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THE DITCH THAT CHANGED THE FACE OF AMERICA
by CAPTAIN JERRY GERTZ

The Erie Canal is the most successful waterway in North America. It shaped the course of settlement and commerce between the Atlantic Seaboard and the interior of our country. The Erie not only made New York the "Empire State" and New York City the world's leading seaport, but also contributed to the creation of the United States as a Superpower and the leader of the world's economy-not bad for a skinny ditch of only 40' wide and 4' deep!!

The dream of opening up the interior of our country, by building a canal, had been discussed for decades prior to the actual beginning of construction in 1817. The Appalachian Mountain Range posed a formidable barrier between the states bordering the Atlantic Ocean and the vast, mostly uninhabited "Northwest Territories" on the west side of the mountains. In order for a young America to grow, prosper and indeed survive, it would be necessary to find a way through those mountains and open up those western lands to settlers and commerce.

Luckily, nature had bestowed upon New York State the only low level, natural opening through the Appalachians between Georgia and New York--the Mohawk Valley. This opening would be the key to making the dream of building the canal a reality!

While the canal had many "fathers", its foremost proponent and promoter was DeWitt Clinton. A visionary and astute politician, Clinton had been a U.S. Senator and was the ten time mayor of New York City. He believed that his city could only become a major economic force by the building of the Erie Canal. After years of hard campaigning, his tireless efforts promoting the concept of the Erie Canal finally paid off and on July 4, 1817 construction began at Rome, NY.

That first canal was dug almost entirely by hand. The canal was only 40' wide by 4' deep. It ran 363 miles across the state from Albany to Buffalo and had 83 locks. The locks raised vessels a total of 565' between those two cities, an amazing engineering feat for 1825. The first barges were towed by mules or horses along towpaths. These barges (14 ½ feet wide and 78 feet long) could carry 30 tons of cargo while being towed by only one mule.

The canal was completed in only 8 years at a cost of $7,000,000. When completed on October 26, 1825, DeWitt Clinton (by then Governor of New York) boarded a vessel, the Seneca Chief, in Buffalo and headed to New York City. Arriving at NYC on November 4th , the Seneca Chief and Clinton became the first to travel the canal's entire length. Upon arriving in NYC Clinton poured two kegs of fresh water from Lake Erie into the salt water of the Atlantic (New York Harbor) in a ceremony known as the "Wedding of the Waters"- this was the official opening of the canal.

The canal was an immediate success and reduced freight rates by over 95%. The Northwest Territories experienced unprecedented settlement and ultimately became the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Indiana. The cost to build the canal was totally paid off from the tolls collected in the canal's first nine years of operation.

By 1835 traffic became so overwhelming that it was necessary to improve and enlarge the canal. When the enlargement was finally completed in 1862 the canals capacity had been increased eight fold and was, once again, extremely successful.

By the 1890's railroads had taken away all of the canals passenger business and most of its cargo business. By 1900 a new larger canal-The Erie Barge Canal-was being planned.

Construction began in 1905 and was completed in 1918. By utilizing "canalized" natural waterways, the new canal would be much larger, faster and better able to compete with the railroads The Erie Barge Canal would be the first canal to use motorized vessels, therefore eliminating the mules, horses and towpaths.

The Erie Barge Canal's success was due primarily to its transport of petroleum products. Its peak cargo carrying year was 1951. After 1960 more modern technology (oil pipelines, our Interstate Highway System, and the Saint Lawrence Seaway) began to obsolete the Erie Barge Canal as a cargo carrying waterway. As cargo declined, recreational boats began utilizing the canal and in 1992 New York State began a series of improvements and upgrades with recreational boating and tourism in mind.

Today this amazing waterway, still fully operational, has become a "yacht highway". The Erie Canal now caters to thousands of recreational vessels from all over the world as well as tour boats such as one of the Lil' Diamond vessels, cruise ships, canoes, fishing boats and kayaks. Some vessels use the canal as a destination. Others use it as a means of completing a popular boat trip known as the "Great Circle Cruise", a 5,600 mile circumnavigation of the eastern half of the United States that typically takes 5-7 months to complete. In 2005 over 1,700 vessels were on this cruise and passed through the Erie Canal.

Today you don't need your own boat to enjoy this marvelous and historic waterway. Tourists and locals alike can now board a tour boat, such as a Lil' Diamond vessel, and relive history by taking a 1 ½ hour cruise on the canal while hearing about the canals history and traveling through a lock. Being raised or lowered 20 feet inside the lock walls is an experience not soon forgotten.

The complete NYS Canal System is 524 miles long and consists of four canals- the Erie, Oswego, Champlain and the Cayuga-Seneca. All four canals are contemporary and fully operational.

In December of 2000 the Federal Government designated all of the NYS Canal System the 23rd National Heritage Corridor in the nation. In 2016 the Erie Canal along with the whole NYS Canal system was designated a National Historic Monument.

With these designations and New York State's strong commitment to the preservation of these four canals rich heritage, the essential steps have been taken to ensure the canals historic legacy will be preserved as a vital resource to be enjoyed by future generations to come.

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THE DITCH THAT CHANGED THE FACE OF AMERICA by CAPTAIN JERRY GERTZ The Erie Canal is the most successful waterway in North America. It shaped the course of settlement and commerce between the Atlantic Seaboard and the interior of our country.

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Building the Erie Canal Video - New York - HISTORY.com

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Building the Erie Canal Video - New York - HISTORY.com

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The Dutch first settled along the Hudson River in 1624; two years later they established the colony of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. In 1664, the English took control of the area and renamed it New York. One of the original 13 colonies, New York played a crucial political and strategic role during the American Revolution. Between 1892 and 1954, millions of immigrants arrived in New York Harbor and passed through Ellis Island on their journey to becoming U.S citizens. It is estimated that up to 40 percent of Americans can trace at least one ancestor to that port of entry. New York City, the largest city in the state, is home to the New York Stock Exchange and is a major international economic center.

Date of Statehood: July 26, 1788

Capital: Albany

Population: 19,378,102 (2010)

Size: 54,555 square miles

Nickname(s): Empire State

Motto: Excelsior ("Ever Upward")

Tree: Sugar Maple

Flower: Rose

Bird: Bluebird

Interesting Facts

New York City was the first capital of the United States after the Constitution was ratified in 1788. On April 30, 1789, George Washington was inaugurated as the nation's first president at Federal Hall, located on Wall Street.

The popular tabloid New York Post was originally established in 1801 as a Federalist newspaper called the New York Evening Post by Alexander Hamilton, an author of the Federalist papers and the nation's first secretary of the treasury.

The Statue of Liberty was a gift from the people of France in honor of the United States' enduring dedication to freedom and democracy and of the alliance held between the two countries during the American Revolution. Erected in 1886 on Bedloe's Island (later renamed Liberty Island) in New York Harbor, the statue stood as a welcoming symbol to the 14 million immigrants who entered the United States through New York until 1924.

After the towns of Woodstock and Wallkill refused permission to host what ultimately became the country's most renowned musical festival, a dairy farmer in nearby Bethel agreed to provide access to his land for "Three Days of Peace and Music." With musical acts kicking off on August 15, 1969, the Woodstock Music Festival attracted more than 400,000 attendees-most of whom were admitted for free since the organizers of the event were unprepared to control access for such a large crowd.

Adirondack Park in northeastern New York contains roughly 6 million acres of protected land. Comprised of both public and private areas, the park is larger than Yellowstone, Glacier, Everglades and Grand Canyon National Parks combined.

New York City contains roughly 660 miles of subway track connecting 468 subway stations-the lowest of which is located 180 feet below street level. In 2011, more than 1.6 billion people rode the subway.

Comprised of three waterfalls on United States and Canadian territory, Niagara Falls attracts 12 million visitors each year. The American Falls, in New York, are nearly 180 feet high and 1,100 feet long. The Niagara River produces enough hydroelectric power to supply more than a quarter of all power used in the state of New York and Ontario.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame is located in Cooperstown, New York.

PHOTO GALLERIES

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The Dutch first settled along the Hudson River in 1624; two years later they established the colony of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. In 1664, the English took control of the area and renamed it New York. One of the original 13 colonies, New York played a crucial political and strategic role during the American Revolution.

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Who were the buffalo soldiers? - Ask History

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Who were the buffalo soldiers? - Ask History

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Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor :: History and Culture

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Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor :: History and Culture

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Skip to content

Built between 1817 and 1825, the original Erie Canal traversed 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo. It was the longest artificial waterway and the greatest public works project in North America.

The canal put New York on the map as the Empire State-the leader in population, industry, and economic strength. It transformed New York City into the nation's principal seaport and opened the interior of North America to settlement.

Equally important, the Erie Canal became a central element forging our national identity. Built with a combination of vision, determination, ingenuity, and hard work, the Erie Canal solidified these central elements of our American character.

An Engineering Marvel

New York's canal system was a nationally and internationally significant work of engineering. Although its builders borrowed and adapted ideas and techniques from earlier European canals, they applied them with audacity on an unprecedented scale.

Originally four feet deep and 40 feet wide, the Erie Canal cut through fields, forests, rocky cliffs, and swamps; crossed rivers on aqueducts; and overcame hills with 83 lift locks. The project engineers and contractors had little experience building canals, so this massive project served as the nation's first practical school of civil engineering.

Some laborers were Irish immigrants, but most were U.S.-born. For eight years of wet, heat, and cold, they felled trees and excavated, mostly by hand and animal power, mile after mile. They devised equipment to uproot trees and pull stumps and developed hydraulic cement that hardened under water. With hand drills and black powder they blasted rocks. Their ingenuity and labor made the Erie Canal the engineering and construction triumph of its day.

Faster, Cheaper

Canal packet boat passengers traveled in relative comfort from Albany to Buffalo in five days-not two weeks in crowded stagecoaches. Freight rates fell 90 percent compared to shipping by ox-drawn wagon. Freight boats carried Midwestern produce from Buffalo to Albany. Most continued on to New York City's seaport, towed down the Hudson River in fleets behind steam tugboats. Mid-western farmers, loggers, miners, and manufacturers found new access to lucrative far-flung markets.

The Erie Canal became known as the "Mother of Cities" because it gave rise to so many cities, towns, and villages.
A Flow of People and Ideas

The Erie Canal and a system of connecting waterways fulfilled DeWitt Clinton's prophecy that New York would be America's preeminent state, populated from border to border and generating wealth for itself and the nation. Soon New York City was the nation's busiest port, most populous city, and foremost seat of commerce and finance. Immigrants knew they could find work there and in many new cities sprouting along the canal.

