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Only do this at the end of the unit to prepare for your final exam.

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Western Growth - Free American History Games for Kids

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A Brief History of the Trail of Tears video

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A Brief History of the Trail of Tears video

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Watch then write 1 - 2 paragraphs in your SS notebook summarizing what you learned about the Trail of Tears. "A Brief History of the Trail of Tears" should be in your Table of Contents.

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Migration from the original Cherokee Nation began in the early 1800's. Some Cherokees, wary of white encroachment, moved west on their own and settled in other areas of the country. A group known as the Old Settlers previously had voluntarily moved in 1817 to lands given them in Arkansas where they established a government and a peaceful way of life. Later, however, they were forced to migrate to Indian Territory.

White resentment of the Cherokee had been building and reached a pinnacle following the discovery of gold in northern Georgia. This discovery was made just after the the creation and passage of the original Cherokee Nation constitution and establishment of a Cherokee Supreme Court. Possessed by "gold fever" and a thirst for expansion, many white communities turned on their Cherokee neighbors. The U.S. government ultimately decided it was time for the Cherokees to be "removed"; leaving behind their farms, their land and their homes.

President Andrew Jackson's military command and almost certainly his life were saved thanks to the aid of 500 Cherokee allies at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814. Unbelievably, it was Jackson who authorized the Indian Removal Act of 1830 following the recommendation of President James Monroe in his final address to Congress in 1825. Jackson, as president, sanctioned an attitude that had persisted for many years among many white immigrants. Even Thomas Jefferson, who often cited the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy as the model for the U.S. Constitution, supported Indian Removal as early as 1802.

The displacement of native people was not wanting for eloquent opposition. Senators Daniel Webster and Henry Clay spoke out against removal. The Reverend Samuel Worcester, missionary to the Cherokees, challenged Georgia's attempt to estinguish Indian title to land in the state, actually winning his case before the Supreme Court.

Worcester vs. Georgia, 1832 and Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, 1831 are considered the two most influential legal decisions in Indian law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled for Georgia in the 1831 case, but in Worcester vs. Georgia, the court affirmed Cherokee sovereignty. President Andrew Jackson arrogantly defied the decision of the court and ordered the removal, an act that established the U.S. government's precedent for the future removal of many Native Americans from their ancestral homelands.

The U.S. government used the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 to justify the removal. The treaty, signed by about 100 Cherokees known as the Treaty Party, relinquished all lands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for land in Indian Territory and the promise of money, livestock, various provisions, tools and other benefits.

When these pro-removal Cherokee leaders signed the Treaty of New Echota, they also signed their own death warrants, since the Cherokee Nation Council had earlier passed a law calling for the death of anyone agreeing to give up tribal land. The signing and the removal led to bitter factionalism and ultimately to the deaths of most of the Treaty Party leaders once the Cherokee arrived in Indian Territory.

Opposition to the removal was led by Chief John Ross, a mixed-blood of Scottish and one-eighth Cherokee descent. The Ross party and most Cherokees opposed the New Echota Treaty, but Georgia and the U.S. government prevailed and used it as justification to force almost all of the 17,000 Cherokees from their southeastern homeland.

Under orders from President Jackson the U.S. Army began enforcement of the Removal Act. The Cherokee were rounded up in the summer of 1838 and loaded onto boats that traveled the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers into Indian Territory. Many were held in prison camps awaiting their fate.

An estimated 4,000 died from hunger, exposure and disease. The journey became a cultural memory as the "trail where they cried" for the Cherokees and other removed tribes. Today it is widely remembered by the general public as the "Trail of Tears". The Oklahoma chapter of the Trail of Tears Association has begun the task of marking the graves of Trail survivors with bronze memorials.

This Information is provided by the Cherokee Nation Cultural Resource Center. For information regarding culture and language, please contact: cultural@cherokee.org.

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Migration from the original Cherokee Nation began in the early 1800's. Some Cherokees, wary of white encroachment, moved west on their own and settled in other areas of the country. A group known as the Old Settlers previously had voluntarily moved in 1817 to lands given them in Arkansas where they established a government and a peaceful way of life.

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Watch then write 1 - 2 paragraphs in your SS notebook summarizing what you learned. Your Table of Contents should have "Trail of Tears PBS" listed.

