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[8] [9] Westward expansion, including the Louisiana Purchase and American victory in the War of 1812 plus the building of canals and the introduction of steamboats opened up new areas for agriculture. Most farming was designed to produce food for the family, and service small local markets.
The trail was used as the 1846 U.S. invasion route of New Mexico during the Mexican–American War. After the U.S. acquisition of the Southwest ending the Mexican–American War, the trail helped open the region to U.S. economic development and settlement, playing a vital role in the expansion of the U.S. into the lands it had acquired.
The British war goal included the creation of an Indian barrier state under British auspices in the Midwest which would halt American expansion westward. American frontier militiamen under General Andrew Jackson defeated the Creeks and opened the Southwest, while militia under Governor William Henry Harrison defeated the Native-British alliance ...
In addition, on the northern Great Plains the growing season is short. Agriculture on the Plains seems to have had an ebb and flow, advancing westward into the drier areas in favorable wet periods and retreating in drier periods. The periodic abundance or scarcity of bison was also a factor in human settlements on the plains. The animal was an ...
Aside from raising funds for a financially struggling government, the westward expansion outlined in the Land Ordinances of the 1780s also provided a framework for spreading democratic ideals. Jefferson proposed an article in the Ordinance that would have outlawed slavery in the new states after the year 1800.
The same year, the California gold rush began, triggering intensified U.S. westward expansion. California joined the Union as a free state via the Compromise of 1850. By the end of the 19th century, California was still largely rural and agricultural, with a population of about 1.4 million.
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.
Overall, government land grants to Western US railroads during the 1850s to 1880s played a crucial role in shaping the economic, social, and geographic landscape of the United States, laying the foundation for much of the nation's modern transportation infrastructure and facilitating the westward expansion of settlement and industry.