Manifest Destiny Timeline

  • Louisana Purchase

    Louisana Purchase
    A purchase for land between the U.S. and Spain.
  • Clermont Steamboat

    Clermont Steamboat
    Built in 1807, the North River Steamboat operated on the Hudson River (at that time often known as the North River) between New York and Albany.
  • Oregon Trail

    Oregon Trail
    Historic east–west large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon.
  • Tecumseh

    Tecumseh
    Tecumseh was a Native American leader of the Shawnee and a large tribal confederacy (known as Tecumseh's Confederacy) which opposed the United States during Tecumseh's War and became an ally of Britain in the War of 1812.
  • Seminole Wars

    Seminole Wars
    The Seminole Wars, also known as the Florida Wars, were three conflicts in Florida between the Seminole—the collective name given to the amalgamation of various groups of Native Americans and African Americans who settled in Florida in the early 18th century—and the United States Army.
  • Spanish Cession

    Spanish Cession
    The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819,[1] also known as the Transcontinental Treaty,[2] the Florida Purchase Treaty,[3] or the Florida Treaty,[4][5] was a treaty between the United States and Spain in 1819 that ceded Florida to the U.S. and defined the boundary between the U.S. and New Spain. It settled a standing border dispute between the two countries and was considered a triumph of American diplomacy.
  • Santa Fe Trail

    Santa Fe Trail
    To take advantage of new trade opportunities with Mexico which had just won independence from Spain in the Mexican War of Independence.
  • Erie Canal Opens

    Erie Canal Opens
    The Erie Canal was opened by governer Clinton. Work began in August 1823.
  • Trail Of Tears

    Trail Of Tears
    A series of relocations of Native Americans in the United States following the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
  • Indian Removal Act

    Indian Removal Act
    The law authorized the president to negotiate with southern Indian tribes for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for their ancestral homelands.[1][2][3]
  • Prophetstown

    Prophetstown
    Prophetstown was named for Wabokieshiek (White Cloud), the prophet who lived upon the land. Wabokieshiek served as an advisor to Black Hawk and took part in the Black Hawk War. Wabokieshiek and his followers, the Sauk Indians, resided where the current Prophetstown State Park (of Illinois) is now located. They left the land in 1832 as the Black Hawk War ended, when Wabokieshiek was taken captive by the United States. This area is now a state park, but at one time it held a community of 14 villag
  • Treaty of New Echota

    Treaty of New Echota
    The treaty established terms under which the entire Cherokee Nation ceded its territory in the southeast and agreed to move west to the Indian Territory. Although the treaty was not approved by the Cherokee National Council nor signed by Principal Chief John Ross, it was amended and ratified by the U.S. Senate in March 1836, and became the legal basis for the forcible removal known as the Trail of Tears.
  • The Alamo

    The Alamo
    The Battle of the Alamo (February 23 – March 6, 1836) was a pivotal event in the Texas Revolution. Following a 13-day siege, Mexican troops under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna launched an assault on the Alamo Mission near San Antonio de Béxar (modern-day San Antonio, Texas, United States), killing all of the Texian defenders
  • Jim Bowie

    Jim Bowie
    Jim Bowie was a 19th-century American pioneer, who played a prominent role in the Texas Revolution, culminating in his death at the Battle of the Alamo. Stories of him as a fighter and frontiersman, both real and fictitious, have made him a legendary figure in Texas history and a folk hero of American culture.
  • Texas Statehood

    Texas Statehood
    The recorded History of Texas begins with the arrival of the first Spanish conquistadors in the region now known as Texas in 1519, who found the region populated by numerous Native American tribes. Their ancestors had been there for thousands of years. During the period from 1519 to 1848, all or parts of Texas were claimed by five countries: France, Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States of America—as well as the Confederate States of America in 1861–65.
  • Donner Party

    Donner Party
    The Donner Party (sometimes called the Donner-Reed Party) was a group of American pioneers led by George Donner and James F. Reed who set out for California in a wagon train in May 1846. Delayed by a series of mishaps and mistakes, they spent the winter of 1846–47 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. Some of the pioneers resorted to cannibalism to survive.
  • Oregon Treaty