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click image for close-up

In 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy, the Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate to an area in present-day Oklahoma. The Cherokee people called this journey the "Trail of Tears," because of its devastating effects. The migrants faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion on the forced march. Over 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees died.

This picture, The Trail of Tears, was painted by Robert Lindneux in 1942. It commemorates the suffering of the Cherokee people under forced removal. If any depictions of the "Trail of Tears" were created at the time of the march, they have not survived.

Image Credit: The Granger Collection, New York

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click image for close-up In 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy, the Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate to an area in present-day Oklahoma. The Cherokee people called this journey the "Trail of Tears," because of its devastating effects.

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'Growth of a Nation' is a ten minute animated movie of American history from 1789.

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Compromise of 1850 ("Shake It Off" Parody) - @MrBettsClass

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Manifest Destiny ("Fancy" Parody) - @MrBettsClass

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In the mid-1800's, the thousands of people who prospected for California gold met with bitter disappointment. They did not find the fortunes they had hoped for. When they got fed up with panning for gold, they often headed north to Washington Territory and the beautiful shores of Puget Sound.

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Word Work

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The security system for this website has been triggered. Completing the challenge below proves you are a human and gives you temporary access.

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Who is who at Wounded Knee?

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Wounded Knee Characters Flashcards | Quizlet

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Start studying Wounded Knee Characters. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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On the morning of December 29, 1890, the Sioux chief Big Foot and some 350 of his followers camped on the banks of Wounded Knee creek. Surrounding their camp was a force of U.S. troops charged with the responsibility of arresting Big Foot and disarming his warriors. The scene was tense. Trouble had been brewing for months.
The once proud Sioux found their free-roaming life destroyed, the buffalo gone, themselves confined to reservations dependent on Indian Agents for their existence. In a desperate attempt to return to the days of their glory, many sought salvation in a new mysticism preached by a Paiute shaman called Wovoka. Emissaries from the Sioux in South Dakota traveled to Nevada to hear his words. Wovoka called himself the Messiah and prophesied that the dead would soon join the living in a world in which the Indians could live in the old way surrounded by plentiful game. A tidal wave of new soil would cover the earth, bury the whites, and restore the prairie. To hasten the event, the Indians were to dance the Ghost Dance. Many dancers wore brightly colored shirts emblazoned with images of eagles and buffaloes. These "Ghost Shirts" they believed would protect them from the bluecoats' bullets. During the fall of 1890, the Ghost Dance spread through the Sioux villages of the Dakota reservations, revitalizing the Indians and bringing fear to the whites. A desperate Indian Agent at Pine Ridge wired his superiors in Washington, "Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy....We need protection and we need it now. The leaders should be arrested and confined at some military post until the matter is quieted, and this should be done now." The order went out to arrest Chief Sitting Bull at the Standing Rock Reservation. Sitting Bull was killed in the attempt on December 15. Chief Big Foot was next on the list.
When he heard of Sitting Bull's death, Big Foot led his people south to seek protection at the Pine Ridge Reservation. The army intercepted the band on December 28 and brought them to the edge of the Wounded Knee to camp. The next morning the chief, racked with pneumonia and dying, sat among his warriors and powwowed with the army officers. Suddenly the sound of a shot pierced the early morning gloom. Within seconds the charged atmosphere erupted as Indian braves scurried to retrieve their discarded rifles and troopers fired volley after volley into the Sioux camp. From the heights above, the army's Hotchkiss guns raked the Indian teepees with grapeshot. Clouds of gun smoke filled the air as men, women and children scrambled for their lives. Many ran for a ravine next to the camp only to be cut down in a withering cross fire.

When the smoke cleared and the shooting stopped, approximately 300 Sioux were dead, Big Foot among them. Twenty-five soldiers lost their lives. As the remaining troopers began the grim task of removing the dead, a blizzard swept in from the North. A few days later they returned to complete the job. Scattered fighting continued, but the massacre at Wounded Knee effectively squelched the Ghost Dance movement and ended the Indian Wars.

Philip Wells was a mixed-blood Sioux who served as an interpreter for the Army. He later recounted what he saw that Monday morning:
"I was interpreting for General Forsyth ( Forsyth was actually a colonel) just before the battle of Wounded Knee, December 29, 1890. The captured Indians had been ordered to give up their arms, but Big Foot replied that his people had no arms. Forsyth said to me, 'Tell Big Foot he says the Indians have no arms, yet yesterday they were well armed when they surrendered. He is deceiving me. Tell him he need have no fear in giving up his arms, as I wish to treat him kindly.' Big Foot replied, 'They have no guns, except such as you have found.' Forsyth declared, 'You are lying to me in return for my kindness.'