As it opened the American interior to settlement, the canal brought a flow of people and new ideas. Social reform movements like abolitionism and women's suffrage, Utopian communities, and various religious movements thrived in the canal corridor. The Erie Canal carried more westbound immigrants than any other trans-Appalachian canal. These newcomers infused the nation with different languages, customs, practices, and religions.

Floating Ideas:
How the Erie Canal Shaped America

This half-hour documentary examines the spread of ideas along the Erie Canal, with an emphasis on women's rights, the right to vote, and the quest for social justice.

A New Kind of National Park

The U.S. Congress recognized the Erie Canal's significance to our nation by establishing the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor in 2000. The Corridor stretches 524 miles across the full expanse of upstate New York, from Buffalo to Albany and north along the Champlain Canal to Whitehall. It threads more than 200 communities connected by a waterway that changed not just the landscape of our state, but also our nation and its history.

National Historic Landmark

Thanks to the dedication of generations of canal workers and the support of people like you, the NYS Canal System remains one of America's greatest treasures.

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Skip to content Built between 1817 and 1825, the original Erie Canal traversed 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo. It was the longest artificial waterway and the greatest public works project in North America. The canal put New York on the map as the Empire State-the leader in population, industry, and economic strength.

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Buffalo Soldiers - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

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Buffalo Soldiers - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

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Buffalo soldiers were African American soldiers who mainly served on the Western frontier following the American Civil War. In 1866, six all-Black cavalry and infantry regiments were created after Congress passed the Army Organization Act. Their main tasks were to help control the Native Americans of the Plains, capture cattle rustlers and thieves and protect settlers, stagecoaches, wagon trains and railroad crews along the Western front.

Who Were the Buffalo Soldiers?

No one knows for certain why, but the soldiers of the all-Black 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments were dubbed "buffalo soldiers" by the Native Americans they encountered.

One theory claims the nickname arose because the soldiers' dark, curly hair resembled the fur of a buffalo. Another assumption is the soldiers fought so valiantly and fiercely that the Indians revered them as they did the mighty buffalo.

Whatever the reason, the name stuck, and African American regiments formed in 1866, including the 24th and 25th Infantry (which were consolidated from four regiments) became known as buffalo soldiers.
READ MORE: Meet the Buffalo Soldiers
The 9th Cavalry Regiment

The mustering of the 9th Cavalry took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, in August and September of 1866. The soldiers spent the winter organizing and training until they were ordered to San Antonio, Texas, in April 1867. There they were joined by most of their officers and their commanding officer, Colonel Edward Hatch.

Training the inexperienced and mostly uneducated soldiers of the 9th Calvary was a challenging task. But the regiment was willing, able and mostly ready to face anything when they were ordered to the unsettled landscape of West Texas.

The soldiers' main mission was to secure the road from San Antonio to El Paso and restore and maintain order in areas disrupted by Native Americans, many of whom were frustrated with life on Indian reservations and broken promises by the federal government. The Black soldiers, facing their own forms of discrimination from the U.S. government, were tasked with removing another minority group in that government's name.

The 10th Cavalry Regiment

The 10th Cavalry was based in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and commanded by Colonel Benjamin Grierson. Mustering was slow, partly because the colonel wanted more educated men in the regiment and partly because of a cholera outbreak in the summer of 1867.

In August 1867, the regiment was ordered to Fort Riley, Kansas, with the task of protecting the Pacific Railroad, which was under construction at the time.

Before they left Fort Leavenworth, some troops fought hundreds of Cheyenne in two separate battles near the Saline River. With the support of the 38th Infantry Regiment-which was later consolidated into the 24th Infantry Regiment-the 10th Cavalry pushed back the hostile Indians.

The cavalry lost just one man and several horses despite having inferior equipment and being greatly outnumbered. It was just one of many battles to come.

Indian Wars

Both the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments participated in dozens upon dozens of skirmishes and larger battles of the Indian Wars as America became obsessed with westward expansion.

For instance, the 9th Cavalry was critical to the success of a three-month, unremitting campaign known as the Red River War against the Kiowas, the Comanches, the Cheyenne and the Arapahoe. It was after this battle that the 10th Cavalry was sent to join them in Texas.

Troops H and I of the 10th Cavalry were part of a team that rescued wounded Lieutenant-Colonel George Alexander Forsyth and what remained of his group of scouts trapped on a sand bar and surrounded by Native Americans in the Arikaree River. A couple weeks later, the same troops engaged hundreds of Indians at Beaver Creek and fought so gallantly they were thanked in a field order by General Philip Sheridan.

By 1880, the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments had minimized Indian resistance in Texas and the 9th Cavalry was ordered to Indian Territory in modern-day Oklahoma, ironically to prevent white settlers from illegally settling on Indian land. The 10th Cavalry continued to keep the Apache in check until the early 1890s when they relocated to Montana to round up the Cree.

About 20 percent of U.S. Cavalry troops that participated in the Indian Wars were buffalo soldiers, who participated in at least 177 conflicts.

Buffalo Soldiers Protect National Parks

Buffalo soldiers didn't only battle Native Americans. They also fought wildfires and poachers in Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks and supported the parks' infrastructure.

According to the National Park Service, buffalo soldiers billeted at the Presidio army post in San Francisco during the winter and served as park rangers in the Sierra Nevada in the summer.
READ MORE: Why Buffalo Soldiers Served Among the Nation's First Park Rangers
Buffalo Soldiers in Other Conflicts

In the late 1890s, with the "Indian problem" mostly settled, the 9th and 10th Calvary and the 24th and 25th Infantry headed to Florida at the start of the Spanish-American War.

Even facing blatant racism and enduring brutal weather conditions, buffalo soldiers earned a reputation for serving courageously. They fought heroically in the Battle of San Juan Hill, the Battle of El Caney and the Battle of Las Guasimas.

The 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments served in the Philippines in the early 1900s. Despite proving their military worth time and again, they continued to experience racial discrimination. During World War I, they were mostly relegated to defending the Mexican border.

Both regiments were integrated into the 2nd Cavalry Division in 1940. They trained for overseas deployment and combat during World War II. The 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments were deactivated in May 1944.

Mark Matthews

In 1948, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981 eliminating racial segregation in America's armed forces. The last all-black units were disbanded during the 1950s.

Mark Matthews, the nation's oldest living buffalo soldier, died in 2005 at age 111 in Washington, D.C.

Buffalo soldiers had the lowest military desertion and court-martial rates of their time. Many won the Congressional Medal of Honor, an award presented in recognition of combat valor that goes above and beyond the call of duty.

Buffalo Soldiers Legacy

Today, visitors can attend the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum in Houston, Texas, a museum dedicated to the history of their military service. Bob Marley and The Wailers immortalized the group in the reggae song " Buffalo Soldier," which highlighted the irony of formerly enslaved people and their descendants "stolen from Africa" taking land from Native Americans for white settlers.

Sources

9th Cavalry Regiment. 1st Cavalry Division Association.
Who Are The Buffalo Soldiers? Buffalo Soldier Museum.
9th Cavalry Regiment (1866-1944). Blackpast.org.
10th Cavalry Regiment (1866-1944). Blackpast.org.
Buffalo Soldiers. National Park Service.
Buffalo Soldiers and the Spanish-American War. National Park Service.
Exploring the Life and History of the "Buffalo Soldiers." National Archives.
Ninth United States Cavalry. Texas State Historical Association.
The Ninth Regiment of Cavalry. U.S. Army Center of Military History.
The Tenth Regiment of Cavalry. U.S. Army Center of Military History.
World War I and the Buffalo Soldiers. National Park Service.

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Buffalo soldiers were African American soldiers who mainly served on the Western frontier following the American Civil War. In 1866, six all-Black cavalry and infantry regiments were created after Congress passed the Army Organization Act.

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NOTE: The year 2020 marked the 20th anniversary of The Erie Canal web site! Hopefully, this site has been both educational and entertaining. The webmaster wishes to thank all those who have helped in this endeavor to present historical information about and images of the Erie Canal, particularly the Canal Society of New York State. Additional information and images from any and all sources will be welcomed. As we face the new decade and continue to enjoy the Erie Canal in both its present state and its historical remnants, you are encouraged to explore the canal and its environs. Enjoy!

"Clinton's Big Ditch"

On July 4th, 1817, ground was broken for the Erie Canal at Rome, N.Y. Two hundred years later, 2017, is the celebration of the bicentennial of this historic event. Proposed in 1808 and completed in 1825, the canal links the waters of Lake Erie in the west to the Hudson River in the east. An engineering marvel when it was built, some called it the Eighth Wonder of the World.

In order to open the country west of the Appalachian Mountains to settlers and to offer a cheap and safe way to carry produce to a market, the construction of a canal was proposed as early as 1768. However, those early proposals would connect the Hudson River with Lake Ontario near Oswego. It was not until 1808 that the state legislature funded a survey for a canal that would connect to Lake Erie. Finally, on July 4, 1817, the construction of the canal began. In those early days, it was often sarcastically referred to as "Clinton's Big Ditch". However, two years after construction began, the first section of the canal, between Rome and Utica, saw the beginning of commercial traffic. Use of the canal expanded as other sections were completed. When finally completed on October 26, 1825, it was the engineering marvel of its day. It was 363 miles long and included 18 aqueducts to carry the canal over ravines and rivers, and 83 locks, with a rise of 568 feet from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. It was 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide, and floated boats carrying 30 tons of freight. A ten foot wide towpath was built along the bank of the canal for the horses and/or mules which pulled the boats and their driver, often a young boy (sometimes referred to as a "hoggee", for the commands given to the horses or mules: "Ho" for stop, and "Gee" for go).

In order to keep pace with the growing demands of traffic, the Erie Canal was enlarged between 1836 and 1862. The "Enlarged Erie Canal" was 350.5 miles long, 7 feet deep and 70 feet wide, and could handle boats carrying 240 tons. The number of locks was reduced to 72. Most of the remaining traces of the Old Erie Canal are from the Enlarged Erie Canal era.

In 1903, the State again decided to enlarge the canal by the construction of what was termed the "Barge Canal", consisting of the Erie Canal and the three chief branches of the State system -- the Champlain Canal, the Oswego Canal, and the Cayuga and Seneca Canal. The resulting Erie Barge Canal was completed in 1918, and is 12 to 14 feet deep, 120 to 200 feet wide, and 338 miles long, from Waterford to Tonawanda. 36 Locks were built to handle barges carrying up to 3,000 tons of cargo, with lifts of 6 to 40 feet. This is the Erie Canal which today is utilized more often by recreational boats than cargo-carrying barges.

