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Many Americans had emigrated from Europe. The original settlements were on the east coasts in 1607. It was named Jamestown and was located in Virginia -
The fighting began on April 19, 1775, followed by the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The Americans were supported by France and Spain, with the conflict taking place in North America, the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean. It ended on September 3, 1783 when Great Britain accepted American independence in the Treaty of Paris.
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The Declaration of Independence , adopted by the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. The Declaration explains why the thirteen colonies at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain considered themselves thirteen independent sovereign states, no longer under British rule. With the Declaration, these new states took the first collective step in forming the USA. The Declaration was signed by 56 of the founding fathers of the United States. -
The Treaty of Paris, signed in Paris by Great Britain and the United States of America on September 3, 1783, officially ended the American Revolutionary War. The treaty set the boundaries between the British Empire in North America and the United States of America. -
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. The purchase doubled the size of the United States -
After the Louisiana Purchase, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Lewis and Clark to map the territory and find a water route to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Clark left St Louis in 1804 and were back in 1806. The expedition lasted 2 years
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In 1805, the Lewis and Clark expedition forged a path to the Pacific, which would allow commerce with the East and provide settlers with maps and valuable information to continue to settle, to expand. -
The Indian Removal Act was signed into law on May 28, 1830 by Andrew Jackson. The act authorized the president to grant Indiantribes unsettled western prairie land in exchange for their desirable territories within state borders , from which the tribes would be removed. -
The Oregon Trail was a roughly 2,000-mile route from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon, which was used by hundreds of thousands of American pioneers in the mid-1800s to emigrate west.
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The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California in a wagon train from the Midwest. Delayed by a multitude of misadventures, they spent the winter of 1846-1847 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Some of the settlers resorted to cannibalism to survive, eating the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation, disease and extreme cold. Only half of the group survived.
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The California Gold Rush was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when James W. Marshall found gold in California. The news of the discovery of gold brought about 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. The sudden increase in population allowed California to quickly achieve statehood at the Compromise of 1850.
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The first person to find gold in California was James Marshall on January 24, 1848 -
Immigration to the United States. The pace of immigration accelerated in the 1840s and 1850s, as people from Europe sought land, freedom, opportunity, and jobs in the United States. -
In West, overland trails were built by pioneers and immigrants throughout between 1829and1870, as an alternative to sea and rail transportation. These immigrants began to settle much of North America west of the Great Plains as part of the massive overland migrations. Settlers emigrating from the eastern US were driven by a variety of motives, including religious persecution and economic incentives, to move to far western destinations via routes such as the Oregon Trail and the California Trail.
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There were 13 British colonies settled in America, but they refused to be governed from the overseas by Great Britain. Between 1775 and 1783, these colonies united against Britain in the American revolutionary war.
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The Homestead Act, passed by during the Civil War in 1862, provided that any adult citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S. government could claim 160 acres of surveyed government land. Claimants were required to “improve” the plot by building a dwelling and cultivating the land. -
North America's first transcontinental railroad was a 1,911-mile non-stop rail line built between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing rail lines from the eastern United States to the Pacific coast.
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The Oregon Trail is graced with “purple mountain majesty” and a red-tinged, blazing sunset in this quintessentially Romantic Landscape of the West. Artist Albert Bierstadt idealized the West by dramatizing its wide-open spaces, rocky ridges, and lush greenery with his adroit use of Luminism. -
This famous 1872 painting by john GAST titled American progress, it symbolizes the expansion of the united states from the Atlantic to the pacific ocean. It portrays settlers moving west, aided by technology, guided and protected by Columbia. This was the perfect illustration of what was happening out west and it clearly shows the idea of Manifest destiny.