thesis statement on westward expansion

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Westward Expansion

By: History.com Editors

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

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

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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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Westward Expansion

A significant push toward the west coast of North America began in the 1810s. It was intensified by the belief in manifest destiny, federally issued Indian removal acts, and economic promise. Pioneers traveled to Oregon and California using a network of trails leading west. 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.

Explore these resources to learn more about what happened between 1810 and 1893, as immigrants, American Indians, United States citizens, and freed slaves moved west.

National Geographic Education Blog

Bring the spirit of exploration to your classroom.

What is Westward Expansion?

During the 19th Century, more than 1.6 million square kilometers (a million square miles) of land west of the Mississippi River was acquired by the United States federal government. This led to a widespread migration west, referred to as Westward Expansion.

A variety of factors contributed to Westward Expansion, including population growth and economic opportunities on what was presented to be available land.

Manifest Destiny was the belief that it was settlers’ God-given duty and right to settle the North American continent. The notion of Manifest Destiny contributed to why European settlers felt they had a right to claim land, both inhabited and uninhabited, in western North America. They believed it was the white man’s destiny to prosper and spread Christianity by claiming and controlling land.

Manifest Destiny was used to validate the Indian Removal Acts , which occurred in the 1830s. Such legislation forced the removal of Native Americans and helped clear the way for non-native settlers to claim land in the west. When the settlers reached land populated or previously promised to Native Americans, they had no qualms claiming it for their own benefit.

It was not just spiritual prosperity that inspired settlers—outright moneymaking opportunities also motivated Westward Expansion.

Throughout most of the 19th century, there were two main ways to make money west of the Mississippi River: through gold and silver prospecting, and through developing land for agriculture, industry, or urban growth. These two activities often supported each other. In California, for instance, the actuality of “ striking it rich ” was quite short-lived, although immigrants continued to populate the new state and contribute to its agricultural and economic growth well after gold fields were discovered there in 1848.

The idea of “free land” was fairly short-lived as well. By 1890, the U.S. Census reported that there were so many permanent settlements west of the Mississippi that a western “frontier” no longer existed in the United States.

This declaration inspired a young historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, to write his famous “Frontier Thesis.” Turner claimed the “close of the frontier” was symbolic. He  asserted that Westward Expansion was the most defining characteristic of American identity to date. With the close of the frontier, he thought, America was that much more “American”—liberated from European customs and attitudes surrounding social class, intellectual culture, and violence.

Many historians criticize the Frontier Thesis, and many reject the idea of an American “frontier” (which Turner described as “the meeting point between savagery and civilization”) entirely. These historians recognize that the “free land” that defined Westward Expansion came at a severe cost to Native American and Spanish-speaking populations, as well as more recent immigrants from Asia (who migrated east, across the Pacific). The Frontier Thesis ignores the development and evolution of these identities almost entirely.

To delve deeper into this complex period of American history, check out our curated resource collection page  on Westward Expansion  at the National Geographic Resource Library .

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Westward Expansion and the American Civil War

by Gina Halabi

Slavery in the Western Territories

To many nineteenth-century Americans, the expansion of slavery into western territories caused a great deal of controversy. Since the drafting of the Constitution in 1787, the North and the South had grown further apart in terms of economy, ideology, and society. The North, especially, was afraid that the South would force its “peculiar institution” upon the entire Union. 1 These fears were realized when the expansion of slavery into western territories entered Congressional debates. The federal government, hoping to prevent a civil war, temporarily resolved the issue with compromises. As the compromises appeared to become more one-sided, however, sectional divides between the North and South became more pronounced.

• Watch Edward L. Ayers on the Civil War from The Gilder Lehrman Institute

The Sectional Divide between the North and the South

While the South utilized slavery to sustain its culture and grow cotton on plantations, the North prospered during the Industrial Revolution. Northern cities, the center of industry in the United States, became major metropolises due to an influx of immigrants. With this willing and cheap workforce, the North did not require a slave system. Although some northerners found the institution of slavery morally reprehensible, most did not believe in complete racial equality either. 2 Slavery became even more divisive when it threatened to expand westward because non-slaveholding white settlers did not want to compete with slaveholders in the new territories.

