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Aug 16, 2016 · How has the history of the American West been rewritten and reimagined by historians and artists? Explore the challenges to the myth of manifest destiny and the frontier thesis, and the new interpretations of the environmental and human costs of westward expansion.
- Manifest Destiny
- Westward Expansion and Slavery
- Westward Expansion and The Mexican War
- Westward Expansion and The Compromise of 1850
- Bleeding Kansas
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By 1840, nearly 7 million Americans–40 percent of the nation’s population–lived in the trans-Appalachian West. Following a trail blazed by Lewis and Clark, most of these people had left their homes in the East in search of economic opportunity. Like Thomas Jefferson, many of these pioneers associated westward migration, land ownership and farming w...
Meanwhile, the question of whether or not slavery would be allowed in the new western states shadowed every conversation about the frontier. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise had attempted to resolve this question: It had admitted Missouri to the union as a slave state and Maine as a free state, preserving the fragile balance in Congress. More impor...
Despite this sectional conflict, Americans kept on migrating West in the years after the Missouri Compromise was adopted. Thousands of people crossed the Rockies to the Oregon Territory, which belonged to Great Britain, and thousands more moved into the Mexican territories of California, New Mexico and Texas. In 1837, American settlers in Texas joi...
In 1848, the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War and added more than 1 million square miles, an area larger than the Louisiana Purchase, to the United States. The acquisition of this land re-opened the question that the Missouri Compromise had ostensibly settled: What would be the status of slavery in new American territories? After t...
But the larger question remained unanswered. In 1854, Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas proposed that two new states, Kansas and Nebraska, be established in the Louisiana Purchase west of Iowaand Missouri. According to the terms of the Missouri Compromise, both new states would prohibit slavery because both were north of the 36º30’ parallel. Howe...
Learn about the 19th-century American movement westward, from the Louisiana Purchase to the Mexican War, and its impact on slavery, politics and culture. Explore the timeline, events and facts of westward expansion and its challenges.
The American West, 1865-1900 [Cattle, horses, and people at the fair with stables in the background] Popular Graphic Arts. The completion of the railroads to the West following the Civil War opened up vast areas of the region to settlement and economic development. White settlers from the East poured across the Mississippi to mine, farm, and ranch.
The American frontier, also known as the Old West, and popularly known as the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last few ...
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This was the highest number of migrants to make the journey west in one year so far and became known as the Great Migration. 27th June 1844. Joseph Smith Killed. Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion, and his brother Hyrum were shot and killed while imprisoned for destroying a printing press. July 1845.
1882 hand-colored map depicting the western half of the continental United States. This timeline of the American Old West is a chronologically ordered list of events significant to the development of the American West as a region of the continental United States. The term "American Old West" refers to a vast geographical area and lengthy time ...
Sep 19, 1996 · The West is in fact as varied as America itself. Indeed, to enlarge on Wallace Stegner’s singular phrase, the West is America, only more so. Lavishly illustrated and based on the finest scholarship, The Oxford History of the American West is the first comprehensive study to do full justice to the rich complexity of this region.
