westward expansion

(noun)

After achieving independence with the Treaty of Paris, the United States expanded westward, enlarging its borders seven times; with two major border adjustments, one each with colonies of the United Kingdom and Spain. Through other several small disputes, the original thirteen states grew into fifty states, most of which began as incorporated territories.

Related Terms

Examples of westward expansion in the following topics:

  • The Rise of the West

    • Westward expansion was motivated by the Jeffersonian ideal of the yeoman farmer and enabled by technological improvements.
    • Westward expansion was sped by improvements in transportation infrastructure, which carried settlers westward.
    • Westward expansion was given further incentives by improved agricultural technology and better market access.
    • Tecumseh led a Native American coalition that attempted to stop westward expansion of the United States.
    • Discuss the developments that contributed to westward migration from the Atlantic seaboard

  • Conclusion: The Effects of Westward Expansion

    • The United States' militant westward expansion of the 19th century had profound effects on American Indians and contributed to tensions over slavery.
    • After 1800, the United States militantly expanded westward across North America.
    • Polk’s administration (1845-1849) was a period of intensive expansion for the United States.
    • However, this expansion led to debates about the fate of slavery in the West.
    • Summarize how westward expansion changed the United States geographically, demographically, militarilly, and politically

  • The Politics of Expansion

    • Americans asserted the right to colonize vast expanses of North America beyond their country's borders, especially into Oregon, California, and Texas.
    • One problem created with westward expansion was the admission of new states--whether they should be slave or free.
    • Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way by Emanuel Luetze
    • American westward expansion is idealized in Emanuel Leutze's famous painting Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way (1861).
    • Examine the issues that redefined political parties and shaped the discussion around American expansion

  • Political Participation and Party Loyalty

    • As the parties developed distinctive positions on issues such as the modernization of the economy and westward expansion, voters found themselves attracted to one side or the other.
    • The Whigs always opposed expansion, as did the Republicans until 1898.
    • The Democrats, meanwhile, talked of agrarian virtues of the yeoman farmer, westward expansion, and how well rural life comported with Jeffersonian values.

  • Moving West

    • While the private profit motive dominated the movement westward, it was the Federal government that played a supporting role in securing land and maintaining law and order.
    • It subsidized the construction of railroad lines to facilitate westward migration, and finally, it had bureaucracies to manage the land.
    • Indian resistance, sectionalism and racism forced some pauses in the process of westward settlement.

  • Settlement of the New Land

    • The United States began continental expansion immediately after the Constitution of 1789 through war, treaty, land deals, and settlement.
    • In particular, these powers fought over western expansion, running from the Mississippi River to the Pacific.
    • However, with the success of the American Revolution, westward expansion and territorial acquisition of the North American continent became a U.S.
    • The continental expansion of the United States was mostly accomplished through treaty, purchase, or war with southern neighbors over the span of the nineteenth century.
    • Identify key dates in the history of the United States' territorial expansion

  • Civil Rights of Native Americans

    • Historical policies of American expansion have infringed upon the rights of Native Americans and have lead to long-term inequality.
    • Relocating Indian populations to reservations during a period of American expansion is an example of what would today be considered a civil rights violation.
    • During the initial phases of American colonization, European policy generally forced Native Americans westward, where there was a low density of European settlement.
    • In an attempt to confine Native Americans to limited territory, thus clearing the way for westward expansion, the U.S. government created a system of Indian reservations.
    • Reservations were intended to reduce conflict between settlers and Indians without curbing American expansion, but they were controversial and largely unsuccessful from the start.

  • Transportation: Roads, Canals, and Railroads

    • By the mid-nineteenth century, the canal boom was brought to a sudden end by the rapid expansion of railroads.
    • Improved transportation increased the United States' potential to expand its borders westward.
    • While much of the basis for westward expansion was economic, there was also another reason, which was bound up in the American belief that the country, and the American Indian “heathens” who populated it, were destined to come under the civilizing rule of Euro-American settlers and their superior technology, most notably railroads and the telegraph.
    • Land developers, railroad magnates, and other investors capitalized on westward settlement into American Indian land.
    • Railroads came to play a major role in westward expansion in the late nineteenth century.

  • Expansion and the Mexican-American War

    • The steady expansion and rapid population growth of the United States after 1815 contrasted sharply with static European societies, and visitors described the attitude of most Americans as rough, sometimes violent, but optimistic and forward-looking.
    • Westward expansion was mostly undertaken by groups of young families, frontiersmen, and hunters.
    • Americans asserted a right to colonize vast expanses of North America beyond their country's borders, especially into Oregon, California, and Texas.
    • Here Columbia, a personification of the United States, leads civilization westward with American settlers, stringing telegraph wire as she sweeps west; she holds a school book.

  • The Western Lands

    • Following the French and Indian War, the colonial desire to expand westward was met with resistance from American Indians.
    • English, French, Spanish, and Dutch patterns of expansion and settlement differed widely.
    • They did not push westward.