country’s main concern was growth, but with growth came the expansion of The early 1800s was a time when the United States was experiencing a rapid growth in population. To what extent is it accurate to claim that the ideal of manifest destiny was a motivating factor in the western expansions of the United States? Even though land speculators were able to get control of large land, this act allowed many more people to migrate than what they were able to before. Post–Civil War Westward Migration In the decades after the Civil War, Americans poured across the Mississippi River in record numbers. The Louisiana Purchase stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to New Orleans, and it doubled the size of the United States. Like Thomas Jefferson, many of these pioneers associated westward migration, land ownership and farming with freedom. What were the reasons for Westward expansion? Because California appeared to have anti-slavery inclinations, southern democrats were reluctant to let it enter the Union and disrupt the sectional balance in Congress. This compromise makes a good point in my opinion, because for three It was passed by the United States Congress as part of The Compromise of 1850. The States had previously maintained a shaky balance in the Senate with an equal number of representatives from both Slave and Free States. Learn about the Louisiana Purchase, manifest destiny, the Gold Rush and more. Paper 1 states. These tensions that made compromise impossible centered mostly on the issue of slavery, and the zeal that many people had in defending their own view of slavery. When the United States entered into a war with Mexico over Texas and its western territories, the issue of extending slavery in the west resurfaced in Congress. Northern cities, the center of industry in the United States, became major metropolises due to an influx of immigrants. Wilmot’s proviso suggested that slavery should be prohibited in any territories acquired from Mexico. Although manifest destiny was a huge motivating factor in the western expansion of the United States, other factors such as the rising population, expansion of slavery and freedom-seeking slaves, the gold rush of California, and new opportunities sought by settlers. 10 When voters from nearby Missouri snuck into Kansas in order to vote to make the territory a slave state, tensions between the two sides exploded. No longer simply crossing over the continent for new imagined Edens in California or Oregon, they settled now in the vast heart of the continent. The Compromise also made future bondage illegal in all areas of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36°30′ parallel with the exception of Missouri; all future states below this line would become Slave States. Under certain circumstances, people could also buy 160 acres at $1.25 an acre. Accessed November 9th, 2012. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/40399768.pdf?acceptTC=true, 262. ...Meghan Gardner This article helps answer “What role did western expansion play in the Civil War?” Themes: causes of the Civil War, the Civil War and Western Expansion, slavery, slavery and western expansion, Wilmot’s Proviso, Antebellum America, Bleeding Kansas, Civil War, Western Expansion, The West, the American West, African American history, economic history. Representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania first introduced a potential solution to the problem in 1846. As Missouri prepared to enter the Union as a Slave State, this tentative balance threatened to come undone. American History Ultimately, negotiations unraveled and a bloody Civil War erupted. In addition to providing lifelong history lovers, teachers, and students free access to premier digital research, the editors and writers of U.S. History Scene are available for freelance or consulting work. 1 These fears were realized when the expansion of slavery into western territories entered Congressional debates. For the South, the Compromise promised that popular sovereignty would decide the question of slavery in the Utah and New Mexico territories. AMH 2010 Railroads, especially transcontinental s, played a large role in the expansion by giving railroad developers land grants. To Jefferson, westward expansion was the key to the nation’s health: He believed that a republic depended on an independent, virtuous citizenry for its survival, and that independence and virtue went hand in hand with land ownership, especially the ownership of small farms. ...In the nineteenth century, the great nation of America that had been so successfully founded and developed by its united citizens was threatened by civil war. Read more about its history and outcome. Westward Expansion was the 19th-century movement of settlers, agriculture and industry into the American West. This compromise weighed equality in the numbers of free states and slave Most of these people had left their homes in the East in search of economic opportunity. At this point in time, the AMH 2010 . wanted to join the Union as a slave state after the Louisiana Purchase. The institution of slavery oppressed enslaved individuals, the effects were felt beyond the large slave population. The Fugitive Slave Act was introduced as a way to limit slavery. From 1801 to1844, westward expansion spread rapidly and America experienced a serious change in national unity. Reconstruction was literally "reconstructing" the United States after the Civil War ravaged physical, economic, and political aspects of the Confederacy. The institutions negative impact on the South, and even the entire nation would eventually lead to the civil war. People who could not afford it got land for free. With this willing and cheap workforce, the North did not require a slave system. For the North, the Compromise guaranteed that California would enter the Union as a Free State and the slave trade would end in the District of Columbia. The War and Westward Movement. Therefore, the South was given stricter laws against slavery. Just four years later in 1854, new statehood controversies arose and forced the issue of slavery back into Congress. Speeches on Political Questions (Westport, Ct: Negro Universities Press, 1872), 71. David M. Kennedy, Thomas A. Bailey, and Lizabeth Cohen, The American Pageant (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006), 247. . 2 Slavery became even more divisive when it threatened to expand westward because non-slaveholding white settlers did not want to compete with slaveholders in the new territories. thought and power. Slavery may have helped produce abundant amounts of cotton cheaply, but it also cursed those who were tangled in the grip of this “peculiar institution”. Even in the matter of land distribution, most of the fertile and nutrient-rich land was used to support plantations built by the wealthy slaveowners. With Federal resources focused on waging the war farther east, both native tribes and the Confederacy attempted to claim lands west of the Mississippi. 3 (1946). Westward Expansion (after the Civil War) You studied how the Civil War redefined the nation. Unfortunately, it required that the federal government move Native Americans from their homes. .” That simple change in a verb from plural to singular reflected the transformation of … “Wilmot Provisio, August 12, 1846”. Kansas and Nebraska were both large territories petitioning for statehood. Slavery, like... ...the French government for $15 million. While the South utilized slavery to sustain its culture and grow cotton on plantations, the North prospered during the Industrial Revolution. No longer simply crossing over the continent for new imagined Edens in California or Oregon, they settled now in the vast heart of the continent. Following the Mexican War, the This westward expansion did not come without a price. They fought for the union. Between the Gold Rush and the Civil War, Americans in growing numbers filled the Mississippi River valley, Texas, the southwest territories, and the new states of Kansas and Nebraska.

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