further colonization. The Monroe Doctrine, adopted in 1823, was the closest America ever came to making Manifest Destiny official policy it put European nations on notice that the U.S. In 1845, a journalist named John O’Sullivan coined the term “Manifest Destiny,” a belief that Americans and American institutions are morally superior and therefore Americans are morally obligated to spread those institutions in order to free people in the Western Hemisphere from European monarchies and to uplift “less civilized” societies, such as the Native American tribes and the people of Mexico. boundaries and defeated native tribes of the Old Northwest, the region of the Ohio and Upper Mississippi valleys and the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forcibly moved virtually all Indians from the Southeast to the present states of Arkansas and Oklahoma, a journey known as the Trail of Tears. Westward expansion was greatly aided in the early 19th century by the Louisiana Purchase (1803), which was followed by the Corps of Discovery Expedition that is generally called the Lewis and Clark Expedition the War of 1812, which secured existing U.S. Westward Expansion summary: The story of the United States has always been one of westward expansion, beginning along the East Coast and continuing, often by leaps and bounds, until it reached the Pacific-what Theodore Roosevelt described as “the great leap Westward.” The acquisition of Hawaii and Alaska, though not usually included in discussions of Americans expanding their nation westward, continued the practices established under the principle of Manifest Destiny.Įven before the American colonies won their independence from Britain in the Revolutionary War, settlers were migrating westward into what are now the states of Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as parts of the Ohio Valley and the Deep South. Manifest Destiny Westward Expansion ArticlesĮxplore articles from the History Net archives about Westward Expansion Western Territories Of The United States Events