The Great Leaps Westward

The Forty Niners were the gold prospectors. The Forty Niners were tens of thousands of men and many fewer women. Who all migrated to California in 1849 after they heard there was gold in 1848. The Forty Niners travelled there both land and sea from the East, hoping to make it rich. And the reason why the 49er’s are called that is because it comes from the name given to the gold prospectors who arrived in Northern California around 1849 during the Gold Rush. The name was suggested to reflect the voyagers who had rushed the West for gold.

America into an "empire for liberty". He made that happen by expanding westward, to create "room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation”. This westward expansion is also known as the "manifests destiny", where many Americans was our God-given right to expand to the Pacific Ocean and into Mexican Territory.

America’s westward expansion really affected the lives of the Native Americans in several ways. Since Americans were wanting land for farming, ranching, and mining, it took away the Native Americans land for hunting and gathering. In general, this dramatically changed the face of American history.

There are many forces the drove different groups westward. One example of a group is Native Americans, they were forced to leave their homes, and move west of the Mississippi River. Native Americans had to move, because Americans wanted their land in the south. Moving west, caused Native Americans to have little time to gather their materials to leave, as the Americans drove into their land very quickly. Including the long journey to the land, the resulted in many losing their lives, this journey was known as the trail of tears. They did not want to leave their homelands, but were forced in fear of their lives. Another example of a group of Americans moving westward, is Mexicans. The war between America and Mexico was taking place, as a fight

In the mid-1800s, many Americans began to move westward, with a variety of motivations. Farmers were drawn west by all of the fertile, open land in the west, offered to them cheap by the Homestead Act. The California Gold Rush was another reason many moved west. Gold was discovered in California, and miners flocked there, hoping to strike it rich. Additionally, cattle ranchers were attracted to the west because their beef cattle thrived on the abundant grasses and open range of the Great Plains. Later on, newly built railroads, including the first transcontinental railroad, made transportation of people and goods west much more feasible, and opened the West to rapid settlement (History Alive). Although Westward Expansion was a time of full

shipped east to feed the growing number of workers in factories in cities like Philadelphia,

After the War of 1812 much of America's attention turned to exploration and settlement of its territory to the West, which had been greatly enlarged by the Louisiana Purchase.

for it (Cooke 254). If it had been left to the government, it would have taken

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. Even 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. Westward expansion was greatly aided in the early 19th century in the year of 1803 by the Louisiana Purchase , 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. 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. In 1845, a journalist by the name of John O’Sullivan created 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. 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. would defend other nations of the Western Hemisphere from further colonization. The debate over whether the U.S. 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. When the Dred Scott case prevented Congress from passing laws prohibiting slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska act gave citizens of new

This text is a sampling of times, places, and people of the Westward Expansion. A teacher teaching the Westward Expansion will find historical images and stories behind the historical times and the sheet music that correlates to the topics. This cross-curricular resource allows for the stories to be read and the pictures to study, and ultimately the music to be incorporated into the classroom learning. Ultimately this book can be utilized to bring adventure, danger, dreams, and the realities of American life during the Westward Expansion to come alive for students. This will make history fun for all students, allowing students to build more of a connection to the past. This is another great resource but because I don’t teach Western Expansion

How do you see progress, as a process that is beneficial or in contrast, that it´s a hurtful process that everyone at one point of their lives has to pass through it? At the time, progress was beneficial for the United States, but those benefits came with a cost, such cost that instead of advancements and developments being advantageous factors for humanity, it also became a harmful process in which numerous people were affected in many facets of life. This all means that progress is awsome to achieve, but when achieved, people have to realize the process they had to do to achieve it, which was stepping on other people to get there.

Ever since Jamestown, America has come a long way. In the middle of the nineteenth century American’s were eager to move west. They wanted to see the span of the United States from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. Jefferson was able to double the size of the United States by negotiating with France, which ended up being known as the Louisiana Purchase. Americans saw empty land waiting to be filled. They thought the open land meant opportunity and potential wealth. By moving west, they could share their unique way of government and the freedom it represented. They believed that America would be a great nation.

I believe the government is primarily responsible for continued westward expansion during the 1800s. Westward expansion or “Manifest Destiny” is the idea of moving west after the Civil War in 1865, Many people felt it was their “God-given right” to do so, also the encouragement of the government. The reasoning behind this is the extended land in the west with the Louisiana Purchase and the law of the Homestead Act which allowed anyone to own land, in which the U.S. government both passed. Also with the U.S. government setting policies with unclear directions about moving westward and the insensitive acts towards the people who were currently living in western areas.

In the eyes of the government, the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 was 2,000 miles of opportunity ready to be seized. Westward expansion started with the idea of Manifest Destiny coined by John L. O’Sullivan in 1845. This was the encouragement of citizens to start a new life in the west, with the hope of acquiring land. Despite this encouragement by the government, the land was occupied by Native Americans who were not willing to give up their land without a fight. The government knew of their existence from the previous expedition of Lewis and Clark, but still encouraged western expansion. This decision resulted in conflicts between the United States and Indians which lasted decades. The difficulties included the environment, developing industries, and conflicts with Native Americans.The environment and the Native Americans had minimal effects on the west, but the industries such as mining and cattle had significant impacts on the settlement west of the Mississippi.

The westward expansion saw the emergence of major cities, railway networks, more interactions and improved agriculture which kept on improving in the 1800s. In the interactive map helped me realized a few important things. For instance. there are several ways through which the United States experienced a huge growth during the 1860–1890 westward expansion. Increased population, development of railroads, as well as large-scale agriculture are amongst the decades' major achievements as indicated on the decade base maps. Furthermore, the map showed as some of the natural barriers that prevented growth as well as the indigenous populations which existed prior the expansion (Billington, Allen, and Martin 2001, 201).