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Westward Movement
Time where America wanted to move west for the east. -
The Louisiana Purchase
Louisiana Purchase, western half of the Mississippi River basin purchased in 1803 from France by the United States; at less than three cents per acre for 828,000 square miles (2,144,520 square km), it was the greatest land bargain in U.S. history. The purchase doubled the size of the United States, greatly strengthened the country materially and strategically, provided a powerful impetus to westward expansion, and confirmed the doctrine of implied powers of the federal Constitution. -
The California Gold Rush
Rapid influx of fortune seekers in California that began after gold was found at Sutter’s Mill in early 1848. It reached its peak in 1852. According to estimates. More than 300,000 people came to the territory during the Gold Rush. -
Homestead Act
in U.S. history, significant legislative action that promoted the settlement and development of the American West. It was also notable for the opportunity it gave African Americans to own land. Pres. Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law on May 20, 1862. -
The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad
The railroad opened the way for the settlement of the West, provided new economic opportunities, stimulated the development of town and communities, and generally tied the country together. Within ten years of its completion, the railroad shipped $50 million worth of freight coast to coast every year. Just as it opened the markets of the west coast and Asia to the east, it brought products of eastern industry to the growing populace beyond the Mississippi. -
The creation of barbed wire
The first patents on barbed wire were taken out in the United States in 1867, but it was not until 1874, when Joseph Glidden of De Kalb, Ill., invented a practical machine for its manufacture, that the innovation became widespread. By 1890, fenced pastureland had virtually replaced the open range in the western United States. -
The Battle Of Little Bighorn
Battle of the Little Bighorn, also called Custer’s Last Stand, (June 25, 1876), battle at the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory, U.S., between federal troops led by Lieut. Col. George A. Custer and Northern Plains Indians (Lakota [Teton or Western Sioux] and Northern Cheyenne) led by Sitting Bull. Custer and all the men under his immediate command were slain. There were about 50 known deaths among Sitting Bull’s followers. The was a lot of fighting between both sides before the war -
The Dawes Act
The main goals of the Dawes Act were the allotment of land, vocational training, education, and the divine intervention. Each Native American family head was given 320 acres of grazing land or 160 acres of farmland. If they were single, they were given 80 acres. -
The Wounded Knee Massacre
December 29, 1890), the slaughter of approximately 150–300 Lakota Indians by United States Army troops in the area of Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota. The massacre was the climax of the U.S. Army’s late 19th-century efforts to repress the Plains Indians. It broke any organized resistance to reservation life and assimilation to white American culture, although American Indian activists renewed public attention to the massacre during a 1973 occupation of the site.