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Westward Expansion
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Northwest Ordinance of 1787
The Northwest Ordinance (formally An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio, and also known as the Freedom Ordinance or The Ordinance of 1787) was an act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States (the Confederation Congress) -
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase (1803) was a land deal between the United States and France, in which the U.S. acquired approximately 827,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million. -
Lewis & Clark
Lewis and Clark did all three things, but Thomas Jefferson said "the object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river and such principal stream of it, as, by it's course and communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, may offer the most direct and practicable water communication -
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict, lasting for two and a half years, fought by the United States of America against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, its North American colonies and its Native American allies -
Flordia from Spain
The colonies of East Florida and West Florida remained loyal to the British during the war for American independence, but by the Treaty of Paris in 1783 they returned to Spanish control. After 1783, Americans immigrants moved into West Florida. -
Eerie Canal
The Erie Canal is a canal in New York that originally ran about 363 miles from Albany, on the Hudson River to Buffalo, at Lake Erie. It was built to create a navigable water route from New York City and the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes -
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was an effort by Congress to defuse the sectional and political rivalries triggered by the request of Missouri late in 1819 for admission as a state in which slavery would be permitted. At the time, the United States contained twenty-two states, evenly divided between slave and free. -
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 southern Indian tribes for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for their ancestral homelands. -
Trail Of Tears
Image result for the 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
In the Proximity of Texas John Tyler was the 10th American President who served in office from April 4, 1841 to March 4, 1845. One of the important events during his presidency was the Annexation of Texas. -
Mormon Movement
On this day in 1846, Young abandoned Nauvoo and began leading 1,600 Mormons west across the frozen Mississippi in subzero temperatures to a temporary refuge at Sugar Grove, Iowa. Young planned to make the westward trek in stages, and he determined the first major stopping point would be along the Missouri River opposite Council Bluffs. He sent out a reconnaissance team to plan the route across Iowa, dig wells at camping spots, and in some cases, plant corn to provide food for the hungry emigrant -
Cali Gold Rush
Many people in California figured gold was there, but it was James W. Marshall on January 24, 1848, who saw something shiny in Sutter Creek near Coloma, California. He had discovered gold unexpectedly while overseeing construction of a sawmill on the American River. -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo in Spanish), officially entitled the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits and Settlement between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic is the peace treaty signed on February 2, 1848, in the Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo (now a neighborhood of Mexico City) between the United States and Mexico that ended the Mexican–American War (1846–48) -
Oregon Territory
The Territory of Oregon was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from August 14, 1848, until February 14, 1859, when the southwestern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Oregon -
Gadsden Purchase
The Gadsden Purchase (known as Venta de La Mesilla or Sale of La Mesilla, in Mexico) 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 -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´. -
Homestead Act
Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, the Homestead Act encouraged Western migration by providing settlers 160 acres of public land. In exchange, homesteaders paid a small filing fee and were required to complete five years of continuous residence before receiving ownership of the land. -
Transcontinental Railroad
The First Transcontinental Railroad was a 1,907-mile contiguous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 across the western United States to connect the Pacific coast at San Francisco Bay with the existing Eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa, on the Missouri River -
The Dawes Act
The Dawes Act of 1887 (also known as the General Allotment Act or the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887), 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. -
Spanish & American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, the result of U.S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence.
