The United States and Early Westward Expansion
Westward Ho! -How the West was Won and the Nation was DividedThe United States and Early Westward ExpansionThe Civil War is one of the most studied and scrutinized periods of United States history. What is often forgotten is that many of the issues that laid the groundwork for the war between the Southern and Northern states began not in the years immediately before the firing at Fort Sumter but had their roots in the period of unprecedented Western expansion during the early half of the 19th century from 1815 to 1850. This period of time saw the growth and expansion of the United States into an economic force in the international community. It also oversaw the creation of distinct regional cultures based upon location, composition of population, and economic orientation within the borders United States. The growth of Western expansion into the Western territories and the Industrial Revolution in the Eastern United States occurred virtually simultaneously in American history. The Industrial Revolution in the East created further divides between the 'haves' or factory owners, and the 'have-nots,' who were often recent immigrants or farmers forced to leave their rural roots. 1815 was a landmark year, after which much of the n
Should America become a loosely federated configuration of territories and states, or a unified nation? Should America allow states to decide what the rights of the citizens ought to be, or should it extend democratic constitutional guarantees to all citizens? The Civil War was required to answer these questions. Southerners opposed to public lands being sold cheaply in small acreages because wealthy agricultural farmers saw this as the Northern-dominated federal government enacting a policy of social engineering, trying to make a new Western farmland full of small rather than larger farms where slavery was not profitable. These new classes felt that they had a right to the American dream of ownership. (Scott, 1997) In the Eastern cities, the streets were often crowded with workers who had been recently removed from their traditional farm-bound lives and nations, where they tilled the land. The acquisition of the Midwestern and Mid-southern territories, and later Texas created new, uncharted territories that could produce new wealth for the land and for the expanding population of the landless. Via the Oregon and Mormon trails, thousands of families left everything and everyone behind to till the land. The Founding Fathers originally left the question of slavery up to the states, hoping that the institution would die of its own accord, as owning slaves grew unprofitable. ("Western Expansion," The American West, 2006) New immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Scandinavia wished to replicate their old ways of life and to make good in the new nation, rather than become reliant upon the new bourgeois class of factory owners. The earliest factories in New England were company-built towns like Waltham, Chicopee, Nashua, and most famously Lowell. Despite Southern fears that new territories would all be anti-slavery, Missouri's settlers came largely from the South, and the homesteaders wished to keep their slaves. During this period of time, America was forced to answer some of its most difficult questions regarding what the new nation would become over the course of its future. (Scott, 1997) Many Southerners alleged that this paternalistic system, combined with the low wages of workers in the North were comparable, if not worse than plantation slave labor. Instead, a compromise was reached, admitting Maine as free state but admitting Missouri as a slave state. ("Pre Civil War Era," Spark Notes, 2006) "Cotton was an almost perfect crop for the lower South.
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