Historical events and conflicts that occurred during the expansion of the United States of America.
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Louisiana's purchase
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson purchased the territory of Louisiana from the French government for $15 million -
The Missouri compromise
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 -
People move to the west
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 -
The great emigration
In 1843, one thousand pioneers took to the Oregon Trail as part of the “Great Emigration.” -
Mexico's robbed terroritory
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 -
Kansas and Nebraska's stablishment
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 -
struggle over slavery
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.”