During this time a medicine man, gaudily dressed and fantastically painted, executed the maneuvers of the ghost dance, raising and throwing dust into the air. He exclaimed 'Ha! Ha!' as he did so, meaning he was about to do something terrible, and said, 'I have lived long enough,' meaning he would fight until he died. Turning to the young warriors who were squatted together, he said 'Do not fear, but let your hearts be strong. Many soldiers are about us and have many bullets, but I am assured their bullets cannot penetrate us. The prairie is large, and their bullets will fly over the prairies and will not come toward us. If they do come toward us, they will float away like dust in the air.' I turned to Major Whitside and said, 'That man is making mischief,' and repeated what he had said. Whitside replied, 'Go direct to Colonel Forsyth and tell him about it,' which I did.

Forsyth and I went to the circle of warriors where he told me to tell the medicine man to sit down and keep quiet, but he paid no attention to the order. Forsyth repeated the order. Big Foot's brother-in-law answered, 'He will sit down when he gets around the circle.' When the medicine man came to the end of the circle, he squatted down. A cavalry sergeant exclaimed, 'There goes an Indian with a gun under his blanket!' Forsyth ordered him to take the gun from the Indian, which he did. Whitside then said to me, 'Tell the Indians it is necessary that they be searched one at a time.' The young warriors paid no attention to what I told them. I heard someone on my left exclaim, 'Look out! Look out!' I saw five or six young warriors cast off their blankets and pull guns out from under them and brandish them in the air. One of the warriors shot into the soldiers, who were ordered to fire into the Indians. I looked in the direction of the medicine man. He or some other medicine man approached to within three or four feet of me with a long cheese knife, ground to a sharp point and raised to stab me. He stabbed me during the melee and nearly cut off my nose. I held him off until I could swing my rifle to hit him, which I did. I shot and killed him in self-defense.
Troop 'K' was drawn up between the tents of the women and children and the main body of the Indians, who had been summoned to deliver their arms. The Indians began firing into 'Troop K' to gain the canyon of Wounded Knee creek. In doing so they exposed their women and children to their own fire. Captain Wallace was killed at this time while standing in front of his troops. A bullet, striking him in the forehead, plowed away the top of his head. I started to pull off my nose, which was hung by the skin, but Lieutenant Guy Preston shouted, 'My God Man! Don't do that! That can be saved.' He then led me away from the scene of the trouble."

References:
Brown, Dee, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1971); Jensen, Richard, et. al, Eyewitness at Wounded Knee (1991); Utley, Robert M., The Last Days of the Sioux Nation (1963); Wells, Philip, "Ninety-six Years among the Indians of the Northwest", North Dakota History, 15, no. 2 (1948).

How To Cite This Article:
"Massacre At Wounded Knee, 1890," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (1998).

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On the morning of December 29, 1890, the Sioux chief Big Foot and some 350 of his followers camped on the banks of Wounded Knee creek. Surrounding their camp was a force of U.S. troops charged with the responsibility of arresting Big Foot and disarming his warriors. The scene was tense.

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Quia - The Frontier West: People, Events and Vocabulary

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before the phone messages were sent by wire

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free land to non indians just for working it for 5 years

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UNIT REVIEW

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Quia - Grade 5 Westward Expansion Review

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Start studying Westward Expansion. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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Word Work

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westward expansion Flashcards and Study Sets | Quizlet

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Learn westward expansion with free interactive flashcards. Choose from 5,000 different sets of westward expansion flashcards on Quizlet.

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Clips of Little House on the Prairie videos

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Clips of Little House on the Prairie videos

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little house on the prairie (tv program)

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Season 1 Episode 1 A Harvest of Friends Preview   Little House on the Prairie

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Little House on the Prairie clip of Season 1 Episode 01 Harvest of Friends. We meet Nels Oleson for the first time in this episode.

