Period 4
Period 4 Contextulization
Contextualization Period 4: By the 1800’s people in america were trying to expand and settle more into the western territory by pushing out Indians and trying to expand our new country which we know today. Lewis and Clark started off the exploration of the whole american country by traveling across the Missouri river in order to see if it would connect to the Pacific Ocean. Over the course of the journey they traveled across present day Montana on foot in order to get to the Jefferson River. We fought for our land by trying to force out the Indians with Indian removal acts. Indian removal acts were signed by president Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830 which authorized the president to grant unsettled lands to west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within the existing borders. The Louisiana Purchase gave us a huge amount of territory west of our original 13 colonies which we purchased from France for 15 million dollars and was one of the biggest purchases we took in order to expand our country by doubling America in size in order to make ourselves known on the map but also be able to explore what different things there are out there more than just what we knew in the east coast. We decided to acquire all the land west of the Missouri river. As we grew as a country our movement out towards the west really expanded our country and what we could really do. Manifest Destiny seemed to be a very big american dream at the time. The thought of being able to have a country that goes from one coast line to the other was that far away as far as hopes and dreams were concerned. The Mexican War greatly helped push these dreams to a whole other level as we won the states we know today as California New Mexico and Texas. These new parts of america offered us new jobs and offered more land for farming and making new types of jobs such as cowboys and ranch workers. Throughout this whole expedition slavery was a huge thing during this time period of our history. It seemed like we were becoming even more and more of a slave country while our whole mission was to make everyone free. In order to stop the spread of all slave states across the nation our president purposed the Missouri compromise in order to help prevent the spread of slave states moving across the Northern border which would help eliminate whom we can choose to be slave states and who can't. This was an enormous way to cut down all our slave states moving across the nation and making us into more of a civilized and free country we were trying to be. Transportation of goods was really a huge thing during this time because we had greater faster ways of traveling around now rather than horses. We developed railway systems to transport goods such as tobacco and foods as well as moving people across the country way more efficiently. We also built various canal systems in order to move water into states for farming. The biggest canal to be built during the time that brought us a great way to transport goods from other countries was the Eerie Canal. It allowed us to have such a quicker route from England to America in order to exchange goods. When it was being built it really changed our environment in a sense that we had to carve out parts of our territory but helped us in the long run to make transportation more efficient than it was before.