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Westward Expansion

By: History.com Editors

Updated: September 30, 2019 | Original: December 15, 2009

Teamsters Camping For The Night(Original Caption) Westward Movement. Teamsters establishing camp for night. Mid 19th Century wash drawing.

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson purchased the territory of Louisiana from the French government for $15 million. The Louisiana Purchase stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to New Orleans, and it doubled the size of the United States. To Jefferson, westward expansion was the key to the nation’s health: He believed that a republic depended on an independent, virtuous citizenry for its survival, and that independence and virtue went hand in hand with land ownership, especially the ownership of small farms. (“Those who labor in the earth,” he wrote, “are the chosen people of God.”) In order to provide enough land to sustain this ideal population of virtuous yeomen, the United States would have to continue to expand. The westward expansion of the United States is one of the defining themes of 19th-century American history, but it is not just the story of Jefferson’s expanding “empire of liberty.” On the contrary, as one historian writes, in the six decades after the Louisiana Purchase, westward expansion “very nearly destroy[ed] the republic.”

Manifest Destiny

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 with freedom. In Europe, large numbers of factory workers formed a dependent and seemingly permanent working class; by contrast, in the United States, the western frontier offered the possibility of independence and upward mobility for all. In 1843, one thousand pioneers took to the Oregon Trail as part of the “ Great Emigration .”

Did you know? In 1853, the Gadsden Purchase added about 30,000 square miles of Mexican territory to the United States and fixed the boundaries of the “lower 48” where they are today.

In 1845, a journalist named John O’Sullivan put a name to the idea that helped pull many pioneers toward the western frontier. Westward migration was an essential part of the republican project, he argued, and it was Americans’ “ manifest destiny ” to carry the “great experiment of liberty” to the edge of the continent: to “overspread and to possess the whole of the [land] which Providence has given us,” O’Sullivan wrote. The survival of American freedom depended on it.

Westward Expansion and Slavery

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 important, it had stipulated that in the future, slavery would be prohibited north of the southern boundary of Missouri (the 36º30’ parallel) in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase .

However, the Missouri Compromise did not apply to new territories that were not part of the Louisiana Purchase, and so the issue of slavery continued to fester as the nation expanded. The Southern economy grew increasingly dependent on “King Cotton” and the system of forced labor that sustained it. Meanwhile, more and more Northerners came to believed that the expansion of slavery impinged upon their own liberty, both as citizens–the pro-slavery majority in Congress did not seem to represent their interests–and as yeoman farmers. They did not necessarily object to slavery itself, but they resented the way its expansion seemed to interfere with their own economic opportunity.

Westward Expansion and the Mexican War

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 joined with their Tejano neighbors (Texans of Spanish origin) and won independence from Mexico. They petitioned to join the United States as a slave state.

This promised to upset the careful balance that the Missouri Compromise had achieved, and the annexation of Texas and other Mexican territories did not become a political priority until the enthusiastically expansionist cotton planter James K. Polk was elected to the presidency in 1844. Thanks to the maneuvering of Polk and his allies, Texas joined the union as a slave state in February 1846; in June, after negotiations with Great Britain, Oregon joined as a free state.

That same month, Polk declared war against Mexico , claiming (falsely) that the Mexican army had “invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil.” The Mexican-American War proved to be relatively unpopular, in part because many Northerners objected to what they saw as a war to expand the “slaveocracy.” In 1846, Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot attached a proviso to a war-appropriations bill declaring that slavery should not be permitted in any part of the Mexican territory that the U.S. might acquire. Wilmot’s measure failed to pass, but it made explicit once again the sectional conflict that haunted the process of westward expansion.

Westward Expansion and the Compromise of 1850

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 two years of increasingly volatile debate over the issue, Kentucky Senator Henry Clay proposed another compromise. It had four parts: first, California would enter the Union as a free state; second, the status of slavery in the rest of the Mexican territory would be decided by the people who lived there; third, the slave trade (but not slavery) would be abolished in Washington , D.C.; and fourth, a new Fugitive Slave Act would enable Southerners to reclaim runaway slaves who had escaped to Northern states where slavery was not allowed.

Bleeding Kansas

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 Iowa and Missouri. According to the terms of the Missouri Compromise, both new states would prohibit slavery because both were north of the 36º30’ parallel. However, since no Southern legislator would approve a plan that would give more power to “free-soil” Northerners, Douglas came up with a middle ground that he called “popular sovereignty”: letting the settlers of the territories decide for themselves whether their states would be slave or free.

Northerners were outraged: Douglas, in their view, had caved to the demands of the “slaveocracy” at their expense. The battle for Kansas and Nebraska became a battle for the soul of the nation. Emigrants from Northern and Southern states tried to influence the vote. For example, thousands of Missourians flooded into Kansas in 1854 and 1855 to vote (fraudulently) in favor of slavery. “Free-soil” settlers established a rival government, and soon Kansas spiraled into civil war. Hundreds of people died in the fighting that ensued, known as “ Bleeding Kansas .”

A decade later, the civil war in Kansas over the expansion of slavery was followed by a national civil war over the same issue. As Thomas Jefferson had predicted, it was the question of slavery in the West–a place that seemed to be the emblem of American freedom–that proved to be “the knell of the union.”

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History of Westward Expansion Essay

Introduction, unfair idea of the manifest destiny, were there other options, works cited.