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The American West:  Little Big Horn and Beyond video

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The American West:  Little Big Horn and Beyond video

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The American West 07 - Little Bighorn and Beyond (1876-1890) - from Timelines.tv

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The American West:  By Railroad to Nebraska (Uriah Oblinger's Story) video

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The American West:  By Railroad to Nebraska (Uriah Oblinger's Story) video

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The American West 04 - By Railroad to Nebraska (1872) - from Timelines.tv

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The American West: A PERSONAL NARRATIVE (Sally's Story) video

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The American West: A PERSONAL NARRATIVE (Sally's Story) video

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The American West 03 - Wagon Trails to the West (1849) - from Timelines.tv

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"Stewed Rabbit with Dumplings: 19th Century Cooking"

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"Stewed Rabbit with Dumplings: 19th Century Cooking"

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Stewed Rabbit with Dumplings | 19th Century Frontier Meal

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For this episode of Adventure Cooking, I decided to try something entirely outside of my comfort zone. Featuring recipes adapted from The Little House Cookbook by Barbara M. Walker, travel to the late 19th century American frontier with Stewed Rabbit and Dumplings in Gravy, and traditional Cornbread and Molasses.

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Pioneer Cooking: Hearth Cooking Demonstration video

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Pioneer Cooking: Hearth Cooking Demonstration video

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Hearth Cooking Demonstration at the Rural Heritage Museum 2010

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Uploaded by RuralHeritageMuseum on 2011-01-13.

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"Manifest Destiny" Educational Rap by MC LaLa

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Schoolhouse Rock - Elbow Room- Manifest Destiny

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Canning 101: Basics for The New Homesteader

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Canning is a must on our off grid homestead. But be it on or off grid canning should be apart of your homesteading! It saves money, gives you more control over your food, and is a great way to preserve all your garden and hunting spoils! not sure how to get started?

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Prairie Yard & Garden: Growing Vegetables in the 1800s video 

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Prairie Yard & Garden: Growing Vegetables in the 1800s video 

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Prairie Yard & Garden: Growing Vegetables in the 1800s

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The Oliver Kelley Farm, located on the bluffs of the Mississippi River near Elk River, is an interpretive historical site that features an operational mid-1800 farmstead. One feature of the farm is a historic garden where pioneer women and children raised vegetables for the family.

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Prairie Public About the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage

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Laura Ingalls Wilder 's Friends & Family

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Blends interviews with historians, the stories told by descendents of homesteaders, and dramatic readings from pioneer diaries & letters to paint a picture of the people who struggled with daily life enduring hardships & successes they celebrated.

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The Reckoning

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Frontier House Ep 06 of 06 Original Airdate 2002 PBS Educational Documentary Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

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It's a Family Affair

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Frontier House Ep 05 of 06 Original Airdate 2002 PBS Educational Documentary Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

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Survival?

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Frontier House Ep 04 of 06 Original Airdate 2002 PBS Educational Documentary Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

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The Brooks get married...

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Frontier House Ep 03 of 06 Original Airdate 2002 PBS Educational Documentary Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

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Reality TV

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Frontier House Ep 02 of 06 Original Airdate 2002 PBS Educational Documentary Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

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Reality TV

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Frontier House Ep 01 of 06 Original Airdate 2002 PBS Educational Documentary Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

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Explain how the affects of the move west on the United States using details from the film clip.  Write one - three paragraphs.  "CramAmeriMania" goes into your Table of Contents.

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Reconstruction and Expansion - US History Review 3

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CRAM-AMERI-MANIA! In Part 3, we start with the trials of reconstruction, after the Civil War, move through westward expansion, industrialization, and progressivism, and end at the outbreak of World War I. Wondering about the flag we used for the Confederate States of America? That was actually the official flag of the CSA during the war.

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Read the online article.  Write a summary in your SS notebook.  "Homestead Act" goes into the Table of Contents.

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The Homestead Act of 1862, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, granted Americans 160-acre plots of public land for the price a small filing fee. The Civil War-era act, considered one of the United States' most important pieces of legislation, led to Western expansion and allowed citizens of all walks of life-including the formerly enslaved, women and immigrants-to become landowners.
WATCH: Aftershock: Beyond the Civil War on HISTORY Vault
What Was the Homestead Act?

In a July 4, 1861, speech, Lincoln told the nation the purpose of America's government was "to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders and to give everyone an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life."

He followed through with the passage of the Homestead Act, which remained active for 124 years until it was repealed in 1976, and resulted in 10 percent of U.S. land-or 270 million acres-to be claimed and settled.

