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Period: to
Westward expansion
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Northwest Ordinance of 1787
The Northwest Ordinance was an act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States. The ordinance created the Northwest Territory, the first organized territory of the United States, from lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains. -
Lousisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the Louisiana territory by the United States from France. -
Lewis and Clark Expedition
A journey made by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, to explore the American Northwest, newly purchased from France, and some territories beyond. -
War of 1812
America's ideas of manifest destiny eventually caused them to move into the northwest and have the desire to annex Canada, which was inhabited by France. Whether or nor America's want to annex Canada brought on the war of 1812 is debatable, considering there are many different reasons for the war. -
Eerie Canal
The Erie Canal is a canal in New York that originally ran about 363 miles from Albany, New York, on the Hudson River to Buffalo, New York, at Lake Erie. It was built to create a navigable water route from New York City and the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. -
Purchase of Florida from Spain
In 1819, settlers in West Florida rebelled against the Spanish Government declaring independence from Spain. President James Madison and Congress used the incident to claim the region, knowing that the Spanish government was seriously weakened by Napoleon’s invasion of Spain. The United States asserted that the portion of West Florida from the Mississippi to the Perdido rivers was part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. -
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was a federal statute in the US that regulated slavery in the country's western territories. The compromise was agreed to by the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States Congress and passed as a law in 1820. -
Indian Removal Act
The Indian Removal Act was passed by Congress on May 28, 1830, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. The law authorized the president to negotiate with Indian tribes in the Southern United States for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for their ancestral homelands. -
Trail of tears
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. -
Annexation of Texas
The Texas annexation was the 1845 incorporation into the United States of America of the Republic of Texas, which was admitted to the Union as the 28th state. -
Mormon Movement
The Mormons started their movement into the West in 1846 due to their persecutions in Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois, for their strong religious beliefs. The West was mostly unsettled and free from those who opposed polygamy, so they could freely practice their religion without being punished and ridiculed from everyone around them, and they wanted a land where they could start their own Mormon society. -
California Gold Rush
The discovery of gold in the Sacramento Valley sparked the Gold Rush, arguably one of the most significant events to shape American history during the first half of the 19th century. As news if the discovery spread across the country, thousands o gold miners traveled by sea or land to San Francisco and the surrounding area -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in the Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo which is now a neighborhood of Mexico City, is the peace treaty signed between the United States and Mexico that ended the Mexican–American War. -
Oregon Territory
The Territory of Oregon was an incorporated territory of the United States that existed from August 14, 1848, until February 14, 1859, when a portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Oregon. -
Gadsden Purchase
The Gadsden Purchase was an agreement between the United States and Mexico, finalized in 1854, where the United States payed Mexico $10 million for a 29,670 sq. mile portion of Mexico that later became part of Arizona and New Mexico. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was an 1854 bill that mandated popular sovereignty, allowing settlers of a territory to decide whether slavery would be allowed within a new state’s borders. Proposed by Stephen A. Douglas, the bill overrided the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory. -
Homestead Act
This act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in May 1867. Anyone who had never taken up arms against the U.S. government, including freed slaves and women, was 21 years or older, or the head of a family, could file an application to claim a federal land grant. -
Transcontinental Railroad
A train route across the United States, finished in 1869. It was the project of two railroad companies: the Union Pacific built from the east, and the Central Pacific built from the west. The two lines met in Utah. -
The Dawes Act
The Dawes Act, adopted by Congress in 1887, authorized the President of the United States to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians. Those who accepted allotments and lived separately from the tribe would be granted United States citizenship. -
Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict between Spain and the United States and was the result of U.S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. American attacks on Spain's Pacific possessions led to involvement in the Philippine Revolution and ultimately to the Philippine-American War. After the war, the U.S. gained control of Cuba, the Phillipines, Guam, and Puerto Rico.