Westward expansion was one of the key periods in the history of the United States of America. It meant significant economic and agricultural growth for white people but it was not the only reason for the expansion; the United States was experiencing certain increase in population and it was getting harder for people to find a job with a decent salary. Thus, moving to the West became a dream for the most ambitious Americans and their desire to achieve it was stronger than any difficulties that frontiersmen were facing. Due to that ambitiousness, the westward expansion was hard to be called a slow process. What is more, not all Americans saw expansion as an advancement. “As Americans poured West, expansion became a source of national political controversy” (Oakes et al. 370).

Manifest destiny was a very popular belief in the 19 th century; according to that, it was an essential destiny of the people from the United States to settle both developed and undeveloped areas of North America. The idea could not be called fair or at least fact-based; according to the manifest destiny, the westward expansion was seen as a naturally determined process conforming both state and moral law. Manifest destiny involved the idea of special virtues and mission of the colonists and it definitely was a powerful weapon of the government.

With help of this idea, it was able to make people believe in a natural necessity of the United States to expand its boundaries. Supporters of the westward expansion believed it to be able to “strengthen it [the country], providing unlimited economic opportunities for future generations” (Haynes par. 4). Moreover, expansionists also used a religion as an instrument as the right to colonize other territories was believed to be given to Americans by God (Oakes et al. 362). When all is said and done, the manifest destiny does not seem to be reasonable as we know what it means to state a superiority of a particular nation over other ones.

Manifest destiny was proclaiming Americans to be God’s favored people who had to perform their mission by means of expansion. In spite of other opinions on the rights and mission of the United States, this idea was successfully incorporated into the vision of the common goal for all Americans. If the United States had not conducted its policy in accordance with the manifest destiny, it might have experienced a certain economic decline caused by a resource scarcity; a swell in population might have yielded to heavy mortality due to the increased fights for the limited resources and the spate of criminal activities caused by high unemployment.

The discussed historical period could be characterized by strong opposition of the colonialists, Mexicans and Native Americans. Thus, it would be interesting for many people to know if there was a way to prevent the conflict, or it was absolutely inevitable. As for the armed conflict between Mexico and the United States, it was caused by strong turf battle after the annexation of Texas that took place in 1845. The conflict was hard to prevent as both aggrieved parties believed to possess priority of territorial supremacy and they saw no solution of the conflict but war. As for the conflict between colonialists and Native Americans, it was likely to be inevitable as the policy of the US government was conducted in accordance with the manifest destiny that supposed invasion to be feasible for performing the mission of the United States.

To conclude, the idea of manifest destiny has played an important role in preparing the country for the westward expansion. As for the latter, it was the way to avoid possible economic decline of the United States and this is why the conflict was inevitable.

Haynes, Sam Walter. Manifest Destiny . PBS. 2006, Web.

Oakes, James, et al. Of the People : A History of the United States , Volume 1: To 1877 . Oxford University Press, 2012.

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IvyPanda. (2020, September 1). History of Westward Expansion. https://ivypanda.com/essays/history-of-westward-expansion/

"History of Westward Expansion." IvyPanda , 1 Sept. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/history-of-westward-expansion/.

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1. IvyPanda . "History of Westward Expansion." September 1, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/history-of-westward-expansion/.

Bibliography

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Home / Essay Samples / History / History of The United States / Westward Expansion

Westward Expansion Essay Examples

Westward expansion as a cause of the civil war.

The American Civil War, a defining moment in U.S. history, was a complex and multifaceted conflict with a range of underlying causes. While slavery is often identified as the primary cause of the war, westward expansion played a significant and intertwined role in escalating tensions...

The Features of Westward Expansion from 1860 to 1890

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Manifest Destiny - as the Careless Attempt to Expand Own Territory

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The Influence of Civil War, Reconstruction and Westward Expansion on America

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The Outcomes of Westward Expansion for the United States

In the early 1800’s, as our young country was still forming its ideals and vision, a great movement westward was born from exploration efforts and a large purchase of land from the French known as the “Louisiana Purchase.” As the boundaries of our country broadened,...

Changes in America During the Westward Expansion

The title of this essay is Westward Expansion. That is the westward expansion of America to be exact. It is common knowledge that when these great states were founded, everything went west from there. In 1860 only the east coast was inhabited by the 13...

antebellum Art and Perspectives on Westward Expansion

In this essay I intend to look at American landscape paintings from artists throughout the Antebellum period to better understand how the American view on westward expansion may have played a role in the attitude many Americans had towards landscape paintings. How the artist’s views...

Westward Expansion: Effects of Manifest Destiny on Native Americans

While most people believe that the idea of Manifest Destiny was primarily beneficial for American citizens, it ultimately did more harm than good, as many conflicts with the land, people, and animals arose with Native Americans. White settlers moving west found that the Native Americans...

The Challenges Posed by the Westward Expansion for the American Society

After the Civil War, many individuals decided to move westward in hopes of better economic opportunities as well as their beliefs in the Manifest Destiny. Prior to the Westward Expansion, many settlers believed that the territory in the west was a wasteland and only fit...

The Importance of the Westward Expansion for the United States

The United States were destined to expand westward since the U.S.A was gaining people and the U.S. needed more land to benefit the U.S. As growing population, The Westward expansion connected the U.S. to the “Great Western Ocean' allowing more trade. According to Senator Lewis...

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About Westward Expansion

Western Territories of the United States

Westward expansion was the the 19th-century movement of settlers into the American West, which began with the Louisiana Purchase and was fueled by the Gold Rush, the Oregon Trail and a belief in "manifest destiny."

In 1893 historian Frederick Jackson Turner declared the frontier closed, citing the 1890 census as evidence, and with that, the period of westward expansion ended.

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