A variety of factors contributed to Westward Expansion, including population growth and economic opportunities on what was presented to be available land. The notion of Manifest Destiny contributed to why European settlers felt they had a right to claim land, both inhabited and uninhabited, in western North America. Manifest Destiny was used to validate the Indian Removal Acts , which occurred in the s.
Such legislation forced the removal of Native Americans and helped clear the way for non-native settlers to claim land in the west. When the settlers reached land populated or previously promised to Native Americans, they had no qualms claiming it for their own benefit.
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. The Central Pacific started work in Sacramento, California, in January 8, , but progress was slow due to the resource and labor shortage caused by the Civil War. The California Gold Rush and the building of the Transcontinental Railroad brought the first great waves of emigration from Asia to America.
Learn more about the Transcontinental Railroad. Since construction began in earnest after the end of the war, most of the workers on the Union Pacific were Army veterans and Irish immigrants who had come to the U.
When the railroad was completed on May 10, , with the ceremonial driving of the last spike at Promontory Summit, Utah, it had already facilitated further population of the western states in concert with the Homestead Act. The railroads led to the decline and eventual end to the use of emigrant trails, wagon trains, and stagecoach lines, and a further constriction of the native population and their territories.
Telegraph lines were also built along the railroad right of way as the track was laid, replacing the first single-line Transcontinental Telegraph with a multi-line telegraph. The California Gold Rush of rapidly expanded the population of the new territory, while also prompting concerns over immigration, especially from China. Efforts to seize western territories from native peoples and expand the republic by warring with Mexico succeeded beyond expectations; few nations had ever expanded so quickly.
However, this expansion led to debates about the fate of slavery in the West. Increasingly, the South came to regard itself as under attack by radical northern abolitionists, and many northerners began to speak ominously of a southern drive to dominate U.
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. 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.
It had four parts: first, California would enter the Union as a free state; second, the status of slavery in the rest of the Mexican territory would be decided by the people who lived there; third, the slave trade but not slavery would be abolished in Washington , D.
But the larger question remained unanswered. In , Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas proposed that two new states, Kansas and Nebraska , be established in the Louisiana Purchase west of Iowa and Missouri. The battle for Kansas and Nebraska became a battle for the soul of the nation. Emigrants from Northern and Southern states tried to influence the vote.
For example, thousands of Missourians flooded into Kansas in and to vote fraudulently in favor of slavery.
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