For a more detailed history of the Erie Canal, see Little Short of Madness.

Particularly interesting portions of the original "Clinton's Ditch" Canal and the Enlarged Erie Canal include:

The locks at Lockport, where the current double 24 1/2 foot high locks are adjacent to one sequence of the original 5 lock pairs. In 2013-2014 and 2019, three of the original locks were restored to operating condition, with plans to restore the other two in the works.

The Fairport Lift Bridge, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in August 2014 and is an engineering curiosity due to the slope and angle of the bridge.

The remains of several early canal structures in the Macedon and Palmyra area, including the remains of the Mud Creek Aqueduct and the rebuilt Aldrich Change Bridge, as well as current canal lock E-29.

The several mile long stretch between Lyons and Lock Berlin, which includes Enlarged Erie Canal Lock No. 56 and its associated locktender's house and mule barn (now a private residence), current canal Lock E-28A and its associated drydock and Canal Corporation maintenance buildings, the end piers of the Lyons Aqueduct, current canal Lock E-27, traces of the original "Clinton's Ditch" Canal and the Enlarged Erie Canal (some sections watered), and Enlarged Erie Canal Lock No. 54.

Old Erie Canal State Historic Park, a 36 mile linear park that preserves the remains of the historic Enlarged Erie Canal from DeWitt to Rome.

Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site, including "Clinton's Ditch" Canal Lock No. 20 and a Guard Lock, Enlarged Erie Canal Lock Nos. 28 and 29; several arches of the Schoharie Creek Aqueduct, and current canal Lock E-12.

About this Site

This web site is devoted to the history of the Erie Canal in general, but focuses to some extent on the middle and western portions of the canal.

The main sections of this site provide views of the old Erie Canal in three ways:

Erie Canal Images -- Old prints, paintings, and postcards

Traces of the Old Erie Canal -- Recent photographs of the remains of old Erie Canal sites and structures, primarily those from the Enlarged Erie Canal era (post-1862)

Tour the Old Erie Canal -- A journey from Buffalo in the west to Albany in the east by way of a clickable map of the Erie Canal path, and incorporating material from both the Images and Traces sections with additional material.

A good introduction to the history of the Erie Canal can be found on the 175th Anniversary Exhibit pages, which originally accompanied an exhibit put together by the Mandeville Gallery of Union College in Schenectady to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the opening of the Erie Canal. More historical information can be found in the Historical Documents section and in the materials listed on the Books and Videos page, or by following the Erie Canal Related Links. Historical and recent maps can be found on the Erie Canal Maps page.

For information about the Erie Canal of today, visit the The Travels of Tug 44 web site, and the Canal Corporation web site.

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Devoted to the history of the Erie Canal in general, as told through Images (old prints, paintings, maps and postcards), Traces (recent photographs of the remains of old Erie Canal sites and structures), and a Tour (a journey from Buffalo in the west to Albany in the east by way of a clickable map of the Erie Canal path).

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African Americans have served proudly in every great American war. Over two hundred thousand African American servicemen fought bravely during the Civil War. In 1866 through an act of congress, legislation was adopted to create six all African American army units. The units were identified as the 9th and 10th cavalry and the 38th, 39th, 40th and 41st infantry regiments. The four infantry units were reorganized in 1868 as the 24th and the 25th infantry. Black soldiers enlisted for five years and received $13.00 a month, far more than they could have earned in civilian life.

The 10th cavalry was formed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and recruited soldiers from the northern states. Colonel Benjamin Grierson was selected to command the 10th cavalry. Colonel Edward Hatch was selected to command the 9th cavalry and he recruited soldiers from the south and set up his headquarters in Greenville , Louisiana. The troops were led by white officers. Many officers, including George Armstrong Custer, refused to command black regiments and accepted a lower rank rather than do so. The black regiments could only serve west of the Mississippi River because of the prevailing attitudes following the Civil War.

The Buffalo Soldier's main charge was to protect settlers as they moved west and to support the westward expansion by building the infrastructure needed for new settlements to flourish.

History of Buffalo Soldiers of the American West (Colorado Unit)

The Buffalo Soldiers of the American West began as the result of an oversight in the history of the West. John Bell, an aficionado of Western history, participated in reenactments in Colorado and noticed a lack of representation of the Buffalo Soldiers. He wondered whether there were Buffalo Soldier organizations in Colorado and found that there were none. After much research and more deliberation, John decided to start an organization of Buffalo Soldiers in Colorado in 1986. John needed to answer the following questions before he began:

Would the unit be cavalry or infantry?

Where could authentic equipment and uniforms be found?

What would be the cost?

How much travel would be involved to research the history of the Buffalo Soldiers?

Who would be interested in becoming members and portraying the soldiers?

Which time period would the unit represent?

Finally, John decided that the organization would be cavalry and represent the time period between the 1870 and 1890.

The Buffalo Soldiers of the American West represent members of the 10th Cavalry M Company, organized in 1867 under Commanding Officer, Capt. Alvord. Troopers of the M Company rode mix colored horses-black, brown, bay, gray, chestnut, and at times, other color combinations. Company M, therefore, is known as the Calico Company.

The 10th Cavalry mounted units were deactivated in North Africa in 1944.

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African Americans have served proudly in every great American war. Over two hundred thousand African American servicemen fought bravely during the Civil War. In 1866 through an act of congress, legislation was adopted to create six all African American army units.

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Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor :: History and Culture

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Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor :: History and Culture

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Skip to content

Built between 1817 and 1825, the original Erie Canal traversed 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo. It was the longest artificial waterway and the greatest public works project in North America.

The canal put New York on the map as the Empire State-the leader in population, industry, and economic strength. It transformed New York City into the nation's principal seaport and opened the interior of North America to settlement.

Equally important, the Erie Canal became a central element forging our national identity. Built with a combination of vision, determination, ingenuity, and hard work, the Erie Canal solidified these central elements of our American character.

An Engineering Marvel

New York's canal system was a nationally and internationally significant work of engineering. Although its builders borrowed and adapted ideas and techniques from earlier European canals, they applied them with audacity on an unprecedented scale.

Originally four feet deep and 40 feet wide, the Erie Canal cut through fields, forests, rocky cliffs, and swamps; crossed rivers on aqueducts; and overcame hills with 83 lift locks. The project engineers and contractors had little experience building canals, so this massive project served as the nation's first practical school of civil engineering.

Some laborers were Irish immigrants, but most were U.S.-born. For eight years of wet, heat, and cold, they felled trees and excavated, mostly by hand and animal power, mile after mile. They devised equipment to uproot trees and pull stumps and developed hydraulic cement that hardened under water. With hand drills and black powder they blasted rocks. Their ingenuity and labor made the Erie Canal the engineering and construction triumph of its day.

Faster, Cheaper

Canal packet boat passengers traveled in relative comfort from Albany to Buffalo in five days-not two weeks in crowded stagecoaches. Freight rates fell 90 percent compared to shipping by ox-drawn wagon. Freight boats carried Midwestern produce from Buffalo to Albany. Most continued on to New York City's seaport, towed down the Hudson River in fleets behind steam tugboats. Mid-western farmers, loggers, miners, and manufacturers found new access to lucrative far-flung markets.

The Erie Canal became known as the "Mother of Cities" because it gave rise to so many cities, towns, and villages.
A Flow of People and Ideas

The Erie Canal and a system of connecting waterways fulfilled DeWitt Clinton's prophecy that New York would be America's preeminent state, populated from border to border and generating wealth for itself and the nation. Soon New York City was the nation's busiest port, most populous city, and foremost seat of commerce and finance. Immigrants knew they could find work there and in many new cities sprouting along the canal.

As it opened the American interior to settlement, the canal brought a flow of people and new ideas. Social reform movements like abolitionism and women's suffrage, Utopian communities, and various religious movements thrived in the canal corridor. The Erie Canal carried more westbound immigrants than any other trans-Appalachian canal. These newcomers infused the nation with different languages, customs, practices, and religions.

Floating Ideas:
How the Erie Canal Shaped America

This half-hour documentary examines the spread of ideas along the Erie Canal, with an emphasis on women's rights, the right to vote, and the quest for social justice.

A New Kind of National Park

The U.S. Congress recognized the Erie Canal's significance to our nation by establishing the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor in 2000. The Corridor stretches 524 miles across the full expanse of upstate New York, from Buffalo to Albany and north along the Champlain Canal to Whitehall. It threads more than 200 communities connected by a waterway that changed not just the landscape of our state, but also our nation and its history.

National Historic Landmark

Thanks to the dedication of generations of canal workers and the support of people like you, the NYS Canal System remains one of America's greatest treasures.

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Skip to content Built between 1817 and 1825, the original Erie Canal traversed 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo. It was the longest artificial waterway and the greatest public works project in North America. The canal put New York on the map as the Empire State-the leader in population, industry, and economic strength.

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Buffalo Soldiers | National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Buffalo Soldiers | National Museum of African American History and Culture

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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As subjects of both historical study and popular legend, the African American servicemen known as “Buffalo Soldiers” continue to provoke conversations.

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Nine Places Where You Can Still See Wheel Tracks from the Oregon Trail | Travel | Smithsonian

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Nine Places Where You Can Still See Wheel Tracks from the Oregon Trail | Travel | Smithsonian

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Any child of the 1980s is familiar with the basic skeleton of the Oregon Trail, from the celebrations warranted by a sight of Chimney Rock to the dangers of running a team of oxen at a grueling pace with meager rations. But even devoted players of the classic computer game, which turned 45 this year, may not know that relics of the trail itself are still carved into the landscapes of the United States.

The trail itself-all 2,170 miles of it-was braved by more than 400,000 people between 1840 and 1880. Weighed down with wagons and their pesonal possessions, the pioneers that dared travel the Oregon Trail slowly helped build the United States' western half. The trail began in Independence, Missouri, and continued to the Willamette Valley in Oregon, where pioneers could decide to either stay put or continue north or south and settle.

As the Oregon Trail evolved, thousands of wagons wore ruts into the ground that acted as an ad-hoc road for the settlers who followed. But they didn't follow a single solid path. Rather, wagon wheels left ruts across the country as pioneers found various shortcuts and easier routes along the way. Many of those ruts still exist today, though some of them are in danger of destruction as municipalities push to stretch bigger and better power supplies across the region.

So caulk those wagons and get ready to ford the river. Follow this modern-day journey, stopping to see trail relics along the way-with no need to worry about typhoid fever or dysentery.

