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Stephen Douglass Declaration Of Independence

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On July 4th, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed in the United States of America. The document declared the United States to be independent from Great Britain, who originally established colonies in America. From this moment on, The United States of America continued to add onto its newly formed country through conquests and treaties. The people of the United States believed they had a God given right to expand and control the territory that laid west of them. This idea of Manifest Destiny (Genovese, 2009) was an ideology of most Americans in the 1800’s. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Adams-Onis Treaty in 1819, Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842, the annexation of Texas in 1845, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, and the Kansas-Nebraska …show more content…

Douglas was born in Brandon, Vermont in 1813, and raised in New England (Capers, 1959, pg 5). His family could not afford for him to attend law school in New England, so he went to Illinois, where anyone could practice law, even without prior schooling (Capers, 1959, pg 8). Eventually, he came a Senator of Illinois, on the Senate Committee on Territories (Vanderford, 2009). When his first wife died, he toured Europe to cope with her death. When he returned home to Illinois, he began to speculate the land, and eventually his profits came from Chicago real estate (Capers, 1959, pg 76). In the 1850’s, the states of the Northwest began to demand money from the Federal government for internal improvements. Douglas used his political influence to help campaign for expansion in the west. A transcontinental railroad was planned to be constructed to help connect the United States. Since a central route had not been placed for the railroad yet, Douglas campaigned for the railroad to have a central route stop in Chicago (Capers, 1959, pg 90). This is an example of Douglas’ selfishness because he had stock invested in real estate in Chicago, and if the railroad was built going through Chicago, Illinois, then Douglas would benefit financially. Douglas then pushed to organize the Nebraska territory, so the railroad could reach from Chicago to places out on the Pacific coast. The northerners favored the railroad going through this unorganized Indian territory to link Chicago to the Pacific (Myers, 2010). The people of the south opposed this because they reminded them of the Indians that had been relocated by the Indian Removal Act (Capers, 1959, pg 92). When the Indian Removal Act was passed, Indians who primarily resided in the southeast were relocated onto reservations west of the Mississippi, which happened to be in the Nebraska territory. Douglas saw to resolve this issue by drafting the Kansas

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