First Steps Towards Controlling Slavery and Westward Expansion

Politicians were forced to deal with the issue of slavery and its westward expansion as early as the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The States had previously maintained a shaky balance in the Senate with an equal number of representatives from both Slave and Free States. As Missouri prepared to enter the Union as a Slave State, this tentative balance threatened to come undone. Henry Clay of Kentucky temporarily solved the issue by crafting the Missouri Compromise, bringing Missouri into the Union as a Slave State and, as a balance, Maine entered as a Free State. The Compromise also made future bondage illegal in all areas of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36°30′ parallel with the exception of Missouri; all future states below this line would become Slave States. 3  This Compromise solved the immediate problem of slavery in the Louisiana Purchase by sweeping the real issue of slavery under the rug in order to placate both northern and southern politicians. In the years to come, politicians of both northern and southern states would not be so quick so compromise.

Conquests from Mexico

When the United States entered into a war with Mexico over Texas and its western territories, the issue of extending slavery in the west resurfaced in Congress. Representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania first introduced a potential solution to the problem in 1846. His proposed amendment stated:

“… the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico by the United States, by virtue of any treaty which may be negotiated between them, and to the use by the Executive of the moneys herein appropriated, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party shall first be duly convicted.” 4

Wilmot’s proviso suggested that slavery should be prohibited in any territories acquired from Mexico. This would encourage white farmers to move west and implied that slavery was not an institution that should stretch far beyond its borders. Fearful of the southern “Slave Power” in Congress, many northern politicians quickly backed Wilmot’s amendment. 5 Meanwhile, southern politicians railed that such an act was unconstitutional and vehemently blocked the passage of the Wilmot Proviso. 6  As a result, it never passed and the issue of slavery in westward territories remained a topic of heated debate.

Territories Becoming States

Congress was forced to revisit this issue yet again when California petitioned for statehood in 1849. Because California appeared to have anti-slavery inclinations, southern democrats were reluctant to let it enter the Union and disrupt the sectional balance in Congress. The resulting Compromise of 1850 was supposed to ensure that the interests of both sides remained intact. For the North, the Compromise guaranteed that California would enter the Union as a Free State and the slave trade would end in the District of Columbia. For the South, the Compromise promised that popular sovereignty would decide the question of slavery in the Utah and New Mexico territories. Furthermore, the Compromise reshaped the existing Fugitive Slave Act and required northerners to help capture runaway slaves. 7  This Act enraged the people of the North as it was a direct violation of their state laws and many argued that the “people of the free states are made [plantation owners’] constables and slave-catchers, bound as ‘good citizens’ to engage in a business at which their humanity must revolt…” 8

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Just four years later in 1854, new statehood controversies arose and forced the issue of slavery back into Congress. Kansas and Nebraska were both large territories petitioning for statehood. However, southerners opposed their admittance because the Missouri Compromise mandated that these two territories would enter as Free states. To satisfy southern states already threatening session, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. 9  This new act repealed the Missouri Compromise; instead, the people living in Kansas and Nebraska would vote to determine the fate of the states. 10  When voters from nearby Missouri snuck into Kansas in order to vote to make the territory a slave state, tensions between the two sides exploded. War broke out in Kansas between pro-slavery sympathizers and abolitionists, earning it the nickname “bleeding Kansas.” 11  The violence in the west would soon spread east.

Check out this clip which highlights the escalating violence between the north and south on the issue of westward expansion:

The Beginnings of the Civil War

The fighting in Kansas foreshadowed the great fighting that would take place just six years later. The compromises of the early nineteenth century did not settle the issue of slavery and westward expansion. Instead, they suppressed the issue and acted as temporary salves. However, as the compromises appeared to benefit Slave States more often than they did Free States, sectional antagonisms between the North and the South were becoming more distinct. Ultimately, negotiations unraveled and a bloody Civil War erupted.

• Listen to James Oakes: Emancipation and the Question of Agency  from The Gilder Lehrman Institute

This article helps answer “What role did western expansion play in the Civil War?” Themes: causes of the Civil War, the Civil War and Western Expansion, slavery, slavery and western expansion, Wilmot’s Proviso, Antebellum America, Bleeding Kansas, Civil War, Western Expansion, The West, the American West, African American history, economic history

Westward Expansion and the Quest to Conserve

Written by: mark thomas, university of virginia, by the end of this section, you will:.