Red Bridge Crossing (Kansas City, Missouri)

These ruts are not so obvious to the untrained eye-the site is a swale, or a sunken trail eroded into the hillside, caused by wet wagon wheels coming out of the Big Blue River. This was the first river crossing pioneers hit on the trail; they often had to camp here and wait for the river to reach the right height to cross.

Alcove Spring (Blue Rapids, Kansas)

This spot's unique rock formations, waterfall, and natural spring were a favorite stopping point for pioneers after crossing the Big Blue River. Many wanted to leave their mark and carved their names into the rocks around the spring- including Edwin Bryant, a member of the famously doomed Donner-Reed Party. According to Bryant, his group actually named the area "Alcove Springs" and carved the name into the rocks and surrounding tree trunks.

California Hill (Brule, Nebraska)

Pioneers faced a hefty climb up California Hill after crossing the South Platte River. Right after reaching the other side of the water, wagons had to drive up 240 feet in a little more than a mile and a half, leaving deep ruts up the hill that are still visible today. Almost everyone on the Oregon Trail had to take this route, and California Hill was the first major climb they encountered on the trail.

Rock Creek Station (Fairbury, Nebraska)

Pristine trail ruts stretch 1,600 feet through the countryside here at Rock Creek Station. The spot was originally established as a supply stop and eventually became a Pony Express station. A toll bridge built specifically for the pioneers crossed a creek here-before the bridge, travelers had to lower their wagons into the creek and hoist them out. The bridge solved the problem, allowing settlers to skip the heavy lifting while paying 10 to 50 cents to cross at road level; the toll was based on load size and ability to pay.

Guernsey Ruts (Guernsey, Wyoming)

The tracks at Guernsey are among the most impressive remnants of Oregon Trail history. Almost every pioneer had to pass through the same spot here, going over soft sandstone. Over time, each wagon wore down the rock a bit more...and more...and more. The ruts eventually became five feet deep, and visitors can walk through them for a real pioneer experience. South of Guernsey is Register Cliff, where many pioneers carved their names into the rock to document their passage.

Independence Rock (Casper, Wyoming)

Many pioneers passing by Independence Rock stopped here to carve their names into the granite, earning it a title of one of the "registers of the desert," given by Father Peter J. DeSmet in 1840. The landmark was christened Independence Rock in 1830 when William Sublette passed through with his wagon train, noting he'd made it there by July 4-if wagon trains didn't make it by then, they weren't likely to reach their final destination by winter.

Big Hill (Montpelier, Idaho)

Until 1852, when the McAuley Road cutoff was blazed, pioneers had to face the challenge of Big Hill. The longest, steepest climb on the Oregon Trail, the hill had an even more dangerous descent. Tracks are still visible going up the hill, and are also visible on the way back down, into Bear River Valley. They're best viewed a bit farther away from the highway-up close you don't see the magnitude of what the pioneers endured on this part of the trail.

Virtue Flat (Baker City, Oregon)

Just below the modern-day National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center on Flagstaff Hill-where pioneers got their first glimpse of the Baker Valley-seven miles of wagon ruts are visible across the ground. This site has what might be the first passing lanes in the west; some of the ruts run parallel to one another, implying that some wagons passed others going slower in order to get to Powder River first.

Columbia River Gorge (Biggs Junction, Oregon)

Along the freeway here, an Oregon Trail historic sign sits on a cliff face next to one of the final sets of wagon ruts along the route to Columbia. These stretch up a hill on the side of the road and go along the cliff for about a mile, leading to an impressive view of the Columbia River.

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Nine Places Where You Can Still See Wheel Tracks from the Oregon Trail

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Any child of the 1980s is familiar with the basic skeleton of the Oregon Trail, from the celebrations warranted by a sight of Chimney Rock to the dangers of running a team of oxen at a grueling pace with meager rations.

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Westward Expansion - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

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Westward Expansion - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

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History: Westward Expansion and the Old West for Kids

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History: Westward Expansion and the Old West for Kids

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Kids learn about the history of the Westward Expansion and the Old West of the United States as pioneers settled the west as the country expanded. Educational articles for teachers, students, and schools including daily life on the frontier, gold rush, Pony Express, timeline, glossary, and people.

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Westward Expansion Timeline for kids ***

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Westward Expansion Timeline for kids ***

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Westward Expansion Map
The Westward Expansion Map details the dates and the historical treaties made by the United States of America that increased the nation's lands and made Westward Expansion possible.

When did Westward Expansion begin?
Westward Expansion began with the settlement of the first 13 colonies in the East. The 1783 Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783 and ended the American Revolutionary War and established the early U.S. boundaries.

When did Westward Expansion end?
Westward Expansion ended on February 14, 1912 when Arizona was admitted to the Union as the last of the 48 contiguous (adjoining) states. The admittance of Arizona to the Union completed the process of conquering, establishing and organizing the American West.

Who was involved in the Westward Expansion? It could be said that between 1783-1912 all of the people of America were involved in the Westward Expansion of the United States. Westward Expansion was led by all of the Presidents of the United States during this period. Treaties were enacted by the politicians and the diplomats. The wars were waged by the military and U.S. citizens. Henry Clay introduced the "
American System" that included a subsidized transportation infrastructure of new roads and canals. The inventors during the period of the Industrial Revolution made new transportation systems such as the railroads possible. Entrepreneurs invested in the systems. But it was the people of America who built the systems making it possible for Westward Expansion to become viable and help the pioneers and settlers to head west and build new lives in new lands.

Reasons for Westward Expansion
Why was westward expansion important and what were the reasons for Westward Expansion? There was a whole continent to explore that offered a range of different climates, geographical features, vegetation, animals and raw materials. The potential of the new resources and the massive areas of land were waiting for American settlers to discover, some land was almost free. Westward Expansion offered people the opportunity to find new homes and work, to experience adventure, to explore possibilities, to become rich, to find gold or silver, to escape from the constraints of civilization and to make a new start. In other words Westward Expansion enabled people to live the 'American Dream'. Americans were motivated to move west for a whole variety of practical reasons but they were inspired by the belief that the Manifest Destiny of the United States was God's will.

Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny for kids notion of the "
The Manifest Destiny" of the United States was that the occupation the whole continent of North America, was a divine right of the American people. Manifest Destiny was based on the belief of cultural and racial superiority over other nations and the obligation to bring enlightenment and civilization to other races like the Native American Indians. The belief in the Manifest Destiny of the United States justified the darker side of Westward Expansion.

Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny
The picture on your right is of a painting depicting Westward Expansion and the concept of Manifest Destiny. It was painted in 1872 by John Gast (1842-1893) and called American Progress "Spirit of the Frontier". The painting depicts American people moving west, using different types of transport guided and protected by the goddess Columbia, as a symbol of America, holding the book of knowledge and enlightenment. The painting provides a graphic representation of Westward Expansion combined with the concept of Manifest Destiny. Look carefully and you will see people including Native American Indians, pioneers, settlers, prospectors and farmers. The history and progress of transport systems by foot, horse, covered wagon, stagecoach, canal steamboats and the railroad. Communication systems are represented by a Pony Express rider and telegraph wires.

Westward Expansion and Westward Expansion Timeline and Facts for kids Interesting Westward Expansion Facts and Timeline for kids are detailed below together with details of important events in Westward expansion. The history of Westward Expansion of the United States is told in a factual timeline sequence consisting of a series of short facts providing a simple method of relating the relevant, significant events that lead to the Westward Expansion of the United States of America. All of the events are explained with access to additional articles containing detailed facts and information about each of these important historical events that aided Westward Expansion in the United States.

Westward Expansion Timeline and Facts for kids

Westward Expansion Timeline Fact 2: 1800 - Cities and Travel - The towns and cities increased and methods of transport included the stagecoach

Westward Expansion Timeline Fact 6: 1811 - The Cumberland Road - The Construction of the Cumberland Road began in Maryland and stretched 600 miles into the Northwest Territory.

Westward Expansion Timeline Fact 7: 1812 - Turnpikes(Toll Roads) - The era of road building introduced the system of Turnpikes (Toll Roads)

Westward Expansion Timeline Fact 25: 1845 - Manifest Destiny - 1845: John O'Sullivan initiates the phrase 'Manifest Destiny'

Westward Expansion Timeline Fact 27: 1846 - Bear Flag Revolt - The Bear Flag Revolt against Mexico in Alta California

Westward Expansion Timeline Fact 30: 1848 - Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo - The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo by which Mexico ceded Upper California and New Mexico to the United States that covered 525,000 square miles for a payment of $15,000,000

Westward Expansion Timeline Fact 30: 1869 - Transcontinental Railroad - The Transcontinental Railroad was completed joining the eastern and western parts of the United States

Westward Expansion Timeline Fact 31: 1872 - Manifest Destiny Painting - The Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion Painting called American Progress "Spirit of the Frontier" was painted by John Gast

Westward Expansion Timeline Fact 32: 1879 - The Exodusters - The Exodusters and the mass migration of African Americans to Kansas

Westward Expansion Timeline Fact 33: 1898 - Annexation of Hawaii - Queen Liliuokalani was deposed leading to the Annexation of Hawaii.

Westward Expansion and Westward Expansion Timeline and Facts for kids

Westward Expansion for kids - President James K Polk Video
The article on the Westward Expansion for kids provides an overview of one of the Important ideas of his presidential term in office. The following James K Polk video will give you additional important facts and dates about the political events experienced by the 11th American President whose presidency spanned from March 4, 1845 to March 4, 1849.

Westward Expansion

● Facts and Manifest timeline for kids and schools
● Definition of the Westward Expansion in US history
● Facts about the Westward Expansion Timeline
● James K Polk Presidency from March 4, 1845 to March 4, 1849
● Fast, fun, Westward Expansion about Important events in his presidency
● Westward Expansion Painting and Timeline
● James K Polk Presidency and the Westward Expansion timeline for schools, homework, kids and children

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Find a summary, definition and facts about the Westward Expansion timeline for kids. Westward Expansion Timeline, Map and Facts. Facts via the Westward Expansion timeline for kids, children, homework and schools.

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Westward Expansion - The Settlers - YouTube

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Westward Expansion - The Settlers - YouTube

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Westward Expansion, 1790–1850 | Social Studies | Interactive | PBS LearningMedia

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Westward Expansion, 1790–1850 | Social Studies | Interactive | PBS LearningMedia

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Westward Expansion, 1790-1850 | Interactive Map | PBS LearningMedia

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Explore the territorial and population changes in the United States between 1790 and 1850 and consider the factors and resources that shaped and enabled westward expansion. After 1787, the newly established United States began to take an active part in the exploration of North America.