The incentive to move and settle on Western territory was open to all U.S. citizens, or intended citizens, and resulted in 4 million homestead claims, although 1.6 million deeds in 30 states were actually officially obtained. Montana, followed by North Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska had the most successful claims.

But to achieve this, thousands of Native Americans were forced from their lands and onto Indian reservations to make way for homesteaders.

During a speech made in Ohio in February 1861, Lincoln said the act was "worthy of consideration, and that the wild lands of the country should be distributed so that every man should have the means and opportunity of benefiting his condition."

After it passed Congress, Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law on May 20, 1862.

Requirements of the Homestead Act

To make a claim, homesteaders paid a filing fee of $18: a $10 fee to make a temporary claim on the land, $2 for commission to the land agent and an additional $6 final payment to receive an official patent on the land. Land titles could also be purchased from the government for $1.25 per acre following six months of proven residency.

Additional requirements included five years of continuous residence on the land, building a home on it, farming the land and making improvements. Homesteaders, who had to be the head of a household or 21 years of age and had to certify they had never borne arms against the United States, also needed two neighbors or friends to attest to the government that they had fulfilled the requirements. Union soldiers could shave off time served in the Civil War from the five-year residency requirement.
WATCH: Matthew Pinsker on the Homestead Act
Land Speculators and the Homestead Act

Of course, there were those who took advantage of homesteading. According to the National Archives, a limited number of farmers and laborers could afford to build a farm, which included access to tools, crops, livestock and more.

"In the end, most of those who purchased land under the act came from areas quite close to their new homesteads (Iowans moved to Nebraska, Minnesotans to South Dakota, and so on)," the agency states. "Unfortunately, the act was framed so ambiguously that it seemed to invite fraud, and early modifications by Congress only compounded the problem. Most of the land went to speculators, cattlemen, miners, lumbermen, and railroads."

Other loopholes included building the required 12-by-14 dwelling in inches, rather than feet, since the exact measurement wasn't specified. A shortage of investigators also allowed false claims to be approved. And unpredictable weather, water shortages and remoteness led many homesteaders to abandon their claims well before the five-year mark.

But with improvements in rail lines and growing populations, new towns and states were created. "One hundred years ago the Congress passed the Homestead Act," President John F. Kennedy said in his message on conservation, sent to Congress in 1962, "probably the single greatest stimulus to national development ever enacted."

Repeal of the Homestead Act

Homesteading virtually came to a screeching halt with the enactment of the Taylor Grazing Act, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934, which regulated grazing on federal public lands and authorized the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to apportion grazing districts.

In 1976, the Homestead Act was repealed with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which stated "public lands be retained in Federal ownership." The act authorized the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to manage federal lands. Homesteading was still allowed for another decade in Alaska, until 1986.

In 1974, a Vietnam War veteran and native of California named Kenneth Deardorff filed a homestead claim on 80 acres of land on the Stony River in southwestern Alaska. After fulfilling all the requirements of the act and living and working on the land for over a decade, Deardorff received his patent in May 1988. He was the last person to receive the title to land claimed under the Civil War-era act.

Today, the Homestead National Historical Park outside Beatrice, Nebraska, commemorates the Homestead Act. Why the tiny midwest town? That's where Daniel Freeman, deemed the first homesteader to file a claim (on Jan. 1, 1863) by the Department of the Interior, established his homestead site.

Sources

Homestead Act (1862). National Archives.
Homestead Act: Primary Documents in American History. Library of Congress.
Landmark Legislation: The Homestead Act of 1862. United States Senate.
FREE LAND was the Cry! Homestead National Historical Park. National Park Service.

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The Homestead Act of 1862, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, granted Americans 160-acre plots of public land for the price a small filing fee. The Civil War-era act, considered one of the United States' most important pieces of legislation, led to Western expansion and allowed citizens of all walks of life-including the formerly enslaved, women and immigrants-to become landowners.

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Was the Oregon Trail a real trail?

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Even before Oregon Country-the disputed area claimed in the early 1800s by both Great Britain and the United States-was officially claimed by Congress as a United States territory in 1846, pioneers had been traveling west to explore its bounty. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had arrived at the Pacific Ocean in 1805, but the route was much too hazardous for families to replicate while traveling by wagon. In 1810, John Jacob Astor funded two separate expeditions-one by land and the other by sea-to establish a fur post at the mouth of the Columbia River. Enlistee Robert Stuart arrived via Cape Horn safely by ship, but after his vessel was blown up in an altercation with Native Americans, Stuart began an overland journey from Fort Astoria in present-day Oregon back to Missouri to request aid from Astor. During his yearlong voyage, Stuart became the first white man to discover a 20-mile gap in the Rocky Mountains through which wagons could safely pass.

