Primary sources of Westward Expansion
Author
Author
Description
Since the beginning of exploration, people have searched for easier ways to navigate between waterways and oceans to bolster trade. The Panama Canal demonstrates how innovation, advanced engineering, hard work, and great personal cost resulted in one of modern history's most critical trade routes. This book includes information about the explorers and inventors behind the project, the goods and services traded, and the ways the canal is used today....
Author
Description
People today refer to the Midwestern and prairie states as flyover country. During the Civil War, crossing those areas was the biggest obstacle in uniting the East and West Coasts of our divided nation. An act of Congress in 1862 authorized the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific railroad companies to build a railroad that would link the coasts. Seven years later, on May 10, 1869, an overwhelmingly immigrant labor force completed the task when a...
Author
Publisher
Cavendish Square Publishing
Pub. Date
[2018]
Language
English
Description
California became a territory in the United States when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848. That treaty ended the Mexican War. Several days before its signing, gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in what is now Sacramento. The non-Native population of the territory was less than one thousand in 1848, but the gold rush increased that number to one hundred thousand by the end of 1849. The gold rush not only made many people wealthy,...
Author
Publisher
Cavendish Square Publishing
Pub. Date
[2018]
Language
English
Description
The Homestead Act was passed in 1862, when states that had seceded from the Union could no longer block it in congress. The act opened land in the west for all Americans, including freed slaves, granting 160 acres to settlers under the condition that they farm it for five years. The result was that 1.6 million claims, covering 420,000 square miles, were granted, making residents of millions of people in the land west of the Mississippi River.
Author
Publisher
Cavendish Square Publishing
Pub. Date
[2018]
Language
English
Description
Manifest Destiny the name given in the 1840s to a belief that the coast-to-coast expansion of the United States was both inevitable and justified, regardless of the means. Standing in the way were not only the native populations, but also the descendants of Spanish settlers who had lived in the Southwest for centuries. The racist belief that white men rightfully should expand their institutions into the area brought the United States into conflict...
Author
Publisher
Cavendish Square Publishing
Pub. Date
[2018]
Language
English
Description
The United States grew rapidly from the time of the Louisiana Purchase to the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. All of this expansion came at the expense of Native American populations that had either lived in the region for centuries or been forced there from ancestral homes in the East. Tribes memorably fought on their own and together in an doomed effort to retain the land and a lifestyle that had long sustained their families. This book...