The Homestead Act of 1862 was one of the most significant and enduring events in the westward expansion of the United States. It gave 160 acres of western land to anyone who promised to work the land for five years. This encouraged many immigrants to come to the United States and help settle the West. But the land was too arid for a homesteader to manage 160 acres. Life was hard in the west because of the harsh environment. They had sand storm and droughts, made impossible for farmers to farm. Very few actually made it work and managed to keep their homesteads.…
western lands. Their plan was to move to California, acquire cheap land where they could reap…
○ seize land at the beginning of the reconstruction area to provide land for former enslaved people…
The expansion of America from the thirteen colonies across the entire continent was known as westward expansion. In 1845, John O’Sullivan, a newspaper editor that was writing about the possible annexation of Texas, coined the term Manifest Destiny. “Manifest Destiny…to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions” (Wexler 96). Manifest Destiny inspired a 29-year old named Stephen F. Austin to talk grandly of colonizing the Mexican province of Texas with "North American population, enterprise and intelligence" (digitalhistory.edu). It led expansionists, united behind the slogan "54° 40' or fight!," to demand that the United States should own the entire Pacific Northwest all the way to the southern border of Alaska. Manifest Destiny was a 19th century view held by Americans who felt they had the right to expand across the North American continent. The events of this westward expansion did provide the United States with security and prosperity by eliminating European powers as well as the North American Indians. However, the necessary balance of the slave versus non-slave states, so essential in Congress, caused the sectional conflicts that led to the Civil War.…
The Louisiana Purchase was the largest land deal in our history. It doubled the size of the United States and gave us a strong face as an economic power. It brought immigrants from all over the world for the idea of owning land and making a living for themselves. We also had a second expansion with the Adams-Onis treaty in 1819 (Davidson, 2002, p.p. 246-247) where we clearly defined the United States and Spanish board to the Pacific and obtained the Florida territory. This gave the United State a firm foothold and clearly defined boarders for the first time in our history.…
During the early 19th century, Americans poured into the backcountry of the south and began to move toward and into what is now Alabama and Mississippi, due to the Homestead Act. This act provided 160 acres of free land to any settler willing to live on it and improve it for five years. (Pg.440) However, during these times Indian tribes lived there and they appeared to be the main obstacle to the westward expansion. White American settlers petitioned to the federal government to remove the Native Americans.…
Moving west provides a grand opportunity to start over. With so many people moving west the government established the Homestead Act, which gave people over the age of 21 to file a claim for up to 160 acres of land. The best area to end up in was next to the railroads. If you where in that general area then it was much easier to get your merchandise to the market. Eventually their was new inventions like the mechanical harrows, updated plows, mowing and harvesting machines, threshers, and binders. These new tools halved the workers hours.…
By the eighteenth century, dramatic increases in population and overcrowding of the land threatened freehold society in New England, where good land had become difficult to find. Farm communities responded to this crisis by reducing family size, asking the government to open new land along the frontier, planting crops with higher yields, and sharing labor and goods. _________________________________________________________________________…
The Manifest Destiny is defined as a widely held belief in the U.S that settlers were destined to expand across North America . Before the American colonies won their independence in the Revolutionary War, settlers were moving West into what is now known as the states Kentucky and Tennessee, along with parts of the Ohio Valley and some in the southern regions. At the end of the War of 1812 there was the Indian Removal Act people had to worry about , in 1830 Indians had to start their trip commonly known as the Indian removal act.…
The two most important components in the development of the American West that took place in the second half of the nineteenth century were the expansion of the West and the decline of Native Americans. In the middle of the Civil War, Congressional Northerners were looking to populate the West with free labor and they developed the Homestead Act of 1862. This Act would promise settlers 160 acres of land to populate and develop and after five years, the land would become theirs. Almost 400,000 farms were developed and populated between 1862-1890. Although the settlers were dealing with locusts, tornadoes, hailstorms, and extreme heat, the success of these farms began to develop as corporate farming covered 13,000 acres. Many of the people began…
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson purchased the territory of Louisiana from the French government for $15 million. The Louisiana Purchase stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to New Orleans, and it doubled the size of the United States. To Jefferson, westward expansion was the key to the nation’s health: He believed that a republic depended on an independent, virtuous citizenry for its survival, and that independence and virtue went hand in hand with land ownership, especially the ownership of small farms. (“Those who labor in the earth,” he wrote, “are the chosen people of God.”) In order to provide enough land to sustain this ideal population of virtuous yeomen, the United States would have to continue to expand.The westward expansion of the United States is one of the defining themes of 19th-century American history, but it is not just the story of Jefferson’s expanding “empire of liberty.” On the contrary, as one historian writes, in the six decades after the Louisiana Purchase, westward expansion “very nearly destroy[ed] the republic.”…
To top it all off the government made an act called the Dawes act that enticed Native Americans to reform into americans with the goal of owning their own land the catch to it was that they had to give up all that they were as an indian nation and were given even less land than the reservations which opened up more land for companies and settlers wanting the…
Ever since the beginning of time it has been in the nature of man to move and expand their area whether it be for food or greed. Although, most cases in history will show that expansion was done for greed such as the Roman Empire from 800 BC to 500 AD or the Crusades that were on and off from 1096 AD – 1272 AD. That same urge to expand did not stop when the America’s were discovered. It all started with the transatlantic migration to the New World. The settlers of the New World started with just coastal settlements such as Plymouth and Jamestown. But as the population and the need for land grew so did the need for westward expansion. The expansion of America was not just for private need or greed though; the Government also did it as well.…
The United States wanted to prevent hostility, so they tried to get the Indians to agree to living on reservations instead of on their homelands. For the rest of the following century they struggled to force the Indians to accept it, they failed to do so in the end and were forced to more desperate measures to clear the west for western settlement.…
The 1840s was a time of great territorial expansion during which the United States fought to annex Texas, acquire the Oregon territory, and conquer California and New Mexico from Mexico. As the people sought reasoning behind their territorial ambitions, a belief known as Manifest Destiny sprouted from their feeling of nationality as they came to believe that America was destined to expand past the current borders. Manifest Destiny was also a term used by Democrats to promote and persuade people to support the territorial expansions that the United States was undergoing at the time. Although manifest destiny was a huge motivating factor in the western expansion of the United States, other factors such as the rising population, expansion of slavery and freedom-seeking slaves, the gold rush of California, and new opportunities sought by settlers.…