In 1836, a small group led by Marcus and Narcissa Whitman made their way by wagon from New York to the Walla Walla Valley, where they established a mission for the Cayuse Indians, but it wasn't until 1843 when the first mass migration of 1,000 pioneers set out from Independence, Missouri, along what came to be known as the Oregon Trail. Traveling alongside more than 100 wagons with 5,000 oxen and cattle, the settlers made the roughly 2,000-mile-long trip across six states seeking cheap land, better economic opportunities or adventure. Thousands of emigrants followed in their footsteps each year until the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, reducing the journey from months to days. In 1978, the historic route was designated a National Historic Trail by Congress. Today, visitors can still witness the deep wagon ruts and traces left behind by early American settlers along the Oregon Trail.

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Even before Oregon Country-the disputed area claimed in the early 1800s by both Great Britain and the United States-was officially claimed by Congress as a United States territory in 1846, pioneers had been traveling west to explore its bounty.

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Read the online article.  Write one paragraph summarizing what you believe to be the most important fact from the article.  "History Channel Most Important Fact" goes into your Table of Contents" in the SS notebook.

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Contents

1. Manifest Destiny

2. Westward Expansion and Slavery

3. Westward Expansion and the Mexican War

4. Westward Expansion and the Compromise of 1850

5. Bleeding Kansas

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."

Manifest Destiny

By 1840, nearly 7 million Americans-40 percent of the nation's population-lived in the trans-Appalachian West. Following a trail blazed by Lewis and Clark, most of these people had left their homes in the East in search of economic opportunity. Like Thomas Jefferson, many of these pioneers associated westward migration, land ownership and farming with freedom. In Europe, large numbers of factory workers formed a dependent and seemingly permanent working class; by contrast, in the United States, the western frontier offered the possibility of independence and upward mobility for all. In 1843, one thousand pioneers took to the Oregon Trail as part of the " Great Emigration."

Did you know? In 1853, the Gadsden Purchase added about 30,000 square miles of Mexican territory to the United States and fixed the boundaries of the "lower 48" where they are today.

In 1845, a journalist named John O'Sullivan put a name to the idea that helped pull many pioneers toward the western frontier. Westward migration was an essential part of the republican project, he argued, and it was Americans' " manifest destiny " to carry the "great experiment of liberty" to the edge of the continent: to "overspread and to possess the whole of the [land] which Providence has given us," O'Sullivan wrote. The survival of American freedom depended on it.

Westward Expansion and Slavery

Meanwhile, the question of whether or not slavery would be allowed in the new western states shadowed every conversation about the frontier. In 1820, 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. More important, it had stipulated that in the future, slavery would be prohibited north of the southern boundary of Missouri (the 36º30' parallel) in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase.

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. The Southern economy grew increasingly dependent on "King Cotton" and the system of forced labor that sustained it. 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.

Westward Expansion and the Mexican War

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 1837, 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 1844. Thanks to the maneuvering of Polk and his allies, Texas joined the union as a slave state in February 1846; in June, after negotiations with Great Britain, Oregon joined as a free state.

That same month, Polk declared war against Mexico, claiming (falsely) that the Mexican army had "invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil." The Mexican-American War proved to be relatively unpopular, in part because many Northerners objected to what they saw as a war to expand the "slaveocracy." In 1846, Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot attached a proviso to a war-appropriations bill declaring that slavery should not be permitted in any part of the Mexican territory that the U.S. might acquire. Wilmot's measure failed to pass, but it made explicit once again the sectional conflict that haunted the process of westward expansion.

Westward Expansion and the Compromise of 1850

In 1848, 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.C.; and fourth, a new Fugitive Slave Act would enable Southerners to reclaim runaway slaves who had escaped to Northern states where slavery was not allowed.

Bleeding Kansas

But the larger question remained unanswered. In 1854, Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas proposed that two new states, Kansas and Nebraska, be established in the Louisiana Purchase west of Iowa and Missouri. According to the terms of the Missouri Compromise, both new states would prohibit slavery because both were north of the 36º30' parallel. However, since no Southern legislator would approve a plan that would give more power to "free-soil" Northerners, Douglas came up with a middle ground that he called "popular sovereignty": letting the settlers of the territories decide for themselves whether their states would be slave or free.