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Westward Expansion, 1860–1890 | Social Studies | Interactive | PBS LearningMedia

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Westward Expansion, 1860–1890 | Social Studies | Interactive | PBS LearningMedia

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Westward Expansion, 1860–1890 | Interactive Map | PBS LearningMedia

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In this interactive map, explore several ways in which the United States experienced substantial growth between the years 1860–1890. Population centers, railroad networks, and improved agricultural lands are pictured in decade increments against base maps, reflecting natural barriers to growth and t…

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American Buffalo Video - Westward Expansion - HISTORY.com

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American Buffalo Video - Westward Expansion - HISTORY.com

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White Cloud the Albino Buffalo Video - Westward Expansion - HISTORY.com

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White Cloud the Albino Buffalo Video - Westward Expansion - HISTORY.com

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In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson purchased the territory of Louisiana from the French government for $15 million. The Louisiana Purchase stretched from the

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American Railroad Video - Westward Expansion - HISTORY.com

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American Railroad Video - Westward Expansion - HISTORY.com

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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."
Access hundreds of hours of historical video, commercial free, with HISTORY Vault. Start your free trial today.

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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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Cumberland Gap Video - Westward Expansion - HISTORY.com

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Cumberland Gap Video - Westward Expansion - HISTORY.com

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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."
Access hundreds of hours of historical video, commercial free, with HISTORY Vault. Start your free trial today.

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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 US History Video - SchoolTube

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Westward Expansion US History Video - SchoolTube

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SchoolTube - Safe video sharing and management for K12

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Westward Expansion: Crash Course US History #24 - YouTube

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Westward Expansion: Crash Course US History #24 - YouTube

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Westward Expansion: Crash Course US History #24

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"Manifest Destiny" Educational Rap by MC LaLa - YouTube

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"Manifest Destiny" Educational Rap by MC LaLa - YouTube

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"Manifest Destiny" Educational Rap by MC LaLa

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Westward Expansion Music Video - YouTube

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Westward Expansion Music Video - YouTube

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Westward Expansion - The Settlers - YouTube

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Westward Expansion - The Settlers - YouTube

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Westward Expansion: The Homestead Act of 1862 & The Frontier Thesis - YouTube

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Westward Expansion: The Homestead Act of 1862 & The Frontier Thesis - YouTube

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Westward Expansion: The Homestead Act of 1862 & The Frontier Thesis

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10 Things You May Not Know About the Pony Express - History Lists

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10 Things You May Not Know About the Pony Express - History Lists

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1. The Pony Express was more than twice as fast as its competitors.

In the mid-19th century, California-bound mail had to either be taken overland by a 25-day stagecoach or spend months inside a ship during a long sea voyage. The Pony Express, meanwhile, had an average delivery time of just 10 days. To achieve this remarkable speed, company owners William H. Russell, William B. Waddell and Alexander Majors set up a string of nearly 200 relief stations across what is now Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California. Lone horsemen would ride between stations at breakneck pace, switching mounts every 10-15 miles and then handing their cargo off to a new courier after 75-100 miles. The relay system allowed mail to criss-cross the frontier in record time. The company's personal best came in March 1861, when riders carried the inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln from Nebraska to California in just seven days, 17 hours.

2. It was a financial flop.

Despite its enduring place in Old West legend, the Pony Express never turned a profit during its year and a half history. The company began making deliveries in April 1860, but service ground to a halt just a few weeks later when the Pyramid Lake War erupted between the United States and the Paiute Indians. The temporary shutdown cost the company some $75,000, and it continued to hemorrhage cash over the next few months due to high operations costs and its failure to secure a government mail contract. Though hailed in the press for its efficiency and adventurous spirit, the Pony Express eventually folded in October 1861, having lost as much as $200,000.

3. There was a weight limit for Pony Express riders.

Since speed was its main goal, the Pony Express went to great lengths to keep its horses' loads as light as possible. Rather than burly cowboys, most of the riders were small, wiry men who weighed between 100 and 125 pounds-roughly the same size as a modern horseracing jockey. Their average age was around 20, but it wasn't unusual for teenagers as young as 14 to be hired. One man named "Bronco" Charlie Miller claimed he was only 11 years old when he first joined the Pony Express.

4. Riders were required to take a loyalty oath.

In exchange for their $100-150 monthly salaries-a substantial sum for the time-Pony Express riders were expected to take a loyalty oath that read: "I do hereby swear, before the Great and Living God, that during my engagement, and while an employee of Russell, Majors and Waddell, I will, under no circumstances, use profane language, that I will drink no intoxicating liquors, that I will not quarrel or fight with any other employee of the firm, and that in every respect I will conduct myself honestly, be faithful to my duties, and so direct all my acts as to win the confidence of my employers, so help me God." Those who broke the rules risked being dismissed without pay, but it appears that few Pony Express employees followed the pledge to the letter. Liquor flowed freely at relief stations, and an eyewitness named Richard Burton reported that he "scarcely ever saw a sober rider."

5. Mail was carried in a specially designed saddlebag.

To cut down on weight and facilitate swift horse and rider changes, the Pony Express used a special type of mailbag known as a "mochilla"-the Spanish word for knapsack. This consisted of a leather cover that was draped over the saddle and held in place by the rider's weight. It featured four padlocked pockets-three for mail and one for the rider's timecard-and was capable of holding up to 20 pounds of cargo. At each relief station, riders would simply grab the mochilla off one mount and then throw it over the next, allowing them to switch horses in the span of just two minutes.

6. Ordinary people almost never used the Pony Express.

The speed of the Pony Express didn't come cheap. In its early days the service cost $5 for every half-ounce of mail-the equivalent of some $130 today. Prices were later reduced to just $1, but they still remained too high for everyday mail. Instead, the service was mainly used to deliver newspaper reports, government dispatches and business documents, most of which were printed on tissue-thin paper to keep costs (and weight) down.

7. One rider completed a 380-mile run in less than two days.

In May 1860, Robert "Pony Bob" Haslam took off on the most legendary ride in Pony Express history. The 20-year-old was scheduled to make his usual 75-mile run from Friday's Station east to Buckland Station in Nevada. Upon arriving at Buckland, however, he found that his relief rider was petrified of the Paiute Indians, who had been attacking stations along the route. When the other man refused to take the mail, Haslam jumped back in the saddle and rode on, eventually completing a 190-mile run before delivering his mochilla at Smith's Creek. After a brief rest, he mounted a fresh horse and retraced his steps all the way back to Friday's Station, at one point passing a relay outpost that had been burned by the Paiutes. By the time he finally returned to his home station, "Pony Bob" had traveled 380 miles in less than 40 hours-a Pony Express record.

8. Riders didn't have the deadliest job on the Pony Express.

Pony Express riders had to deal with extreme weather conditions, harsh terrain and the threat of attacks by bandits and Indians, but life may have been even more dangerous for the stock keepers who manned the relief stations. Their outposts were usually crude, dirt floor hovels equipped with little more than sleeping quarters and corrals for the horses. Many were located in remote sections of the frontier, making them extremely vulnerable to ambush. Accounts differ, but Indians reportedly attacked or burned several relay stations during the Pyramid Lake War in the summer of 1860, killing as many as 16 stock hands. By contrast, only a handful of riders-six, according to the National Park Service -died in the line of duty during the entire history of the Pony Express.

9. Buffalo Bill Cody probably wasn't a Pony Express rider.

In his autobiography, the famed frontier showman William "Buffalo Bill" Cody claimed that he served as a Pony Express rider at the age of 14. He even alleged that he once rode a record 384 miles in a single run. But while Cody almost certainly worked as a messenger for the owners of the Pony Express, there is no record of him ever carrying the mail, and evidence suggests he was probably in school in Kansas during the company's brief history. Whatever Cody's involvement with Pony Express was, there's no doubt that he later kept its memory alive with his famous "Wild West" vaudeville shows, which featured Pony Express riders and horse swaps as a recurring stunt from 1883 until 1916.

10. The transcontinental telegraph dealt the Pony Express its deathblow.

For all its financial troubles, the Pony Express didn't truly collapse until a better alternative appeared on the scene. The company had spent its brief history bridging the gap between the Eastern and Western telegraph lines, but it was finally rendered obsolete on October 24, 1861, when Western Union completed the transcontinental telegraph line at Salt Lake City. The Pony Express ceased service just two days later. Despite operating for only 19 months, its riders had successfully delivered some 35,000 pieces of mail and traveled more than half a million miles across the American frontier.

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10 Things You May Not Know About the Pony Express

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In the mid-19th century, California-bound mail had to either be taken overland by a 25-day stagecoach or spend months inside a ship during a long sea voyage. The Pony Express, meanwhile, had an average delivery time of just 10 days. To achieve this remarkable speed, company owners William H.

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Erie Canal opens - Oct 26, 1825 - HISTORY.com

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Erie Canal opens - Oct 26, 1825 - HISTORY.com

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The Erie Canal opens, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River. Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, the driving force behind the project, led the opening ceremonies and rode the canal boat Seneca Chief from Buffalo to New York City.

Work began on the waterway in August 1823. Teams of oxen plowed the ground, but for the most part the work was done by Irish diggers who had to rely on primitive tools. They were paid $10 a month, and barrels of whisky were placed along the canal route as encouragement. West of Troy, 83 canal locks were built to accommodate the 500-foot rise in elevation. After more than two years of digging, the 425-mile Erie Canal was opened on October 26, 1825, by Governor Clinton.

The effect of the canal was immediate and dramatic. Settlers poured into western New York, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin. Goods were transported at one-tenth the previous fee in less than half the time. Barges of farm produce and raw materials traveled east, as manufactured goods and supplies flowed west. In nine years, tolls had paid back the cost of construction. Later enlarged and deepened, the canal survived competition from the railroads in the latter part of the 19th century. Today, the Erie Canal is used mostly by pleasure boaters, but it is still capable of accommodating heavy barges.

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The Erie Canal opens, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River. Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, the driving force behind the project, led the opening ceremonies and rode the canal boat Seneca Chief from Buffalo to New York City. Work began on the waterway in August 1823.

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What the Oregon Trail Looks Like Today From Above | Air & Space Magazine

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What the Oregon Trail Looks Like Today From Above | Air & Space Magazine

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History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places Smithsonian Magazine

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(1) History of Buffalo Soldiers - YouTube

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(1) History of Buffalo Soldiers - YouTube

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(1) Oregon Trail - Story of Us - YouTube

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(1) Oregon Trail - Story of Us - YouTube

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Erie Canal opens - Oct 26, 1825 - HISTORY.com

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Erie Canal opens - Oct 26, 1825 - HISTORY.com

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The Erie Canal opens, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River. Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, the driving force behind the project, led the opening ceremonies and rode the canal boat Seneca Chief from Buffalo to New York City.

