History 1301

History 1301

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History 1301

Westward expansion

Thomas Jefferson, the former US president believed that westward expansion can save the future of the nation. In 1803 the size of United States was doubled by purchasing Louisiana and 7 million of the native Ame5ican migrated towards the west in the year 1840 in order to secure some property (Merk).

People believe that the western part of the country has all the resources that will make them prosperous. The expansion strategies that made the westward expansion possible where were the growth in population and the economic opportunities over there. The send important idea was Manifest Destiny that led the local control to many lands. The submersion of Texas and Oregon with the United States occurred after the Mexican war. The first group of settlers settled west to the Mississippi River after the purchase of Louisiana and the second wave of settler went to California (Dahl and Allord).

It was the belief that it as the God-given duty to the settlers to expand towards the west and settle in the North American continent. It was a simple impolitic agenda to get to the resources of the western side as used by the European settlers, who used to believe that white man is responsible to spread Christianity and claim the land. Manifest destiny was used to justify the Mexican and American war in the 1840s. In this war, one million square miles of land was occupied that previously belonged to Mexicans. The settlers turned into cash cropper and started growing marketable product (Merk)

Causes of Civil war

The North American civil war was fought on the issue of slavery. The other factors were territorial expansion and the state rights issue (McPherson and Lincoln). Kansas-Nebraska Act, caning of Charles Sumner, Panic of 1857, Dred Scott decision and the election of 1880 were the main causes.

Slavery issue

The European invasion of North America brought the concept of slavery in America and which became weak after the American Revolution. Slavery was soon given a religion though and being declared as a sin. The slaver was abolished by the abolitionist moments called “free soil”, the political bodies wh+o declared some states free of slavery. The radical abolitionism was also helped to free the slaves (“Slavery in the United States”).

There was an intense slavery master relation. Pro-slavery arguments were generated and slaves were bought to do huge tasks. There were several compromises that abolished slavery in the United States and those were the Missouri compromise of 1820, slave-trade compromise and the Compromise of 1850. All of these helped to remove slavery from Northern America.

References

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Dahl, Thomas E., and Gregory J. Allord. “History of Wetlands in the Conterminous.” US Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper, no. 2425, 1982, p. 19.

McPherson, James M., and Abraham Lincoln. Ordeal by Fire. McGraw-Hill Companies, 1993.

Merk, Frederick. History of the Westward Movement. Knopf, 1978.

“Slavery in the United States.” American Battlefield Trust, 18 Dec. 2008, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/slavery-united-states.