Settlement FAQs

what hastened settlement of the west

by Breanna Okuneva Published 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago
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The California Gold Rush was a major factor in expansion west of the Mississippi. That westward expansion was greatly aided by the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, and passage of the Homestead Act in 1862.

Full Answer

What was the western settlement of the 1800s?

Western Settlement. Between the years 1800 and 1820 the American population nearly doubled and by 1830 a quarter of the people lived west of the Appalachians. Westward movement was made easier by government efforts to push Native American peoples even farther west. A series of new states were admitted to the Union: Indiana in 1816,...

When did the settlement of the west begin and end?

The settlement of the American West began in the 1840s and ended in the early 1900s. Several factors influenced this settlement, including the use of the Oregon Trail and the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. Updated: 03/09/2021 After the first European settlers arrived in the Americas, they began to move westward.

What was the first wave of settlement in the American West?

From the mid-1800s to early 1900s, there were several waves of settlement in the American West. The first is the California Gold Rush of the 1840s, along with the concurrent use of the Oregon Trail.

What was the significance of western settlement in the Far West?

Western Settlement. The Far West had been Spanish territory, but in 1821 Mexico won her independence and opened its lands to all traders. Hundreds of Americans poured into the areas of Texas, New Mexico and California, setting the stage for commerce and conflict. The attraction of the Far West was more than farmland; the lure of timber, gold,...

Where did the settlers settle in the wilderness?

Who wrote the book The Beginning of Settlement in the American West?

What were the workers at the Fort Lisa?

What was the population of Kansas in 1855?

What did the first comers do in the prairie?

How did the Santa Fe trade affect Kansas?

When did the whites settle in Kansas?

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What factors contributed to the settlement of the West?

Gold rush and mining opportunities (silver in Nevada) The opportunity to work in the cattle industry; to be a “cowboy” Faster travel to the West by railroad; availability of supplies due to the railroad. The opportunity to own land cheaply under the Homestead Act.

Which event led to an increase in settlement of the West?

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

What was the settlement of the West?

The Western Settlement (Old Norse: Vestribygð [ˈwestreˌbyɣð]) was a group of farms and communities established by Norsemen from Iceland around 985 in medieval Greenland.

What opened the West to settlement?

The completion of the railroads to the West following the Civil War opened up vast areas of the region to settlement and economic development.

How did America expand westward?

Westward expansion began in earnest in 1803. Thomas Jefferson negotiated a treaty with France in which the United States paid France $15 million for the Louisiana Territory – 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River – effectively doubling the size of the young nation.

Why did westward migration increase in the late 1800s?

Now western settlers were spurred onward by the development of the transcontinental railroad, a major byproduct of the period of industrialization that had begun in earnest. The expansion and immigration of the late 1800s merged with this industrialization to provoke the growth of American urban society.

Why the early settlers went west?

Pioneers and settlers moved out west for different reasons. Some of them wanted to claim free land for ranching and farming from the government through the Homestead Act. Others came to California during the gold rush to strike it rich. Even others, such as the Mormons, moved west to avoid persecution.

When was the West first settled?

While the settling of the American West began in earnest in the 1840s, the most famous period in the region's history, the Wild West, began in 1865 after the American Civil War, which was the war fought between the Northern and Southern United States between 1861 and 1865, and ended in the late 1890s and early 1900s, ...

When was the West settled?

July 4, 1776Western United States / Date settled

What were four reasons settlers moved west?

Settlers flocked to the Far West for many reasons. They sought adventure, farmland, an escape from the constraints of civilization, and new starts. California was attractive because of its climate and the fact that the Spanish and Mexicans had begun to organize the territory through the mission system.

What encouraged migration to the West?

Signed into law by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, the Homestead Act encouraged westward migration and settlement by providing 160-acre tracts of land west of the Mississippi at little cost, in return for a promise to improve the land.

What was the biggest impact of westward expansion?

Westward Expansion had the biggest impact on the economy and there were several positive outcomes as a result of Manifest Destiny. First, Westward Expansion led to the creation of many new technologies including steamboats, canals and the transcontinental railroads.

What did the Homestead Act of 1862 promise to potential migrants to the West?

What did the Homestead Act of 1862 promise to potential migrants to the West? 160 acres free to any citizen or prospective citizen who settled on land west of the Mississippi River for five years. How did the invention of barbed wire revolutionize the cattle industry? It allowed ranchers to fence in their cattle.

Why did the Spanish encourage settlement in Florida?

To destabilize British colonization in the north, Spain encouraged British slaves to escape to Florida, where they could convert to Catholicism and become Spanish citizens. In the 1730s, a black Spanish community formed in St. Augustine, the capital of Spanish Florida, and founded a town called Fort Mose.

Who was Geronimo quizlet?

Who was Geronimo? B) The Nez Percé leader who said "I will fight no more forever."

What was the outcome of Native Americans settlement on reservations in the late nineteenth century?