Work began on the waterway in August 1823. Teams of oxen plowed the ground, but for the most part the work was done by Irish diggers who had to rely on primitive tools. They were paid $10 a month, and barrels of whisky were placed along the canal route as encouragement. West of Troy, 83 canal locks were built to accommodate the 500-foot rise in elevation. After more than two years of digging, the 425-mile Erie Canal was opened on October 26, 1825, by Governor Clinton.

The effect of the canal was immediate and dramatic. Settlers poured into western New York, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin. Goods were transported at one-tenth the previous fee in less than half the time. Barges of farm produce and raw materials traveled east, as manufactured goods and supplies flowed west. In nine years, tolls had paid back the cost of construction. Later enlarged and deepened, the canal survived competition from the railroads in the latter part of the 19th century. Today, the Erie Canal is used mostly by pleasure boaters, but it is still capable of accommodating heavy barges.

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The Erie Canal opens, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River. Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, the driving force behind the project, led the opening ceremonies and rode the canal boat Seneca Chief from Buffalo to New York City. Work began on the waterway in August 1823.

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History & Culture - Pony Express National Historic Trail (U.S. National Park Service)

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History & Culture - Pony Express National Historic Trail (U.S. National Park Service)

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History & Culture - Pony Express National Historic Trail (U.S. National Park Service)

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It is hard to believe that young men once rode horses to carry mail from Missouri to California in the unprecedented time of only 10 days. This relay system along the Pony Express National Historic Trail in eight states was the most direct and practical means of east-west communications before the t…

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(1) Buffalo Soldiers: The Unknown Army - Texas Parks and Wildlife [Official] - YouTube

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(1) Buffalo Soldiers: The Unknown Army - Texas Parks and Wildlife [Official] - YouTube

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Buffalo Soldiers: The Unknown Army - Texas Parks and Wildlife [Official]

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Lewis Clark Great Journey West National Geographic In HD - YouTube

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Lewis Clark Great Journey West National Geographic In HD - YouTube

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Lewis Clark  Great Journey West National Geographic   In HD

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Lewis & Clark Expedition Video - Westward Expansion - HISTORY.com

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Lewis & Clark Expedition Video - Westward Expansion - HISTORY.com

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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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Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery

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Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery

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Mapping the Route of Lewis and Clark | A Biography of America | Social Studies | Interactive | PBS LearningMedia

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Mapping the Route of Lewis and Clark | A Biography of America | Social Studies | Interactive | PBS LearningMedia

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Mapping the Route of Lewis and Clark | A Biography of America | PBS LearningMedia

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Maps of the routes of the Lewis and Clark expedition have tended to represent the West as empty country for the taking. This version of the map was drawn for a biography of Sacagawea. This annotated image from A Biography of America helps you think about whose journey is represented.

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The Buffalo and Native Americans Video - Westward Expansion - HISTORY.com

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The Buffalo and Native Americans Video - Westward Expansion - HISTORY.com

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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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The Last of the Sioux Video - Westward Expansion - HISTORY.com

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The Last of the Sioux Video - Westward Expansion - HISTORY.com

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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 and The Native Americans.pdf - Google Drive

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Westward Expansion and The Native Americans.pdf - Google Drive

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Westward Expansion and The Native Americans.pdf

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Trail of Tears | United States history | Britannica.com

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Trail of Tears | United States history | Britannica.com

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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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Indian Removal - Social Studies - Manifest Destiny

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Indian Removal - Social Studies - Manifest Destiny

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Indian Removal - Social Studies - Manifest Destiny - Flocabulary

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Teach or review Indian Removal with Flocabulary’s educational rap video and lesson plan.

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How the 'Trail of Tears' ordeal began - The Washington Post

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How the 'Trail of Tears' ordeal began - The Washington Post

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(1) Story of Us- Trail of Tears.mov - YouTube

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(1) Story of Us- Trail of Tears.mov - YouTube

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Trail of Tears - Native American History - HISTORY.com

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Trail of Tears - Native American History - HISTORY.com

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At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida-land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. But by the end of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians' land, the federal government forced them to leave their homelands and walk hundreds of miles to a specially designated "Indian Territory" across the Mississippi River. This difficult and oftentimes deadly journey is known as the Trail of Tears.
WATCH: Native American History Documentaries on HISTORY Vault
The 'Indian Problem'

White Americans, particularly those who lived on the western frontier, often feared and resented the Native Americans they encountered: To them, American Indians seemed to be an unfamiliar, alien people who occupied land that white settlers wanted (and believed they deserved).

Some officials in the early years of the American republic, such as President George Washington, believed that the best way to solve this "Indian problem" was to simply "civilize" the Native Americans. The goal of this civilization campaign was to make Native Americans as much like white Americans as possible by encouraging them convert to Christianity, learn to speak and read English and adopt European-style economic practices such as the individual ownership of land and other property (including, in some instances in the South, enslaved persons).

In the southeastern United States, many Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee people embraced these customs and became known as the "Five Civilized Tribes."

Did you know? Indian removal took place in the Northern states as well. In Illinois and Wisconsin, for example, the bloody Black Hawk War in 1832 opened to white settlement millions of acres of land that had belonged to the Sauk, Fox and other native nations.

But the Native Americans' land, located in parts of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee, was valuable, and it grew to be more coveted as white settlers flooded the region. Many of these whites yearned to make their fortunes by growing cotton, and often resorted to violent means to take land from their Indigenous neighbors. They stole livestock; burned and looted houses and towns; committed mass murder; and squatted on land that did not belong to them.

Worcester v. Georgia

State governments joined in this effort to drive Native Americans out of the South. Several states passed laws limiting Native American sovereignty and rights and encroaching on their territory.

In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the U.S. Supreme Court objected to these practices and affirmed that native nations were sovereign nations "in which the laws of Georgia [and other states] can have no force."

Even so, the maltreatment continued. As President Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, if no one intended to enforce the Supreme Court's rulings (which he certainly did not), then the decisions would "[fall]...still born." Southern states were determined to take ownership of Indian lands and would go to great lengths to secure this territory.

Indian Removal Act

Andrew Jackson had long been an advocate of what he called "Indian removal." As an Army general, he had spent years leading brutal campaigns against the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida-campaigns that resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of acres of land from Indian nations to white farmers.

As president, he continued this crusade. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the federal government the power to exchange Native-held land in the cotton kingdom east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the "Indian colonization zone" that the United States had acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase. This "Indian territory" was located in present-day Oklahoma.

The law required the government to negotiate removal treaties fairly, voluntarily and peacefully: It did not permit the president or anyone else to coerce Native nations into giving up their ancestral lands. However, President Jackson and his government frequently ignored the letter of the law and forced Native Americans to vacate lands they had lived on for generations.

Trail of Tears

In the winter of 1831, under threat of invasion by the U.S. Army, the Choctaw became the first nation to be expelled from its land altogether. They made the journey to Indian Territory on foot (some "bound in chains and marched double file," one historian writes), and without any food, supplies or other help from the government.

Thousands of people died along the way. It was, one Choctaw leader told an Alabama newspaper, a "trail of tears and death."

The Indian-removal process continued. In 1836, the federal government drove the Creeks from their land for the last time: 3,500 of the 15,000 Creeks who set out for Oklahoma did not survive the trip.
READ MORE: How Native Americans Struggled to Survive on the Trail of Tears
Treaty of New Echota

The Cherokee people were divided: What was the best way to handle the government's determination to get its hands on their territory? Some wanted to stay and fight. Others thought it was more pragmatic to agree to leave in exchange for money and other concessions.

In 1835, a few self-appointed representatives of the Cherokee nation negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, which traded all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi - roughly 7 million acres - for $5 million, relocation assistance and compensation for lost property.

To the federal government, the treaty (signed in New Echota, Georgia) was a done deal, but a majority of the Cherokee felt betrayed. Importantly, the negotiators did not represent the tribal government or anyone else. Most Cherokee people considered the Treaty of New Echota fraudulent, and the Cherokee National Council voted in 1836 to reject it.

John Ross

"The instrument in question is not the act of our nation," wrote the nation's principal chief, John Ross, in a letter to the U.S. Senate protesting the Treaty of New Echota. "We are not parties to its covenants; it has not received the sanction of our people." Nearly 16,000 Cherokees signed Ross's petition, but Congress approved the treaty anyway.

By 1838, only about 2,000 Cherokees had left their Georgia homeland for Indian Territory. President Martin Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott and 7,000 soldiers to expedite the removal process. Scott and his troops forced the Cherokee into stockades at bayonet point while his men looted their homes and belongings.

Then, they marched the Indians more than 1,200 miles to Indian Territory. Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the way. Historians estimate that more than 5,000 Cherokee died as a result of the journey.

Legacy of the Trail of Tears

By 1840, tens of thousands of Native Americans had been driven off of their land in the southeastern states and forced to move across the Mississippi to Indian Territory. The federal government promised that their new land would remain unmolested forever, but as the line of white settlement pushed westward, "Indian Country" shrank and shrank. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state and Indian Territory was considered lost.

A 2020 decision by the Supreme Court, however, highlighted ongoing interest in Native American territorial rights. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that a huge area of Oklahoma is still considered an American Indian reservation.

This decision left the state of Oklahoma unable to prosecute Native Americans accused of crimes on those tribal lands - only federal and tribal law enforcement can prosecute such crimes. (A later 2022 Supreme Court decision rolled back some provisions of the 2020 court finding.)

The Trail of Tears - actually a network of different routes - is over 5,000 miles long and covers nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Today, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail is run by the National Park Service and portions of it are accessible on foot, by horse, by bicycle or by car.

Sources

Trail of Tears. NPS.gov.
Trail of Tears. Museum of the Cherokee Indian.
The Treaty of New Echota and the Trail of Tears. North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
The Treaty That Forced the Cherokee People from Their Homelands Goes on View. Smithsonian Magazine.
Justices rule swath of Oklahoma remains tribal reservation. Associated Press.
Justices limit 2020 ruling on tribal lands in Oklahoma. Associated Press.

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At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida-land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. But by the end of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States.

