Westward Expansion Answers and Questions Quiz
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Western Expansion Questions and Answers Quiz is an interactive quiz that covers all aspects of a country’s currency or fiat money directly related to gold. Anyone interested in learning more about this platform can take the test.
Guide to West Expansion Questions and Answer Quiz
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana lands from the French government for $15 million. The Louisiana Purchase extended from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to New Orleans, doubling the size of the United States. For Jefferson, westward expansion was critical to a nation’s health: he believed that the republic depended on virtuous, independent citizens for its survival and that independence and virtue went hand in hand with land ownership and minimal farm ownership.
Manifest Destiny
By 1840, nearly 7 million Americans, or 40% of the country’s population, lived in the western Appalachians. Following a trail by Lewis and Clark, most of these people left their homes in the East in search of economic opportunity. Like Thomas Jefferson, many pioneers linked immigration to the West, land ownership, and agriculture to freedom. In Europe, the large numbers of factory workers formed a seemingly dependent and permanent working class. By contrast, in the United States, the western frontier offered the possibility of independence and upward movement for all. In 1843, a thousand pioneers traveled the Oregon Trail as part of the Great Migration.
Westward Expansion and Slavery
Meanwhile, the question of whether or not slavery would be allowed in the new Western nations cast a shadow over every conversation about borders. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise attempted to resolve this question: Missouri recognized the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state, while maintaining a fragile balance in Congress. But, most importantly, it stipulated that in the future, slavery north of Missouri’s southern border (latitude 36-30°) would be prohibited in the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase.
However, the Missouri Compromise didn’t apply to new lands not part of the Louisiana Purchase. As the nation expanded, the issue of slavery was ever-present. Moreover, the economy of the south grew increasingly dependent on “king’s cotton” and the system of forced labor that perpetuated it.
Westward Expansion and the Mexican War
Despite this sectoral conflict, Americans continued to emigrate to the West in the years following the adoption of the Missouri Compromise. Thousands of people crossed the Rocky Mountains into the Oregon Territory, which belonged to Great Britain, and thousands more moved to the Mexican territories of California, New Mexico, and Texas. In 1837, American settlers in Texas joined their neighbors from Tejano (Texas of Hispanic descent) and gained independence from Mexico. They petitioned to enter the United States as a slave state.
Westward Expansion and the Compromise of 1850
In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War and added over a million square miles to the United States, an area larger than the Louisiana Purchase. However, the acquisition of this land reopened the question ostensibly resolved by the Missouri Compromise: What was the status of slavery in the new American territory? After two years of increasingly volatile controversy over the issue, Kentucky Senator Henry Clay has proposed another compromise.
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