Northerners were outraged: Douglas, in their view, had caved to the demands of the "slaveocracy" at their expense. 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 1854 and 1855 to vote (fraudulently) in favor of slavery. "Free-soil" settlers established a rival government, and soon Kansas spiraled into civil war. Hundreds of people died in the fighting that ensued, known as " Bleeding Kansas."

A decade later, the civil war in Kansas over the expansion of slavery was followed by a national civil war over the same issue. As Thomas Jefferson had predicted, it was the question of slavery in the West-a place that seemed to be the emblem of American freedom-that proved to be "the knell of the union."
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Manifest Destiny Westward Expansion and Slavery Westward Expansion and the Mexican War Westward Expansion and the Compromise of 1850 Bleeding Kansas In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson purchased the territory of Louisiana from the French government for $15 million.

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Westward expansion, the 19th-century movement of settlers into the American West, began with the Louisiana Purchase and was fueled by the Gold Rush, the Oregon Trail and a belief in "manifest destiny."

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Westward expansion, the 19th-century movement of settlers into the American West, began with the Louisiana Purchase and was fueled by the Gold Rush, the Oregon Trail and a belief in "manifest destiny."

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ASSIGNMENT G:  What is the cartoonist trying to say?

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ASSIGNMENT G:  What is the cartoonist trying to say?

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In your SS notebook, describe what you see in this political cartoon.  Explain what you think the cartoonist is trying to make you understand.  "Cheap Land Cartoon" goes into your Table of Contents.

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Watch the YouTube video.  Write a summary of the video in your SS notebook.  "Westward Expansion Video" goes in your Table of Contents.

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Westward Expansion: Crash Course US History #24

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Read the documents.  Answer ONE SET of questions.  Put the answers in your SS notebook.  "Westward Expansion Question Set" goes into the Table of Contents.

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Read the information on this page.  Write one - two paragraphs summarizing what you learned.  "Africans Go West" goes into your Table of Contents in your SS notebook.

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Frederick Jackson Turner, the great historian of the late 19th century, said it was on the frontier that democracy was born, that American ideas of equality were born, individualism. But the frontier also carried with it the expansion of slavery. The westward expansion of slavery was one of the most dynamic economic and social processes going on in this country. The westward expansion carried slavery down into the Southwest, into Mississippi, Alabama, crossing the Mississippi River into Louisiana. Finally, by the 1840's, it was pouring into Texas. So the expansion of slavery, which became the major political question of the 1850's, was not just a political issue. It was a fact of life that every American had experienced during this period.

- Eric Foner, historian

In 1828, when Andrew Jackson was elected president, he promised to expand the United States westward. His justification for expansion seemed to him self-evident, for "What good man would prefer a country covered with forest and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive republic, studded with cities, towns and prosperous farms and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization and religion?" The idea of Manifest Destiny, which held that America had the right and even the duty to extend its civilization, fueled the westward move into Indian and Mexican territories. As the country expanded, the question of slavery gained new importance. Would the new territories be slave-holding or free?

Over the next several years, Jackson seized millions of acres of Indian lands in the southeast, eventually removing five Indian nations from their homes. As a result of the removals, these lands were opened to settlement and the establishment of new cotton plantations. Although some Indian nations chose to fight, in the end, most of the population was removed. The U.S. Army forcibly removed more than 15,000 Cherokees and marched them westward to "Indian Territory" in Oklahoma, a journey the Cherokee called the "Trail of Tears." As many as a quarter of the Indians died during the forced march, and the $6 million cost of the removal was deducted from the $9 million offered them for their land in the treaty they were forced to sign. The Removal Act of 1830 guaranteed the Indians lands in the west, but these promises were later broken.

* Indian Removal
* Trail of Tears

When Mexico encouraged settlers to come to its territory of Texas, many Americans brought slaves with them. In 1829, the Mexican government abolished slavery in Texas to try to lessen American influence. American slaveowners forced their newly-freed slaves to sign life indenture contracts, and the American population continued to grow even after Mexico forbade further immigration in 1830. Tensions mounted, and in 1835 a rebellion broke out. Although the Mexican army won initial engagements at the Alamo in San Antonio and the fortress of Goliad, a surprise attack by the Americans at the San Jacinto River in April, 1836 gained Texas its independence. Texas requested immediate admission into the United States, but opposition from the North to the addition of another slave state to the Union, then precariously balanced with 13 proslavery and 13 antislavery states, delayed its annexation until 1845. The annexation of Texas soon led to the Mexican War, lasting from 1846 to 1848.