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How did Westward Expansion affect the Native Americans - YouTube

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How did Westward Expansion affect the Native Americans - YouTube

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How did Westward Expansion affect the Native Americans

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Trail of Tears | Social Studies | Video | PBS LearningMedia

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Trail of Tears | Social Studies | Video | PBS LearningMedia

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Trail of Tears | We Shall Remain | PBS LearningMedia

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In this video segment adapted from American Experience: “We Shall Remain,” reenactments help tell the story of how the Cherokee people were forced from their lands in the southeast. The U.S. government initially promised the Cherokee and other Native American tribes that if they could assimilate int…

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(1) Oregon Trail: Wagons to West -- Landmarks of the Old Oregon Country -- Program 6 - YouTube

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(1) Oregon Trail: Wagons to West -- Landmarks of the Old Oregon Country -- Program 6 - YouTube

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Oregon Trail: Wagons to West -- Landmarks of the Old Oregon Country -- Program 6

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(1) America the Story of Us: Gold Rush | History - YouTube

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(1) America the Story of Us: Gold Rush | History - YouTube

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America the Story of Us: Gold Rush | History

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The Gold Rush of 1849 - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

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The Gold Rush of 1849 - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

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The California Gold Rush was sparked by the discovery of gold nuggets in the Sacramento Valley in early 1848 and was arguably one of the most significant events to shape American history during the first half of the 19th century. As news spread of the discovery, thousands of prospective gold miners traveled by sea or over land to San Francisco and the surrounding area; by the end of 1849, the non-native population of the California territory was some 100,000 (compared with the pre-1848 figure of less than 1,000). A total of $2 billion worth of precious metal was extracted from the area during the Gold Rush, which peaked in 1852. .
WATCH: Gold Rush Money on HISTORY Vault
Sutter's Mill

On January 24, 1848, James Wilson Marshall, a carpenter originally from New Jersey, found flakes of gold in the American River at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Coloma, California.

At the time, Marshall was working to build a water-powered sawmill owned by John Sutter, a German-born Swiss citizen and founder of a colony of Nueva Helvetia (New Switzerland, which would later become the city of Sacramento). As Marshall later recalled of his historic discovery: "It made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold."

Did you know? Miners extracted more than 750,000 pounds of gold during the California Gold Rush.

Days after Marshall's discovery at Sutter's Mill, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War and leaving California in the hands of the United States-a remarkable twist of fate with important ramifications for an America eager for westward expansion.

At the time, the population of the territory consisted of 6,500 Californios (people of Spanish or Mexican descent); 700 foreigners (primarily Americans); and 150,000 Native Americans (barely half the number that had been there when Spanish settlers arrived in 1769).

Sutter, in fact, had enslaved hundreds of Native Americans and used them as a free source of labor and makeshift militia to defend his territory and expand his empire.

Gold Fever Strikes

Though Marshall and Sutter tried to keep news of the discovery under wraps, word got out, and by mid-March at least one newspaper was reporting that large quantities of gold were being turned up at Sutter's Mill. Though the initial reaction in San Francisco was disbelief, storekeeper Sam Brannan set off a frenzy when he paraded through town displaying a vial of gold obtained from Sutter's Creek.

By mid-June, shops and businesses stood empty, as some three-quarters of the male population of San Francisco had abandoned the city for the gold mines, and the number of miners in the area ballooned to some 4,000 by August.

As news reports-many wildly overblown-of the easy fortunes being made in California spread worldwide, some of the first migrants to arrive were those from lands accessible by boat, such as Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii), Mexico, Chile, Peru and China.
WATCH: Columbus' Quest for Gold
Polk Spreads Gold Fever

When the news reached the East Coast, press reports were initially skeptical. Gold fever kicked off nationwide in earnest, however, after December 1848, when President James K. Polk announced the positive results of a report made by Colonel Richard Mason, California's military governor, in his inaugural address.

As Polk wrote, "The accounts of abundance of gold are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service."

The '49ers Come to California

Throughout 1849, people around the United States (mostly men) with gold fever borrowed money, mortgaged their property or spent their life savings to make the arduous journey to California. In pursuit of the kind of wealth they had never dreamed of, they left their families and hometowns. In turn, women left behind took on new responsibilities such as running farms or businesses and caring for their children alone.

Thousands of would-be gold miners, known as 49ers for the year they arrived, traveled overland across the mountains or by sea, sailing to Panama or even around Cape Horn, the southernmost point of South America.

By the end of the year, the non-native population of California was estimated at 100,000, (as compared with 20,000 at the end of 1848 and around 800 in March 1848). To accommodate the needs of the 49ers, gold mining towns had sprung up all over the region, complete with shops, saloons, brothels and other businesses seeking to make their own Gold Rush fortune.

The overcrowded chaos of the mining camps and towns grew ever more lawless, including rampant banditry, gambling, alcoholism, prostitution and violence. San Francisco, for its part, developed a bustling economy and became the central metropolis of the new frontier.

Gold Rush Politics

The Gold Rush undoubtedly sped up California's admission to the Union as the 31st state. In late 1849, California applied to enter the Union with a constitution that barred the Southern system of racial slavery, provoking a crisis in Congress between proponents of slavery and anti-slavery politicians.

According to the Compromise of 1850, proposed by Kentucky's Senator Henry Clay, California was allowed to enter as a free state, while the territories of Utah and New Mexico were left to decide the legal status of slavery for themselves.
READ MORE: When California (Briefly) Became Its Own Nation
California's Mines

After 1850, the surface gold in California largely disappeared, even as miners continued to arrive. Mining had always been difficult and dangerous labor, and striking it rich required good luck as much as skill and hard work. Moreover, the average daily take for an independent miner working with his pick and shovel had by then sharply decreased from what it had been in 1848.

As gold became more and more difficult to reach, the growing industrialization of mining drove more and more miners from independence into wage labor. The new technique of hydraulic mining, developed in 1853, brought enormous profits but destroyed much of the region's landscape.

Though gold mining continued throughout the 1850s, it had reached its peak by 1852, when some $81 million was pulled from the ground. After that year, the total take declined gradually, leveling off to around $45 million per year by 1857. Settlement in California continued, however, and by the end of the decade the state's population was 380,000.

Impact of the Gold Rush

New mining methods and the population boom in the wake of the California Gold Rush permanently altered the landscape of California. The technique of hydraulic mining brought enormous profits but destroyed much of the region's landscape.

Dams designed to supply water to mine sites in summer altered the course of rivers away from farmland, while sediment from mines clogged others. The logging industry in the area was born from the need to construct extensive canals and feed boilers at mines, further consuming natural resources.

In 1884, hydraulic mining was outlawed by court order, and soon agriculture became the dominant industry in California, and it remains so today. While a few mines and Gold Rush towns remain, much of the heritage of that era is preserved at places such as Bodie State Historic Park, a decaying ghost town, and at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, where Sutter's Mill once stood.

Sources

Environmental Impact of the Gold Rush. Calisphere.org.
After the Gold Rush. National Geographic.

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The California Gold Rush was sparked by the discovery of gold nuggets in the Sacramento Valley in early 1848 and was arguably one of the most significant events to shape American history during the first half of the 19th century.

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In January 1848, James Wilson Marshall discovered gold while constructing a saw mill along the American River northeast of present-day Sacramento. The discovery was reported in the San Francisco newspapers in March but caused little stir as most did not believe the account.

The spark that ignited the gold rush occurred in May 1848 when Sam Brannan, a storekeeper in Sutter's Creek, brandished a bottle filled with gold dust around San Francisco shouting 'Gold! Gold! Gold from American River!' The residents of the city now had proof of the discovery and the stampede to the gold fields was on. San Francisco's harbor was soon cluttered with derelict ships deserted by their crews. Workers abandoned their jobs - San Francisco's two newspapers were forced to close their doors as their staffs were struck by gold fever. The populations of many of the coastal towns were depleted as prospective prospectors headed to the gold fields.

The New York Herald printed news of the discovery in August 1848 and the rush for gold accelerated into a stampede. Gold seekers traveled overland across the mountains to California (30,000 assembled at launch points along the plains in the spring of 1849) or took the round-about sea routes: either to Panama or around Cape Horn and then up the Pacific coast to San Francisco. A census of San Francisco (then called Yerba Buena) in April 1847 reported the town consisted of 79 buildings including shanties, frames houses and adobes. By December 1849 the population had mushroomed to an estimated 100,000. The massive influx of fortune seekers Americanized the once Mexican province and assured its inclusion as a state in the union.

S. Shufelt was one of those gold-seekers. All that we know about Mr. Shufelt is contained in a letter he wrote from the gold fields to his cousin in March 1850. We don't know if he struck it rich or whether he ever returned to his wife and home - we don't even know his first name. On May 11, 1849 he boarded the steamer Panama in New York City along with about 200 fellow fortune hunters risking all on a gamble in California. Behind him he left a wife and child in Windham, NY near the Catskills.

Mr. Shufelt reveals his motivation when he tells his cousin that: "I have left those that I love as my own life behind and risked everything and endured many hardships to get here. I want to make enough to live easier and do some good with, before I return." These same thoughts no doubt inspired the majority of those who made the trek to the gold fields - they were not intending to stay, but planned to make some money and return to their origins.

Mr. Shufelt's letter was discovered at an auction in 1924 and is now part of the collection of the Library of Congress.

On May 11, 1849 Shufelt sailed out of New York harbor headed for the Isthmus of Panama (at the time a part of Columbia). Although he experienced a few days of sea sickness, he describes the voyage as enjoyable. We pick up his story as he makes his way across the isthmus to the Pacific Ocean hoping to find passage on a ship bound for San Francisco:

"(We) proceeded up the river in canoes rowed by the natives, and enjoyed the scenery & howling of the monkeys & chattering of Parrots very much. We pitched our tents at Gorgona & most of our party stayed there several weeks. S. Miller & myself went on to Panama to look out for a chance to get up to San Francisco. Of our ill success you have probably been informed & consequently of our long stay there, & of the deaths in our party. Yes, here Mr. Crooker, J. Miller & L. Alden yielded up their breath to God who gave it.

On the 85th day out we hove in sight of an object that greatly attracted our attention & ere long the green hills of San Francisco bay began to show their highest points, & soon we were gliding smoothly along between them, down the bay, & when the order came to let go anchor, we brought up directly in front of the City amidst a fleet of vessels, of all kinds & sizes."
"We took passage on a small schooner, crossed the bay with a gentle breeze & soon were winding our way up the crooked Sacramento. We soon entered Soosoon bay & our Capt. not being acquainted with the channel we ran on the ground at high tide & a stiff breeze, so that we were fast in reality. As the tide fell our little schooner fell also on her side & filled with water. We clung to the upper side, but were so thick that as night drew on the Capt. thought some of us had better go on shore. Some of our party went, myself among the rest. We came very near getting swamped on the water.