• Compare attitudes toward the use of natural resources from 1890 to 1945

Suggested Sequencing

Use this Narrative after the Chapter 10 Introductory Essay: 1898-1919 to allow students to learn more about the American conservation movement and the steps its leaders took to preserve the natural environment.

The United States in the nineteenth century was characterized by abundance, notably of land and natural resources. Perhaps the most important resource for the expansion of the industrial sector of the American economy was timber. Trees not only covered much of the land and were ripe for harvesting, they also needed to be cut down if agriculture, the dominant sector of the economy, were to produce enough food to sustain the rapidly growing population. Timber was used to build houses and provide furniture and heating for residents; to erect factories and fuel machines; to construct ships to carry cotton (and, after 1870, wheat) across the Atlantic; to build canal barges for carrying produce from the Midwest to Atlantic seaports and imported goods from the seaports to the Midwest; to provide the sleepers on which the iron tracks for railroads rested; and to supply power for the locomotives that rode on the tracks. Gradually, as the cost of shipping goods around the country diminished because the limitations of distance were overcome, other natural resources became more important, most notably, coal, petroleum, and ores of iron, copper, and other minerals. Land was no longer simply being cleared of old-growth forests but was increasingly mined for materials needed by industry. However, sound environmental management was not always a concern, and eventually, there was a price to pay for scarring the land.

Throughout this period of continental expansion, the U.S. government pursued policies that promoted westward expansion and continental settlement. This was a matter not simply of negotiating the transfer of land from France (the Louisiana Purchase in 1803), Spain (the Florida/Adams-Onís Treaty in 1819), and Mexico (the Gadsden Treaty of 1853 for present-day Arizona and New Mexico). It also meant establishing a process by which these new territories should be settled. The governing authority to do so was established a century before by the Northwest Ordinances (1785, 1787), which provided for the systematic survey and sale of land west of the Appalachians.

As the spread of railroads accelerated the process of continental settlement and the potential for future economic opportunities, federal land policies became more generous. The turning point was the Homestead Act of 1862, which carved western lands into parcels of 640 acres and sold them to settlers for a token payment. Later, legislation followed, such as the Timber Culture Act (1873) and the Desert Land Act (1877), each designed to promote rapid transfer of federal land into private hands to boost economic expansion through the use of natural resources.

This map of the United States shows America’s expansion up to 1853.

But the tide was already turning, as attitudes toward the rapid and seemingly unstoppable consumption of natural resources began to change. The Transcontinental Railroad had been completed in 1869, permanently linking the East and West Coasts of the United States and allowing continuous movement of goods and people across the continent. Not only were the lines of communication and transportation complete but the settlement of the continental United States seemed close to completion as well. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner gave voice to this idea with his address on the significance of the frontier in American history, delivered to the American Historical Association in 1890. With the closing of the frontier came fears that the fundamental character of the American people would change, because it had been shaped by that frontier. Moreover, the belief that America was blessed with a near-infinite abundance of resources was under challenge.

A number of intellectual movements shaped the last decades of the nineteenth century and entered the mainstream of American intellectual and social thought in the first decades of the twentieth. The first was the idea of efficiency. Manufacturers hoping to drive down production costs embraced efficiency by reducing their consumption of resources, whose prices were rising as demand caught up with supply. Efficiency later also became the watchword of Progressivism, which sought to order an increasingly complex and chaotic world by using scientific measurement and the policy insights of experts. Scientific management and national efficiency were key elements of this movement; legislation to curb the perceived excesses of urban industrial life was among its products. Another intersection between Progressivism and the perceived closing of the frontier was the growing belief that not only was the innocence of American economic life being sullied by modernization, technology, urbanization, and the inexorable rise of big business but so was the innocence and purity of the American environment.

The settlement of the West had unleashed creative energies and an entrepreneurial spirit, and it contributed to economic, social, and geographic mobility. But as faith in abundance was increasingly replaced by an awareness of limits and fear of overuse, a budding environmental movement found itself split between those who believed in scientific management to conserve the environment for sustainable future use and those who wanted to preserve it untouched.

