Westward Expansion: Emigrants On The Oregon Trail

The Westward expansion began for the United States with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. For $15 million dollars, President Thomas Jefferson purchased from France 828,000 square miles, including most of 14 current states, thus doubling the size of America. Jefferson now had the land, but how to populate it was another story. On a three year expedition, Lewis and Clark were sent by Jefferson to explore the lands to get a better understanding of the geography and resources of the West. During the 1830s to 1840s, to promote further territory expansion, the “manifest destiny” came into play – which was the idea that America was destined to expand across the entire country westward. Quickly, the nation expanded.

The U.S. government encouraged westward expansion through the Louisiana Purchase and the Homestead Act. President Thomas Jefferson acted on the Louisiana Purchase, after buying the land from France for millions of dollars, he also believed in the idea of moving west and thought of it as a

During westward expansion, the Native Americans got kicked to the side. The settlers coming west often saw the Indians as a threat to them and their families. However, this was not the main reason the Indians were pushed aside. The settlers saw the Indians had fertile land and wanted it for themselves. The Indians were the opposite of what the settlers thought they were. The Indians often helped the people moving west across the plains; giving them food, supplies, and acting as guides. However, the U.S. Government did not see this side of the Indians, instead they forced the Indians onto reservations. During the time of the expansion of the United States to the present, the Native Americans went through many things so that the United States could expand; they were pushed onto reservations, and forced to give up their culture through the Ideas of Manifest Destiny and Social Darwinism.

The Westward Expansion started prior to The Revolutionary War, settlers were migrating westward to what states are now modern day Kentucky and Tennessee in hopes for a fruitful life and larger job opportunity. This Westward Expansion was aided through the Louisiana purchase in 1803, in which the United States purchased territory from France, resulting in doubling in size of the country. This Louisiana purchase was stretched from the Mississippi River to the eastern Rocky Mountains in the west and from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the south of the Canadian border in the north. In result of the Westward Expansion , families would pick up and walk as far west as

Westward expansion was a time of successes and failures, a time celebrations and grief, a time full of life and death but in the end it shaped how America is the way is today. Westward expansion was put in action because of the belief of Manifest Destiny, the belief that it is America fate to expand from the Atlantic to Pacific ocean. The economical, political and humanitarians impacts were necessary to achieve the goal of manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion.

In the article “The Klondike Gold Rush,” it explains how miners from all across the land traveled to get to the gold rush. The two main paths to travel were by boat or by trail, the harder of the two was the trail because it was long and required going up a steep mountain. The article tells the reader of how people would be carrying hundreds of pounds going up the mountain, but then dropping most of their items on the side of the trail because they couldn't carry the weight. The point of view in this article gave us the idea that the journey was long and laborious.

2.Route danger&poorly supplied(mt&river),worst in way toward CA-(Sierra Nevada-Donner party- cannibalism)-wagons endangered by illness&accident-Indian attack-few, but white

Westward expansion was a new thing and time in our country and had many impacts on the American people and ways of life. The government made it available to buy a lot more of land in the West. Our government gave opportunities for people to move west for a better life or more land in the west. The government gave opportunities like the homestead act where the government would give families 160 acres of land if they moved west at the time this deal was going on. This act was signed into law by President Lincoln in 1862. People moved west for any opportunity they could. People moved for a new life, more land, and more opportunities in

The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of U.S in 1803. But it is not enough for ambitious Americans, we are not satisfied, we wanted more territory. So western expansion did not end, it actually keep moved. Westward Expansion is a very significant part in U.S history. It operated perfectly based on the ideology called manifest destiny. However, the creation of this theory is on purpose. It was used to push U.S territory to further west.

The Cherokee marched through, biting cold, rains, and snow. Many people died during this trip from starvation, diseases, exposure,

Jefferson believed that the nation's future depended on its westward expansion. Almost 7 million americans had migrated westward securing their land and being prosperous. The louisiana from the mississippi river to the rocky mountains and canada.

The Oregon Trail was a 2,200 mile long journey from Missouri to Oregon that many pioneers traveled along to reach new lands in hopes of better opportunities. The first people to explore the Oregon Trail were fur traders in the early 1800’s. In the 1840’s many more settlers headed out west due to hardships that the East was enduring. Settlers were faced with difficult obstacles such as, harsh landscapes, extreme weather diseases, and shortages of food, water and supplies.

The British and the U.S. were both wanting to settle on the Oregon land. They both came up with an agreement of joint occupancy that would provide Oregon to be a free and open country for settlement by Great Britain and the U.S. in 1818. For a quarter of a century both countries maintained a peaceful coexistence. In the mid-1840s the Americans traveled west on the Oregon Trail. With the news getting back to the east of how great it was in the west, there were more settlers that picked up and moved out west.

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.

The purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803 opened the door to westward expansion. Thomas Jefferson purchased this extensive plot of land with the hopes of strengthening and expanding the Republic, unaware that it would have the opposite effect. Jefferson’s fateful decision to expand the United States nearly destroyed the Republic that Americans worked so hard to build. It triggered the rise of divisions amongst Americans. These small cracks continued to grow and tear at the seams of the nation. Although westward expansion between 1800 and 1848 granted many new opportunities to the American people, it also brought about tension that plagued the nation for years to come.