What was the outcome of Native Americans' settlement on reservations in the late nineteenth century? They came to depend on government assistance.

What was the Westward Migration?

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.

Where did the American settlers move to?

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.

What was the Missouri compromise?

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.

What was the Westward Expansion and the Compromise of 1850?

Westward Expansion and the Compromise of 1850. Bleeding Kansas. 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.

What did Jefferson believe about the Westward Expansion?

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.

What was the battle between Kansas and Nebraska?

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 .”

What was Douglas' middle ground?

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.

Where did the settlers settle in the wilderness?

Only a few, the more adventurous and those loving the wild frontier life, pressed across the wooded hills of Missouri, or the rolling pastures of Iowa, to make settlement on the untried prairies. They were bold hearts who first found passage over the yellow flood, and established their homes in the heart of the wilderness.

Who wrote the book The Beginning of Settlement in the American West?

About the Author: The Beginning of Settlement in the American West was written by Randall Parrish as a chapter of his book, The Great Plains: The Romance of Western American Exploration, Warfare, and Settlement, 1527-1870; published by A.C. McClurg & Co. in Chicago, 1907. Parrish also wrote several other books including When Wilderness Was King, ...

What were the workers at the Fort Lisa?

There were the trader and his clerk, wood-cutters and hay-makers, who were also boatmen upon occasion, probably a few white trappers under contract, with a worker or two in wood and iron. Sometimes, as at Fort Lisa, Nebraska, opposite Council Bluffs, Iowa and some others of those larger posts up the river, women braved the wilderness to be with the men they loved.

What was the population of Kansas in 1855?

The local census in 1855 credits Kansas with a population of 8,501, which increased in five years to 107,206. In Nebraska, the growth was less remarkable, its population in 1855 was 4,494, and in 1860, 28,441.

What did the first comers do in the prairie?

Led by prejudices engendered in the experiences of the East, they shunned the open prairie, holding it as of little value. In the timber by the river’s edge, or in the midst of those small groves common to the country, they built their log huts and led lives of privation, hardship, and occasional peril.

How did the Santa Fe trade affect Kansas?

The Santa Fe trade had much influence on the early settlement of Kansas ; and the Mormon migration, together with the opening of the Oregon Trail, on that of Nebraska. The more rapid development of the southern Territory can also be traced to the struggle against slavery bringing to Kansas soil ardent sympathizers with the North and the South, respectively, in the fiercely raging controversy. While the main outfitting of the caravans bound for Santa Fe occurred at Independence, Missouri, the necessities of the trade early developed a considerable settlement at Council Grove, Kansas.

When did the whites settle in Kansas?

There was, however, very little permanent white settlement in either Nebraska or Kansas until after 1854, at which date these Territories were legally organized. Previous to this, the entire region had been designated merely as the “ Indian country,” and its population consisted of little more than wandering trappers and hunters, scattered fur traders with their few employees, and those men interested in the Santa Fe trade. Yet as soon as these Territories were formally thrown open to settlement, the rush across the border began. The local census in 1855 credits Kansas with a population of 8,501, which increased in five years to 107,206. In Nebraska, the growth was less remarkable, its population in 1855 was 4,494, and in 1860, 28,441. In both cases, the settlements were almost totally confined to the river bottoms and within a comparatively short distance of the Missouri River.

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Main Body

  • One of the earliest western engagements was the Dakota War of 1862 between colonists and the Sioux tribe in Minnesota and the Dakota Territory. After the number of American farmers moving to the Sioux native lands dramatically increased in the 1850s, the tribe was reduced to poverty, b…
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American Industrialization

  • The Industrial Revolution started in the USA at the beginning of the 19th century and continued steadily up to and through the Civil War. The greatest changes started to occur at the end of the 19th century when hand labor was replaced with machine-based production all over the country. Industrialization was mostly beneficial to the American economy, turning the country into one o…
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American Imperialism at The End of The 19th Century

  • American imperialism is a policy aimed to extend the political, economic, and cultural influence of the United States over other countries. The concept was first popularized during the presidency of James K. Polk at the end of the 19th century when the USA first started to intervene in other countries’ affairs to enforce their interests. The United States’ actions in Hawaii, the Philippines, …
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Conclusion

  • The American attempts to increase their influence in Latin America were also ill-founded and aggressive towards the neighboring countries. They included not only political, economic, and cultural influence, but also military interventions, support of authoritarian regimes, and political pressure onto local governments (Locke and Wright). For example, when the Mexicans revolted …
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References

  • Immerman, Richard. Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz. Princeton University Press, 2010. Hastedt, Glenn. Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy. Infobase Publishing, 2014. Locke, Joseph, and Ben Wright, editors. The American Yawp. Stanford University Press, 2019. Luebering, John, editor. Native American History. Britann…
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Manifest Destiny

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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, l…
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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 stipulat…
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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 n…
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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 volatil…
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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 Iowaand 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 Southe…
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