When was western expansion

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Read more about the Indian Removal Act. Disputes over who owned the Oregon Territory nearly led to a third war between the United States and Britain. Ultimately, the question was settled peacefully in a manner that gave the United States clear possession of its first important Pacific port, the area of Puget Sound.

Britain, Spain, Russia and the U. By international principle, his journey gave the United States a claim to all the area drained by the river and its tributaries. This treaty also defined the western borders of the Louisiana Purchase, which had been somewhat vague. The southern borderline would be the 42nd parallel, the top of present California, and would extend across the Rockies to the Pacific.

That left the northern boundary to be defined. The Anglo-American Convention of between the U. Under the treaty, the question of dividing that region could be revisited every 10 years. In , Russia abandoned its claims south of the 54 degrees, 40 minutes parallel In the s, Americans began their major push west of the Mississippi, into lands that were largely unsettled except by the indigenous tribes.

Some went in search of land, some in search of gold and silver, and in the case of the Mormons, in search of religious freedom. Braving harsh weather, attacks by Indians or wild animals, and isolation, their numbers rose into the tens of thousands. Increasingly, Americans talked of the prospect of a transcontinental railroad.

In the presidential election of , Democrat James K. Polk narrowly won on a platform of national expansion. The youngest president up to that time, Polk tended toward confrontational diplomacy. Britain had long offered to split the Oregon Territory, along the line of the Columbia River. The only area of contention was Puget Sound, which promised its owner a deep-water port for trade with China and Pacific Islands.

Polk then demanded the whole territory, north to the line. In April , Congress authorized Polk to end the joint agreement of Americans took up the slogan " or fight," and war loomed with Britain.

The British, however, saw little value in another war with its former colonies in order to protect the interest of the Hudson Bay Company along the Pacific Coast. An agreement was reached that split the Oregon Territory along the 49th parallel excepting the southern portion of Vancouver Island in exchange for free navigation along the Columbia for the Hudson Bay Company.

In , during the administration of President John Tyler, the U. Texas had won independence from Mexico in , although Mexico refused to officially acknowledge the republic or its borders. Upon learning Slidell was there to purchase more territory instead of compensate Mexico for Texas, the Mexican government refused to receive him. Slidell wrote to Polk, "We can never get along well with them, until we have given them a good drubbing. In January , to defend the disputed Texas border and put pressure on Mexican officials to work with Slidell—and perhaps to provoke the Mexicans into a military response—Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor with a small U.

Army contingent to the north bank of the Rio Grande. Texas and the U. On April 25, , a patrol under Captain Seth Thornton encountered a force of 2, Mexican soldiers; 11 Americans were killed and the rest captured.

One wounded man was released by the Mexicans and reported news of the skirmish. Polk received word of the conflict a few days before he addressed Congress. The Thornton Affair, which "shed American blood upon American soil," provided a more solid footing for his declaration of war, though the veracity of the account is still questioned today.

Some opposed the war on grounds that war should not be used to expand the U. Some thought that Polk, a Southerner, wanted to expand slavery and strengthen the influence of slave owners in the federal government. Despite the opposition by Whigs—Polk was a Democrat—the U. American success on the battlefield was swift. By August, General Stephen W.

Kearny had captured New Mexico—there had been no opposition when he arrived in Santa Fe. Securing California would take longer, although on June 14, , settlers in Alta California began the Big Bear Flag Revolt against the Mexican garrison in Sonoma, without knowing of the declaration of war.

Cumulative U. He promised the U. Once in Mexico City, however, he reneged on the agreement and seized the presidency. Taylor pushed south into Monterrey, Mexico, in September. After a hard-won victory, Taylor negotiated the surrender of the city and agreed to an eight-week armistice, during which the Mexican troops would be allowed to go free. In January , Santa Anna learned of the U. Santa Anna began the long march back to Mexico City. Read more about the Mexican American War. On January 24, , James W.

Although he and Sutter tried to keep it a secret, word got out—the first printed notice of the discovery was in the March 15, , San Francisco newspaper The Californian. Not long after, gold was discovered in the Feather and Trinity Rivers, also located northeast of Sacramento. The first people to rush the gold fields were those already living in California, but as word slowly got out overland and via the port city of San Francisco, people from Oregon, Mexico, Chile, Peru, and Pacific Islands arrived to find their fortunes.

In , there was such a huge influx of gold-seekers—approximately 90,—that they would be referred to collectively as "forty-niners. It is estimated that by some , people had streamed into California hoping to strike it rich. The port town of San Francisco went from a population of about 1, in to become the eighth largest city in the U. Read more about the California Gold Rush. The Klondike gold rush consisted of the arrival of thousands of prospectors to the Klondike region of Canada as well as Alaska in search of gold.

Over , people set out on the year long journey to the Klondike, with less than one third ever finishing the arduous journey. Only a small percentage of the prospectors found gold, and the rush was soon over.

Read more about the Klondike Gold Rush. The first concrete plan for a transcontinental railroad in the United States was presented to Congress by dry-goods merchant Asa Whitney in Whitney had ridden on newly opened railway lines in England and an — trip to China, which involved a transcontinental trip and the transport of the goods he had bought, further convinced him that the railroad was the future of transport.

The act, based on a bill proposed in that had been a victim of the political skirmishes over slavery, was considered a war measure that would strengthen the union between the eastern and western states. As tensions mounted and both sides hurled accusations, national unity frayed. Compromise became nearly impossible and antagonistic sectional rivalries replaced the idea of a unified, democratic republic. Tensions between the North and South ultimately led to the collapse of American democracy and a brutal civil war.

Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. The Westward Movement and Manifest Destiny: — Meanwhile, the question of whether or not slavery would be allowed in the new western states shadowed every conversation about the frontier. In , the Missouri Compromise had attempted to resolve this question: It had admitted Missouri to the union as a slave state and Maine as a free state, preserving the fragile balance in Congress.

However, the Missouri Compromise did not apply to new territories that were not part of the Louisiana Purchase, and so the issue of slavery continued to fester as the nation expanded. Meanwhile, more and more Northerners came to believed that the expansion of slavery impinged upon their own liberty, both as citizens—the pro-slavery majority in Congress did not seem to represent their interests—and as yeoman farmers.

They did not necessarily object to slavery itself, but they resented the way its expansion seemed to interfere with their own economic opportunity. Despite this sectional conflict, Americans kept on migrating West in the years after the Missouri Compromise was adopted. Thousands of people crossed the Rockies to the Oregon Territory, which belonged to Great Britain, and thousands more moved into the Mexican territories of California , New Mexico and Texas.

In , American settlers in Texas joined with their Tejano neighbors Texans of Spanish origin and won independence from Mexico. They petitioned to join the United States as a slave state. This promised to upset the careful balance that the Missouri Compromise had achieved, and the annexation of Texas and other Mexican territories did not become a political priority until the enthusiastically expansionist cotton planter James K. Polk was elected to the presidency in Thanks to the maneuvering of Polk and his allies, Texas joined the union as a slave state in February ; in June, after negotiations with Great Britain, Oregon joined as a free state.

In , the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War and added more than 1 million square miles, an area larger than the Louisiana Purchase, to the United States. The acquisition of this land re-opened the question that the Missouri Compromise had ostensibly settled: What would be the status of slavery in new American territories? After two years of increasingly volatile debate over the issue, Kentucky Senator Henry Clay proposed another compromise.