There were, in effect, two strands in the movement toward conserving the environment. One was represented by John Muir, a disciple of transcendentalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson and advocate for the preservation of wilderness areas before their wholesale destruction by human settlement and intensive logging. Muir was a pioneering environmentalist who became a highly influential figure through the publication of numerous books and articles on the flora, fauna, and beauty of wilderness areas, especially in the western states. He is perhaps best remembered for his roles in the creation of Yosemite National Park in 1890 and the establishment in 1892 of the Sierra Club, which remains a major force in the conservation movement today. Muir did not found the environmental movement in the United States; George Perkins Marsh, a diplomat deeply interested in conservation, had delivered a speech opposing deforestation as early as 1849 and published Man and Nature , considered the most significant early work in the conservation movement, in 1864. Nor did Muir begin the national park movement; the first national park, Yellowstone, was dedicated in 1872. But he did become the movement’s most famous advocate.

This 1906 photograph shows Theodore Roosevelt (left) and John Muir (right) on Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park, with Yosemite Valley in the background.

The other strand of the environmental movement was personified by Gifford Pinchot, the first head of the U.S. Forestry Service, who argued for scientific conservation. This was the purposeful, structured harvesting of forest resources, designed simultaneously to minimize waste and damage to western forests from industrial demands and maximize the potential for future harvesting to support continued economic expansion. Pinchot recommended not the end of logging but rather the efficient use of resources. He wanted to reduce waste by private enterprise on government-owned land and ensure the availability of lumber for the needs of industry. Order, not chaos, was his prevailing philosophy.

Both these strands of thought were reflected in the actions of Theodore Roosevelt, an instinctual preservationist and a pragmatic conservationist who was the political embodiment of the conservation movement. With his friend, fellow hunter and outdoor enthusiast George Bird Grinnell, Roosevelt founded the Boone and Crockett Club in 1887, which later became his brain trust on how to balance the interests of the natural environment with the demands of a modern American economy. Roosevelt was acutely aware of the combination of circumstances that made a solution so urgent. He also understood that the West represented the last frontier of American expansion, and that the tensions between nature and modernization would be fought on land that was under the federal government’s control. He saw it as a national problem that could be solved only by the national government.

Roosevelt was by no means the first U.S. president to take steps to protect the environment. In 1891, Congress had repealed the Timber Culture Act, replacing it with the Forest Reserve Act, which gave the federal government the power to create forest reserves on some 50 million acres of federal land that were set aside over the next decade. But it was Roosevelt, through a combination of publicity and policy, who became known as the conservation president. His actions added an additional 230 million acres to protected terrain in the form of forest reserves, national parks, and game and bird reserves. Much of this was done by presidential edict through executive order, but Congress added to the powers of the presidency by passing the Newlands Reclamation Act in 1902, which laid down the basis for irrigation of arid western lands that has shaped the geography of the region over the past century.

Congress and the president joined forces in 1905 to create the U.S. Forest Service. Pinchot was appointed the first head of the agency, with extensive powers to shape conservation policy. But his proposal to extend the precepts of scientifically managed conservation to the national parks angered preservationists such as Muir, who sought protection of wilderness areas.

The rapid expansion of national forests (121 were established during Roosevelt’s presidency, mostly by executive order) created tensions between the president and Congress, especially among representatives from the western states who thought the policy had gone too far too quickly. In 1907, to restrain Roosevelt’s use of presidential power, Congress passed legislation that prevented the establishment of new national forests by executive order. In the same year, the Denver Public Lands Convention, set up by the governor of Colorado and attended mostly by representatives of western ranching and mining interests, called for a moratorium or halt on the setting aside of national forests and national parks, because they wanted to use the land’s natural resources.

Gifford Pinchot, pictured here in 1909, was the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service and an advocate for scientific conservation.

In the end, neither vision of environmentalism prevailed over the other. Congress continued to create national parks and national forests. Roosevelt left the presidency in 1909 and Pinchot was fired from the Forestry Service in 1910 after a political spat with the secretary of the Interior, but both men continued their advocacy of conservation policies as private individuals and both remained influential. (Pinchot became a two-term governor of Pennsylvania in the 1920s and 1930s, pursuing progressive policies including unemployment relief and public works programs.) But the Golden Era of conservation had passed, and the ideas that had fostered it were eclipsed by more the immediate issues of war, prosperity, and depression. It was not until the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 that a new wave of environmentalism began, stimulated by industrialism’s impact not just on the well-being of wilderness areas but on the health and welfare of the American people.