    Oregon Treaty
    The Oregon Treaty[1] is a treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States that was signed on June 15, 1846, in Washington, D.C. Signed under the presidency of James K. Polk, the treaty brought an end to the Oregon boundary dispute by settling competing American and British claims to the Oregon Country; the area had been jointly occupied by both Britain and the U.S. since the Treaty of 1818.
  • Sutter's Mill

    Sutter's Mill
    James W. Marshall found several flakes of gold and told sutter. The news got arouund and people began moving out to the west.
  • Mexican Cession

    Mexican Cession
    The Mexican Cession of 1848 is a historical name in the United States for the region of the modern day southwestern United States that Mexico ceded to the U.S. in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, but had not been part of the areas east of the Rio Grande which had been claimed by the Republic, though the Texas annexation resolution two years earlier had not specified Texas's southern and western boundary. The Mexican Cession (529,000 sq. miles) was the third largest acquisition of territo
  • Oregon Territory

    Oregon Territory
    The Territory of Oregon was an organized incorporated territory of the United States
  • California Statehood

    California Statehood
    From 1847 to 1850, California had military governors appointed by the senior military commander in California.
  • Gadsden Purchase

    Gadsden Purchase
    The Gadsden Purchase (known in Mexico as Spanish: Venta de La Mesilla, "Sale of La Mesilla"[1]) is a 29,640-square-mile (76,800 km2) region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that was purchased by the United States in a treaty signed on December 30, 1853 by James Gadsden who was the American ambassador to Mexico at that time.
  • American Civil War

    American Civil War
    The American Civil War, widely known in the United States as simply the Civil War as well as other names, was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865 to determine the survival of the Union or independence for the Confederacy. Among the 34 states in January 1861, seven Southern slave states individually declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America.
  • Telegraph

    Telegraph
    The first transcontinental telegraph (completed in 1861) was a line that connected an existing network in the eastern United States to a small network in California by a link between Omaha and Carson City via Salt Lake City. It was a milestone in electrical engineering and in the formation of the United States of America.[1] It served as the only method of near-instantaneous communication between the east and west coasts during the 1860s. In 1841, it had taken 110 days for the news of the death
  • Alaska Purchase

    Alaska Purchase
    Russia wanted to sell its Alaskan territory, fearing that it might be seized if war broke out with Britain. Russia's primary activities in the territory had been fur trade and missionary work among the Native Alaskans. The land added 586,412 square miles (1,518,800 km2) of new territory to the United States.
  • First Transcontinental Railroad

    First Transcontinental Railroad
    The First Transcontinental Railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the "Overland Route") was a 1,907-mile (3,069 km) contiguous railroad line constructed in the United States between 1863 and 1869 west of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers to connect the Pacific coast at San Francisco Bay with the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa.
  • Golden Spike

    Golden Spike
    The golden spike (also known as The Last Spike[1]) is the ceremonial final spike driven by Leland Stanford to join the rails of the First Transcontinental Railroad across the United States connecting the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory.
  • Little Bighorn

    Little Bighorn
    The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to Lakota as the Battle of the Greasy Grass,[1] and commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes, against the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army.
  • Wounded Knee Massacre

    Wounded Knee Massacre
    On the morning of December 29, the troops went into the camp to disarm the Lakota. One version of events claims that during the process of disarming the Lakota, a deaf tribesman named Black Coyote was reluctant to give up his rifle, claiming he had paid a lot for it.[7] A scuffle over the rifle escalated, and a shot was fired which resulted in the 7th Cavalry opening fire indiscriminately from all sides, killing men, women, and children, as well as some of their fellow soldiers.
  • Arizona Statehood

    Arizona Statehood
    Arizona became a state in 1912 but was primarily rural with an economy based on cattle, cotton, citrus and copper. Dramatic growth came after 1945, as retirees who appreciated the warm weather and low costs emigrated from the northeast.