Short And Long Term Effects Of Westward Expansion

Throughout history, expansion was a common action for a country. The United States was growing at a considerable rate, making it was understandable to want to obtain more land. The issue how they went about obtaining it. Thomas Jefferson had two men, Lewis and Clark, travel west of the states to find a trade route and explore the land to see if the nation could expand. He, along with Andrew Jackson, showed that westward expansion is needed because the land helps support people by providing resources to allow them to survive. Yet people didn’t care for the land and instead would take advantage of it. The relationship between the American settlers and the land is that they exploit it for money. Since people don’t have a positive relationship with the land and get into conflicts over it, the topic has led to many conflicts that have continued to affect people for generations. One way westward expansion was useful was that the land provided resources that helped the
This can be seen in “President Jackson’s Message to Congress ‘On Indian Removal’ ” in the lines “It puts an end to all possible danger of collision between the authorities of the General and State Governments”. The quote is about removing the natives from their homes to keep the state and federal governments from fighting, as well as giving the states more land, shown in the quote “It will relieve the whole State of Mississippi and the western part of Alabama…enable those states to advance rapidly in population, wealth, and power”. Once the states gained the land, they would also gain more power and be able to defend themselves from an invasion without assistance. This shows that American settlers used the land to gain power and didn’t care for it as much as the natives did since they didn’t see it as sacred or have a physical bond to