Review Questions

1. A systematic process for the survey and sale of western lands and the orderly admission of new states into the Union was established by the

• Northwest Ordinance
• Missouri Compromise
• Compromise of 1850
• Homestead Act of 1862

2. The goal of federal land policy before the late nineteenth century was

• protecting natural resources
• establishing a national park system
• nationalizing the timber and mining industries
• fostering economic expansion by increasing private ownership of land

3. The conservation movement of the early twentieth century echoed the progressive movement’s emphasis on

• increasing efficiency and scientific management
• expanding the American western frontier
• decreasing immigration to the United States
• increasing the power of the rural western states

4. Efficient use of the environment and its resources through government regulation is best represented by the ideas of

• logging and mining interests
• the Sierra Club
• Gifford Pinchot

5. Actions taken by the U.S. government to protect the environment before the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt included all the following except

• the establishment of federal forest reserves
• the creation of the U.S. Forest Service
• the establishment of Yosemite National Park in California
• the creation of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

6. Theodore Roosevelt became known as the conservation president largely because

• he was the first president to support actions to protect the environment
• he undertook environmental policy initiatives that generated publicity
• he had unlimited congressional support for his environmental policies
• he united ranching and mining interests in support of federal environmental policies

Free Response Questions

• Explain why the environmental movement developed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
• Explain how Theodore Roosevelt’s actions reflected the environmental ideas of both John Muir and Gifford Pinchot.

AP Practice Questions

“Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. . . . Moreover, I believe that the natural resources must be used for the benefit of all our people, and not monopolized for the benefit of the few . . . Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation. Let me add that the health and vitality of our people are at least as well worth conserving as their forests, waters, lands, and minerals, and in this great work the national government must bear a most important part.”

Theodore Roosevelt, “New Nationalism Speech,” August 31, 1910 (A speech delivered at the dedication of the John Brown Memorial Park in Osawatomie, Kansas)

1. Which of the following developments represented a continuation of the sentiments in the excerpt?

• Support for laissez-faire economic policies
• Expansion of mechanized farming on the Great Plains during the 1920s and 1930s
• Development of post-World War II suburbs
• Restrictions on pesticide use after the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring

2. This excerpt most directly reflected a growing belief that

• the United States was transitioning to an urban, industrial economy
• greater government action was needed to counter problems with economic development
• presidential leadership was superior to congressional action
• the growth of popular culture led to uniformity of public opinion

3. This excerpt was most directly shaped by

• creation of the National Park System during the Progressive Era
• the popularity of the Populist Party
• the Great Migration
• tensions between preservationists and conservationists

Primary Sources

Muir, John. Our National Parks .

Muir, John. The Mountains of California .

Muir, John. Wilderness Essays .

Pinchot, Gifford. Breaking New Ground .

Pinchot, Gifford. The Fight for Conservation .

Roosevelt, Theodore. African Game Trails .

Roosevelt, Theodore. Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail .

Roosevelt, Theodore. The Winning of the West .

Suggested Resources

Brinkley, Douglas. The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America . New York: Harper Collins, 2009.

Hays, Samuel P. Conservation and The Gospel Of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 . Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999.

Worster, Donald. A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Related Content

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

In our resource history is presented through a series of narratives, primary sources, and point-counterpoint debates that invites students to participate in the ongoing conversation about the American experiment.

How Did an Expanding Frontier Shape American Culture?

During the summer of 1893, a young historian presented a paper to the American Historical Society on the site of the World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair. Frederick Jackson Turner’s essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” pointedly noted an announcement by the Census Bureau in 1890 that a western frontier as such no longer existed in the United States, since the entire continent had now been settled. Turner went on to explore what the fact of an expanding frontier had meant in the first century of the republic’s development, drawing large conclusions about the frontier’s effect in shaping a distinctly American individualism. Turner argued that the virtually free land of the west had provided opportunity and diffused social discontent; that in traveling west, Americans had shed many European cultural traits and shaped new ones, partly borrowed from native Americans;  and that the necessary self-sufficiency of westward-moving settlers inclined them to devalue central governmental authority. He left open the question of how the nation would adapt to the closing of this frontier.

