The United States was experiencing a periodic high birth rate and increases in population due to immigration. Because agriculture provided the primary economic structure, large families to work the farms were considered an asset. The U.S. population grew from more than five million in 1800 to more than 23 million by mid-century. Thus, there was a need to expand into new territories to accommodate this rapid growth. It is estimated that nearly 4,000,0o00 Americans moved to western territories between 1820 and 1850. The United States suffered two economic depressions - one in 1818 and a second in 1839. These crisis drove some people to seek their living in frontier areas. Frontier land was inexpensive and in some cases, free. Land ownership was associated wealth and tied to self-sufficiency, political power and independent "self-rule." http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/prelude/md_introduction.html
In the span of five years, the United States increased its size by a third. It annexed Texas in 1845: negotiated with Britain for half of the Oregon country; and acquired California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming as a result of a war with Mexico. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/modules/westward/index.cfm
America's dramatic territorial expansion intensified the sectional conflict between North and South and raised the fateful and ultimately divisive issue of whether slavery would be allowed in the western territories. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/modules/westward/index.cfm
It took American colonists a century and a half to expand as far west as the Appalachian Mounts, a few hundred miles from the Atlantic coast. It took another fifty years to push the frontier to the Mississippi River. Seeking cheap land and inspired by the notion that Americans had a "manifest destiny" to stretch across the continent, pioneers by 1850 pushed the edge of settlement to Texas, the Southwest, and the Pacific Northwest. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/modules/westward/index.cfm
Soon after Texas won independence from Mexico in 1836, the state legalized slavery. Free blacks and mulattoes were forbidden from entering Texas, which had once been a safe haven for runaways. In the 1830s, as the westward push of white settlements and of slavery brought significant numbers of new settlers into the region, conflicts between whites and Mexicans, who had long occupied the land, increased. In Texas, authorities used the Texas Rangers to protect the large land and cattle operations established after statehood from insurgents like Juan Cortina, a wealthy Mexican-born rancher who became a symbol of militant resistance to anglo racism. Authorities in Texas systematically disenfranchised Mexican Americans, and prevented them from serving in local government, while vigilantes, with broad support from the white communities, terrorized Mexican Americans in southern Texas, where they were most numerous. Statehood was delayed for New Mexico, primarily because of its Mexican American political leadership. However, Mexican Americans remained the majority population until the end of the nineteenth century. http://www.understandingrace.org/history/gov/west_exp_post_mex.html
The war with Mexico also affected the political balance between pro-and anti-slavery states. If slavery was allowed in the newly acquired Mexican territory, slave-holding states would acquire greater representation in Congress. Even with a much smaller population, the South sent and suffered greater casualties in the Mexican War than the North, which had disapproved of the effort and sent less than half as many troops. Not surprisingly, southerners felt the Wilmot Proviso, a proposal by Pennsylvanian legislator to ban slavery in all territories acquired as a result of the Mexican War, was unjust, since the South had risked more lives to win the Southwest. http://www.understandingrace.org/history/gov/west_exp_post_mex.html
Early in the 19th century, while the rapidly-growing United States expanded into the lower South, white settlers faced what they considered an obstacle. This area was home to the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chicasaw and Seminole nations. These Indian nations, in the view of the settlers and many other white Americans, were standing in the way of progress. Eager for land to raise cotton, the settlers pressured the federal government to acquire Indian territory. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html
Andrew Jackson was a forceful proponent of Indian removal. In 1814 he commanded the U.S. military forces that defeated a faction of the Creek nation. In their defeat, the Creeks lost 22 million acres of land in southern Georgia and central Alabama. The U.S. acquired more land in 1818 when, spurred in part by the motivation to punish the Seminoles for their practice of harboring fugitive slaves, Jackson's troops invaded Spanish Florida. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html
In 1830, just a year after taking office, Jackson pushed a new piece of legislation call the "Indian Removal Act" through both houses of Congress. It gave the president power to negotiate removal treaties with Indian tribes living east of Mississippi. Jackson's attitude toward Native Americans was paternalistic and patronizing- he described them as children in need of guidance and he believed the removal policy was beneficial to the Indians. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html
By 1837, the Jackson administration had removed 46, 000 Native American people from their land east of the Mississippi, and had secured treaties which led to the removal of a slightly larger number. Most members of the five southeastern nations had been relocated west, opening 25 million acres of land to white settlement and to slavery. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html
The story of the westward expansion in the United States are people who dreamed of freedom, made sacrifices and carried heavy burdens as they pursued their happiness. African Americans carried even more as they rode westward. They faced laws that limited their rights, denied them justice and sometimes armed their neighbors against them Like others, black pioneers longed for homes of their own, peaceful places where they could raise their children and pursue elusive dreams. But African Americans also sought places where a person's worth was judged by his skill, not his skin. During and after the Civil War, emancipated men and women moved to secure their freedom. As many northern blacks went south as soldiers, other black men and women traveled south to teach and help lead communal institutions. The "Exoduster" movement (1871 to 1881) saw forty to seventy thousand African Americans leave the former slave states and head for Kansas. black protesting the loss of political rights sought equality and opportunity in the west. http://www.nps.gov/untold/banners_and_backgrounds/expansionbanner/expansion.htm
The west attracted many kinds of people, although they probably all shared two traits in common: A desire to improve their lives, and a certain self-reliance. http://www.nps.gov/untold/banners_and_backgrounds/expansionbanner/expansion.htm
... right of our manifest destiny to over spread to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given to us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federative development of the self government entrusted in us. it is right such as that of the tree to the space of air and the earth suitable for the full expansion of its principle and destiny of growth"... Joun L. O'Sullivan. http://www.megaessayper s.com/viewpa/55748.html
For some reason we believe as Americans we are owed and deserving of things that simply never belonged to us in the first place. We have owned slaves, mistreated women, massacred the Indians and took away their land. We used the Manifest Destiny to justify this behavior towards many things that were not acceptable.
Still to this day as Americans we have this way of thinking. Greed and power play the role. Are we still justifying the Manifest Destiny?
Works Citied
http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/prelude/md_introduction.html
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/modules/westward/index.cfm
http://www.understandingrace.org/history/gov/west_exp_post_mex.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html
http://www.nps.gov/untold/banners_and_backgrounds/expansionbanner/expansion.htm
http://www.megaessayper s.com/viewpa/55748.html
http://www.manifest-destiny-3.jpg
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/modules/westward/index.cfm
http://www.understandingrace.org/history/gov/west_exp_post_mex.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html
http://www.nps.gov/untold/banners_and_backgrounds/expansionbanner/expansion.htm
http://www.megaessayper s.com/viewpa/55748.html
http://www.manifest-destiny-3.jpg