Mexico severed diplomatic ties with the U.S. in protest after the annexation of Texas. Newly-elected President James K. Polk, rather than retreating, demanded even more concessions. In addition to extending Texas lands 150 miles southward to the Rio Grande, he demanded that Mexico cede New Mexico and California. The resulting war, presented by Polk as an invasion by Mexico of American land, divided the country, with Democrats siding with expansion, and Abraham Lincoln calling the war a "conquest brought into existence to catch votes."

Among the territories gained by the United States was California, where gold was discovered in 1848. The California Gold Rush swept the nation, sending almost 200,000 prospectors to California over the next four years. As the population swelled, California applied for statehood, and the compromise that allowed the state to be admitted as a free state included passage of the Fugitive Slave Law.

One northerner wrote in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, "We went to bed one night, old-fashioned, conservative, compromise, Union Whigs, and waked up stark mad Abolitionists."

The Kansas-Nebraska act in 1854 brought antislavery and proslavery proponents head-to-head in a battle over the status of Kansas. Slavery had been prohibited in the Great Plains territories under the Missouri Compromise of 1820. With the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Nebraska territory was divided into north and south, and the question of whether slavery would be legal in either part was left to popular referendum.

The southern part, Kansas, soon became a battleground. Free-Soil settlers were recruited from the northeast, while secret societies on the Missouri border vowed to combat these "negro thieves." Most of the northern settlers were not abolitionists, but members of the Free Soil movement, a group of homesteaders who wanted to keep slaveholders and blacks, whether free or enslaved, from competing with them for land. The clash between proslavery and antislavery forces led to a series of violent outbreaks that historians have called Bleeding Kansas, a preview of the Civil War. More than 50 men died before Kansas declared itself a free state.

* Bleeding Kansas
* Letter from Edward Bridgman

The Kansas-Nebraska Act led to the birth of the Republican Party, which promoted an anti-slavery interpretation of the Constitution. Abolitionists found a home within this larger political organization that, while not abolitionist, was against the spread of slavery.

The debate over free versus slave territories reached a new pitch with the case of Dred Scott. In 1847 Dred Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that his master had brought him to live in free land. Ten years later his case was decided by the Supreme Court, which handed down the infamous decision that Scott could not sue because he was not a citizen of the United States and that no one of African origin could ever become a citizen.

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney justified his decision by insisting that the Founders believed that African Americans were "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The controversial decision invalidated the idea of a free state, since any slave brought North by his or her owner would remain trapped in a legal state of bondage. Abraham Lincoln used the Dred Scott case to launch his bid for the U.S. Senate on June 16, 1858.

* Dred Scott's Fight for Freedom
* Dred Scott Case: The Supreme Court Decision
* Lincoln's House Divided Speech

Next: The Civil War

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Frederick Jackson Turner, the great historian of the late 19th century, said it was on the frontier that democracy was born, that American ideas of equality were born, individualism. But the frontier also carried with it the expansion of slavery. The westward expansion of slavery was one of the most dynamic economic and social processes going on in this country.

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This is a depiction of a Northern Carpetbagger which appeared in a newspaper during Reconstruction.  A political cartoon's main purpose is not to amuse you but to persuade you. A good political cartoon makes you think about current events, but it also tries to sway your opinion toward the cartoonist's point of view.

Create a political cartoon about an issue during Westward Expansion OR find a political cartoon during this era and explain what it means.

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View the slide show for additional information about Westward Expansion.  Write one or two paragraphs summarizing what you learned.  "Westward Expansion After the Civil War" goes into your Table of Contents in your SS notebook.

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AAmerica Changes after the Civil War
Read the "study section" (left side).  Complete any two activities.

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USII.3 U.S. History - 1877 to the Present - Activity Page America Changes after the Civil War Westward Expansion, Growth in Immigration, Cities, Big Business, Industry, Inventions. "Jim Crow" and Segregation, the Progressive Movement, Women's Suffrage, the Temperance Movement

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Map of Westward Expansion