Turner’s essay—published in the Report of the American Historical Association for 1893 and later incorporated in his 1920 book, the Frontier in American History —profoundly influenced American historiography in the early 20 th century.  Many of Turner’s claims are currently disputed (for example, his claim that the long struggle to resolve the problem of slavery did less to shape the nation than did the frontier). Nevertheless, the essay still provides an informative summary of the process of western settlement, while raising interesting questions about American self-understanding.

It is interesting to compare Turner’s retrospective view of westward expansion with the prospective view of Jefferson, an early and active proponent of western settlement. In 1783, two decades before pushing through the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson had broached the idea of an exploratory party into the west with George Rogers Clark. He would eventually recruit Clark’s younger brother William to make the trek with Meriwether Lewis, secretly requesting funding from Congress for the expedition in January 1803–three months before he would learn that the ambassadors he had sent to France (James Monroe and Robert Livingston) had been able to negotiate purchase of the entire Louisiana territory.

Seeing in America “an immensity of land courting the industry of the husbandman,” Jefferson rejoiced in Query 19 of Notes on the State of Virginia that the majority of American citizens could live for generations as small yeoman farmers, not as artisans crowded into cities. Jefferson thought the “manners and spirit” of the small farmer best suited to “preserve a republic in vigour.” The speed with which the continent was peopled surely would have surprised him. But Jefferson correctly anticipated the hunger of Americans for western lands, as well as the importance of the trans-Mississippi lands for American strength and security, as seen in his letter to John Breckinridge on August 12, 1803, where he describes his aims in purchasing the Louisiana territory.

The Sedition Act: An Early Challenge to Free Speech

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Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Westward expansion — the final journey from maine to california: an illustrated thesis.

James Schiele , Washington University in St. Louis Follow

Date of Award

Spring 5-15-2015

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Author's Department

American Cultural Studies

Additional Affiliations

University College

Degree Name

Doctor of Liberal Arts (DLA)

Degree Type

This doctoral thesis shall examine how public policy changed with Westward Expansion during the late 19th century. Illustrations played a significant role in both educating readers to what was taking place out west, as well as bringing current events to the public eye in a timely fashion. Once newspapers received word of “Custer’s Massacre,” daily accounts were printed and pictures followed in Harper’s Weekly. Thus, public opinion rose to a peak following the battle, encouraging the federal government to move quickly to bring the Plains tribes under control and protect settlers moving west. Illustrations by Frederic Remington and others tended to show Indians in warfare mode. The impressions made by news accounts, fiction, and presentations such as the Buffalo Bill traveling troupe added to the public’s growing awareness of the West. The thesis contrasts the “hostiles” with George Catlin’s more researched books and pictures of tribes as a mature civilization in existence well before white Europeans arrived. Obstacles other than Indians, such as weather, barren landscapes, long distances, broken down wagons, and disease all made the movement hazardous. The sociological and civil rights impacts are the focal point of this study. The contrast between opposing points of view are brought out in visual form.

English (en)

Chair and Committee

Randall Calvert

Committee Members

Iver Bernstein, Douglas Dowd, Steven Fazzari, David Konig, Richard Mahoney, Gary Miller

Permanent URL: https://doi.org/10.7936/K7FX77KR

Recommended Citation

Schiele, James, "Westward Expansion — The Final Journey From Maine to California: An Illustrated Thesis" (2015). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations . 400. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/400

Additional files available below

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https://doi.org/10.7936/K7FX77KR

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Primary Source Set Westward Expansion: Encounters at a Cultural Crossroads

The resources in this primary source set are intended for classroom use. If your use will be beyond a single classroom, please review the copyright and fair use guidelines.

Teacher’s Guide

To help your students analyze these primary sources, get a graphic organizer and guides: Analysis Tool and Guides

In the nineteenth century, the United States expanded its territory westward at a dramatic pace, leading to conflict, national growth, and ongoing cultural exchange within a transformed continent.

The expansion of the United States into the territory west of the Mississippi River began with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. President Thomas Jefferson nearly doubled the size of the nation by negotiating a price of $15 million to purchase 828,800 square miles from France, including all or part of 14 current states. In 1804, Jefferson sent an expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the area. The three-year expedition produced new understanding of the geography and resources of the western part of the continent. In the 1830s and 1840s, “manifest destiny”, the idea that the United States was destined to expand across the entire continent, was used to promote further territorial expansion. And the nation expanded quickly:

• In 1845 the United States annexed Texas;
• In 1846 the Oregon Treaty ended British claims to Oregon Territory;
• In 1848, following the Mexican-American War, Mexico ceded much of the Southwest to the United States;
• In 1853 the United States bought an additional tract of land from Mexico.