"We hired an ox team to carry our baggage & started for this place then called Hangtown, from the fact that three persons had been hung here for stealing & attempting to murder. Ten miles from the river we passed Sutters fort, an old looking heap of buildings surrounded by an high wall of unburnt brick, & situated in the midst of a pleasant fertile plain, covered with grass and a few scattering oaks, with numerous tame cattle & mules. We walked by the wagon & at night cooked our suppers, rolled our blankets around us & lay down to rest on the ground, with nothing but the broad canopy of the heavens over us & slept soundly without fear or molestation. After leaving the plains we passed over some hills that looked dry & barren being burnt up by the sun & the long droughts that we have here. We reached this place at night on the fourth day, & in the morning found ourselves in the midst of the diggings, being surrounded by holes dug.

"It is found along the banks of the streams & in the beds of the same, & in almost every little ravine putting into the streams. And often from 10 to 50 ft. from the beds up the bank. We sometimes have to dig several feet deep before we find any, in other places all the dirt & clay will pay to wash, but generally the clay pays best. If there is no clay, then it is found down on the rock. All the lumps are found on the rock--& most of the fine gold. We tell when it will pay by trying the dirt with a pan. This is called prospecting here. If it will pay from six to 12 1/2 pr pan full, then we go to work. Some wash with cradles some with what is called a tom & various other fixings. But I like the tom best of any thing that I have seen.

Shufelt lived in a cabin with six other miners. The cabin had windows, a fireplace and an oven. The miners' diet was poor with the result that many suffered from disease, particularly scurvy. Shufelt himself fell seriously ill, became deranged and was not expected to live but recovered in a week's time. He describes life in camp:

"Many, very many, that come here meet with bad success & thousands will leave their bones here. Others will lose their health, contract diseases that they will carry to their graves with them. Some will have to beg their way home, & probably one half that come here will never make enough to carry them back. But this does not alter the fact about the gold being plenty here, but shows what a poor frail being man is, how liable to disappointments, disease & death.

There is a good deal of sin & wickedness going on here, Stealing, lying, Swearing, Drinking, Gambling & murdering. There is a great deal of gambling carried on here. Almost every public House is a place for Gambling, & this appears to be the greatest evil that prevails here. Men make & lose thousands in a night, & frequently small boys will go up & bet $5 or 10 (Equivalent to $115-$225 today) -- & if they lose all, go the next day & dig more. We are trying to get laws here to regulate things but it will be very difficult to get them executed."

References:
Mr. Shufelt's letter is part of the collection of the Library of Congress A letter from a gold miner, Placerville, California, March, 1850; Holliday, J.S. Rush for Riches: Gold Fever and the Making of California (1999).

How To Cite This Article:
"The California Gold Rush, 1849" EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2003).

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In January 1848, James Wilson Marshall discovered gold while constructing a saw mill along the American River northeast of present-day Sacramento. The discovery was reported in the San Francisco newspapers in March but caused little stir as most did not believe the account.

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Discovery of Gold, by John A. Sutter - 1848

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Discovery of Gold, by John A. Sutter - 1848

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THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA.

by Gen. John A. Sutter

I was very much in need of a new saw-mill, to get lumber to finish my large flouring mill, of four run of stones, at Brighton, which was commenced at the same time, and was rapidly progressing; likewise for other buildings, fences, etc., for the small village of Yerba Buena, (now San Francisco.) In the City Hotel, (the only one) at the dinner table this enterprise was unkindly called "another folly of Sutter's," as my first settlement at the old fort near Sacramento City was called by a good many, "a folly of his," and they were about right in that, because I had the best chances to get some of the finest locations near the settlements; and even well stocked rancho's had been offered to me on the most reasonable conditions; but I refused all these good offers, and preferred to explore the wilderness, and select a territory on the banks of the Sacramento. It was a rainy afternoon when Mr. Marshall arrived at my office in the Fort, very wet. I was somewhat surprised to see him, as he was down a few days previous; and then, I sent up to Coloma a number of teams with provisions, mill irons, etc., etc. He told me then that he had some important and interesting news which he wished to communicate secretly to me, and wished me to go with him to a place where we should not be disturbed, and where no listeners could come and hear what we had to say. I went with him to my private rooms; he requested me to lock the door; I complied, but I told him at the same time that nobody was in the house except the clerk, who was in his office in a different part of the house; after requesting of me something which he wanted, which my servants brought and then left the room, I forgot to lock the doors, and it happened that the door was opened by the clerk just at the moment when Marshall took a rag from his pocket, showing me the yellow metal: he had about two ounces of it; but how quick Mr. M. put the yellow metal in his pocket again can hardly be described. The clerk came to see me on business, and excused himself for interrupting me, and as soon as he had left I was told, "now lock the doors; didn't I tell you that we might have listeners?" I told him that he need fear nothing about that, as it was not the habit of this gentleman; but I could hardly convince him that he need not to be suspicious. Then Mr. M. began to show me this metal, which consisted of small pieces and specimens, some of them worth a few dollars; he told me that he had expressed his opinion to the laborers at the mill, that this might be gold; but some of them were laughing at him and called him a crazy man, and could not believe such a thing.

After having proved the metal with aqua fortis, which I found in my apothecary shop, likewise with other experiments, and read the long article "gold" in the Encyclopedia Americana, I declared this to be gold of the finest quality, of at least 23 carats. After this Mr. M. had no more rest nor patience, and wanted me to start with him immediately for Coloma; but I told him I could not leave as it was late in the evening and nearly supper time, and that it would be better for him to remain with me till the next morning, and I would travel with him, but this would not do: he asked me only "will you come to-morrow morning?" I told him yes, and off he started for Coloma in the heaviest rain, although already very wet, taking nothing to eat. I took this news very easy, like all other occurrences good or bad, but thought a great deal during the night about the consequences which might follow such a discovery. I gave all my necessary orders to my numerous laborers, and left the next morning at 7 o'clock, accompanied by an Indian soldier, and vaquero, in a heavy rain, for Coloma. About half way on the road I saw at a distance a human being crawling out from the brushwood. I asked the Indian who it was: he told me "the same man who was with you last evening." When I came nearer I found it was Marshall, very wet; I told him that he would have done better to remain with me at the fort than to pass such an ugly night here but he told me that he went up to Coloma, (54 miles) took his other horse and came half way to meet me; then we rode up to the new Eldorado. In the afternoon the weather was clearing up, and we made a prospecting promenade. The next morning we went to the tail-race of the mill, through which the water was running during the night, to clean out the gravel which had been made loose, for the purpose of widening the race; and after the water was out of the race we went in to search for gold. This was done every morning: small pieces of gold could be seen remaining on the bottom of the clean washed bed rock. I went in the race and picked up several pieces of this gold, several of the laborers gave me some which they had picked up, and from Marshall I received a part. I told them that I would get a ring made of this gold as soon as it could be done in California; and I have had a heavy ring made, with my family's cost of arms engraved on the outside, and on the inside of the ring is engraved, "The first gold, discovered in January, 1848." Now if Mrs. Wimmer possesses a piece which has been found earlier than mine Mr. Marshall can tell, as it was probably received from him. I think Mr. Marshall could have hardly known himself which was exactly the first little piece, among the whole.

Mr. Brannan made a kind of claim on Mormon Island, and put a tolerably heavy tax on "The Latter Day Saints." I believe it was 30 per cent, which they paid for some time, until they got tired of it, (some of them told me that it was for the purpose of building a temple for the honor and glory of the Lord.)

By this sudden discovery of the gold, all my great plans were destroyed. Had I succeeded for a few years before the gold was discovered, I would have been the richest citizen on the Pacific shore; but it had to be different. Instead of being rich, I am ruined, and the cause of it is the long delay of the United States Land Commission of the United States Courts, through the great influence of the squatter lawyers. Before my case will be decided in Washington, another year may elapse, but I hope that justice will be done me by the last tribunal — the Supreme Court of the United States. By the Land Commission and the District Court it has been decided in my favor. The Common Council of the city of Sacramento, composed partly of squatters, paid Adelpheus Felch, (one of the late Land Commissioners, who was engaged by the squatters during his office), $5,000, from the fund of the city, against the will of the tax-payers, for which amount he has to try to defeat my just and old claim from the Mexican government, before the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington. Hutchings' California Magazine
November 1857

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Discovery of Gold, by John A. Sutter - 1848

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THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. by Gen. John A. Sutter I was very much in need of a new saw-mill, to get lumber to finish my large flouring mill, of four run of stones, at Brighton, which was commenced at the same time, and was rapidly progressing; likewise for other buildings, fences, etc., for the small village of Yerba Buena, (now San Francisco.)

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(1) The California Gold Rush cartoon 1849 (The Wild West) - YouTube

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(1) The California Gold Rush cartoon 1849 (The Wild West) - YouTube

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The California Gold Rush cartoon 1849 (The Wild West)

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(1) The Start of the California Gold Rush (1849) - YouTube

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(1) The Start of the California Gold Rush (1849) - YouTube

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The Start of the California Gold Rush (1849)

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(1) The California Gold Rush in 3 Minutes - YouTube

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(1) The California Gold Rush in 3 Minutes - YouTube

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(1) Buffalo Soldiers - Service on the Frontier - YouTube

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(1) Buffalo Soldiers - Service on the Frontier - YouTube

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Buffalo Soldiers - Service on the Frontier

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Building the Erie Canal | Social Studies | Video | PBS LearningMedia

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Building the Erie Canal | Social Studies | Video | PBS LearningMedia

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DeWitt Clinton’s Plan to Construct the Erie Canal | PBS LearningMedia

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This video segment adapted from American Experience tells the story of how New York State Governor DeWitt Clinton championed the building of an all-water route from New York City to the Great Lakes. Although many felt it was doomed to financial failure, Clinton came up with a new approach to funding…

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Oregon Trail, The : MECC : Free Streaming : Internet Archive

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Oregon Trail, The : MECC : Free Streaming : Internet Archive

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Oregon Trail, The : MECC : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive

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The Oregon Trail is a series of strategy computer games. The first game was originally developed by Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger in 1971...

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Pony Express | United States history | Britannica.com

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Pony Express | United States history | Britannica.com

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Pony Express | U.S. Mail Delivery History & Map

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The Pony Express was a system of U.S. mail delivery that operated from April 3, 1860, until October 1861. It consisted of continuous horse-and-rider relays between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, with steamers covering the final leg from Sacramento to San Francisco.

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Facts, information and articles about the Pony Express, an event of Westward Expansion from the Wild West Pony Express Facts Dates April 3, 1860 -