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The cultural endeavor and pursuit of manifest destiny provided a strong impetus for westward expansion in the 19th century. The United States began expanding beyond North America in 1856 with the passage of the Guano Islands Act , causing many small and uninhabited, but economically important, islands in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean ...
The history of the United States from 1815 to 1849—also called the Middle Period, the Antebellum Era, or the Age of Jackson—involved westward expansion across the American continent, the proliferation of suffrage to nearly all white men, and the rise of the Second Party System of politics between Democrats and Whigs.
The Oregon Trail, the longest of the overland routes used in the westward expansion of the United States, was first traced by settlers and fur traders for traveling to the Oregon Country. The main route of the Oregon Trail stopped at the Hudson's Bay Company Fort Hall , a major resupply route along the trail near present-day Pocatello and where ...
American westward expansion is idealized in Emanuel Leutze's famous painting Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (1861). As president, Polk sought compromise and renewed the earlier offer to divide the territory in half along the 49th parallel, to the dismay of the most ardent advocates of manifest destiny.
America wished to rescue Europe from the devastation of World War II, and to contain the expansion of communism, represented by the Soviet Union. U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War was built around the support of Western Europe and Japan along with the policy of containment (containing the spread of communism). [ 212 ]
The seaboard colonial settlements gave priority to land ownership for individual farmers, and as the population grew they pushed westward for fresh farmland. [37] Unlike Britain, where a small number of landlords owned most of the land, ownership in America was cheap, easy and widespread. Land ownership brought a degree of independence as well ...
In 1867, the federal government purchased Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, adding 586,412 square miles to U.S. western expansion. Some believed it would lead toward the annexation of Canada ...
Jefferson encouraged agriculture and westward expansion, most notably by the Louisiana Purchase and subsequent Lewis and Clark Expedition. Believing America to be a haven for the oppressed, Jefferson reduced the residency requirement for naturalization to five years.