States joined the Union at a relatively fast pace: California became a state in 1850 and Oregon in 1859, Nevada in 1864, Nebraska in 1867, Colorado in 1876, South and North Dakota, Montana, and Washington in 1889, Wyoming and Idaho in 1890, and Utah in 1896. As new towns like Denver and Phoenix sprang up in these new states, established towns and cities grew to accommodate the new industries and new populations that westward expansion brought with it.

A number of factors fueled migration west. Trappers, settlers, and miners headed West from the eastern United States prior to the Civil War. The Homestead Act, passed in 1862, allowed settlers to claim 160 acres of land for free. Another important factor was completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869; the railroad led to much more rapid western migration and also facilitated economic development.

In looking at the history of the American West, it is important to keep in mind the myths that arose around the settling of the West in the second half of the nineteenth century. The influential historian Frederick Jackson Turner described a uniquely American personality forged by the experience of taming the wilderness and critical to the success and growth of the United States. That view of the West as a frontier where heroic white settlers and cowboys struggled to bring civilization to a savage land framed popular and scholarly thinking for years to come.

More recently, however, historians have questioned the notion of the frontier. Instead, they have argued that the nineteenth-century West was a crossroads of cultures. The trans-Mississippi West was home to countless Native American communities. The lifeways of the Native American groups varied considerably. Some with nomadic lifestyles required large amounts of rangeland to maintain their families; other groups lived in settled communities, where they farmed and raised livestock brought to the West by the Spanish. The cultural diversity was heightened by the addition of tens of thousands of Native Americans forced west from the eastern areas of the United States.

Spain ruled what is today the southwestern United States between 1598 and 1821; it used land grants to promote settlement and protect this remote region of its empire. Spanish policy was to give settlers free land owned by the government. The Republic of Mexico followed many of the same policies when it governed the Southwest between 1821 and 1848.

Thus, when white settlers began pouring into the West, they were entering a region in which indigenous peoples and Spanish settlers had been living for hundreds of years. Nor was east the only direction from which settlers came into the American West.

African Americans came from the southeast, Spanish settlers came from Mexico in the south, and workers came from the west, across the Pacific from China.

The hope for economic advancement that brought white settlers to the West also brought workers from Asia. Chinese immigrants worked in mining, ran small businesses, and helped build railroads across the West; however, they were often met with hostility and violent attacks when they attempted to settle into communities.

Expansion in the American West continues today, as its population centers continue to expand into even the most remote areas of the region. Cultural encounters also continue to have an impact on everyday life in the United States, and may prove to be among the most important legacies of the great era of westward expansion.

Suggestions for Teachers

The documents in this set can be used to help students explore westward expansion of the United States and the resulting interactions among the West’s many cultural groups.

Additional Resources

Railroad Maps, 1828 to 1900

California As I Saw It

Maps: Discovery and Exploration

Topics in Chronicling America – From Territory to Statehood: The West

Rivers, Edens, Empires: Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America

Home — Essay Samples — History — Californian Gold Rush — The Positive and Negative Effects of The California Gold Rush on Westward Expansion

The Positive and Negative Effects of The California Gold Rush on Westward Expansion

• Categories: Californian Gold Rush Westward Expansion

About this sample

Words: 560 |

Published: Feb 12, 2021

Words: 560 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

The essay analyzes the impact of the California Gold Rush of 1849 on westward expansion in the United States, highlighting both positive and negative effects.

On the positive side, the Gold Rush led to a significant increase in population as people from the eastern United States and other parts of the world rushed to California in search of gold. This population boom ultimately contributed to California becoming a state, furthering westward expansion. The rapid immigration also resulted in the development of boomtowns like San Francisco, stimulating the economy and leading to the creation of international trading networks.

However, the essay also acknowledges the negative consequences of the Gold Rush. As the gold supply gradually decreased, only a small number of people managed to become wealthy, creating a social hierarchy with economic and governmental challenges. Monetary instability arose due to the rapid mining of gold, leading to hyperinflation and economic disintegration.

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