The original party consisted of two families, the Donners and the Reeds, who left Springfield, Illinois for California in the spring of They first travelled to Independence, Missouri, the crossroads of the major pioneer routes. From there, they set off along the California Trail, joining up with other wagon trains they met along the way. Their fateful mistake was the decision to take a shortcut called the Hastings Cutoff, which split off from the California Trail in Utah and went directly across the Great Salt Lake Desert.
Although the Hastings Cutoff appeared shorter on the map, it was in fact slower than the main route, and very dangerous. By the time the Donner Party reached the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada, they were a month behind schedule and already running low on supplies.
Heavy snowfall began in late October, stranding them just below the steep divide now known as Donner Pass. After several failed attempts to cross the pass, the party holed up near Truckee Lake now Donner Lake , building log cabins for shelter.
When people began to die of starvation, the survivors decided to use their bodies for food. In , Russia abandoned its claims south of the 54 degrees, 40 minutes parallel In the s, Americans began their major push west of the Mississippi, into lands that were largely unsettled except by the indigenous tribes.
Some went in search of land, some in search of gold and silver, and in the case of the Mormons, in search of religious freedom. Braving harsh weather, attacks by Indians or wild animals, and isolation, their numbers rose into the tens of thousands. Increasingly, Americans talked of the prospect of a transcontinental railroad. In the presidential election of , Democrat James K. Polk narrowly won on a platform of national expansion. The youngest president up to that time, Polk tended toward confrontational diplomacy.
Britain had long offered to split the Oregon Territory, along the line of the Columbia River. The only area of contention was Puget Sound, which promised its owner a deep-water port for trade with China and Pacific Islands. Polk then demanded the whole territory, north to the line. In April , Congress authorized Polk to end the joint agreement of Americans took up the slogan " or fight," and war loomed with Britain.
The British, however, saw little value in another war with its former colonies in order to protect the interest of the Hudson Bay Company along the Pacific Coast. An agreement was reached that split the Oregon Territory along the 49th parallel excepting the southern portion of Vancouver Island in exchange for free navigation along the Columbia for the Hudson Bay Company.
In , during the administration of President John Tyler, the U. Texas had won independence from Mexico in , although Mexico refused to officially acknowledge the republic or its borders. Upon learning Slidell was there to purchase more territory instead of compensate Mexico for Texas, the Mexican government refused to receive him. Slidell wrote to Polk, "We can never get along well with them, until we have given them a good drubbing.
In January , to defend the disputed Texas border and put pressure on Mexican officials to work with Slidell—and perhaps to provoke the Mexicans into a military response—Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor with a small U.
Army contingent to the north bank of the Rio Grande. Texas and the U. On April 25, , a patrol under Captain Seth Thornton encountered a force of 2, Mexican soldiers; 11 Americans were killed and the rest captured. One wounded man was released by the Mexicans and reported news of the skirmish. Polk received word of the conflict a few days before he addressed Congress. The Thornton Affair, which "shed American blood upon American soil," provided a more solid footing for his declaration of war, though the veracity of the account is still questioned today.
Some opposed the war on grounds that war should not be used to expand the U. Some thought that Polk, a Southerner, wanted to expand slavery and strengthen the influence of slave owners in the federal government. Despite the opposition by Whigs—Polk was a Democrat—the U. American success on the battlefield was swift.
By August, General Stephen W. Kearny had captured New Mexico—there had been no opposition when he arrived in Santa Fe. Securing California would take longer, although on June 14, , settlers in Alta California began the Big Bear Flag Revolt against the Mexican garrison in Sonoma, without knowing of the declaration of war.
Cumulative U. He promised the U. Once in Mexico City, however, he reneged on the agreement and seized the presidency. Taylor pushed south into Monterrey, Mexico, in September. After a hard-won victory, Taylor negotiated the surrender of the city and agreed to an eight-week armistice, during which the Mexican troops would be allowed to go free. In January , Santa Anna learned of the U.
Santa Anna began the long march back to Mexico City. Read more about the Mexican American War. On January 24, , James W. Although he and Sutter tried to keep it a secret, word got out—the first printed notice of the discovery was in the March 15, , San Francisco newspaper The Californian.
Not long after, gold was discovered in the Feather and Trinity Rivers, also located northeast of Sacramento. The first people to rush the gold fields were those already living in California, but as word slowly got out overland and via the port city of San Francisco, people from Oregon, Mexico, Chile, Peru, and Pacific Islands arrived to find their fortunes. In , there was such a huge influx of gold-seekers—approximately 90,—that they would be referred to collectively as "forty-niners.
It is estimated that by some , people had streamed into California hoping to strike it rich. The port town of San Francisco went from a population of about 1, in to become the eighth largest city in the U.
Read more about the California Gold Rush. The Klondike gold rush consisted of the arrival of thousands of prospectors to the Klondike region of Canada as well as Alaska in search of gold. Over , people set out on the year long journey to the Klondike, with less than one third ever finishing the arduous journey. Only a small percentage of the prospectors found gold, and the rush was soon over.
Read more about the Klondike Gold Rush. The first concrete plan for a transcontinental railroad in the United States was presented to Congress by dry-goods merchant Asa Whitney in Whitney had ridden on newly opened railway lines in England and an — trip to China, which involved a transcontinental trip and the transport of the goods he had bought, further convinced him that the railroad was the future of transport.
The act, based on a bill proposed in that had been a victim of the political skirmishes over slavery, was considered a war measure that would strengthen the union between the eastern and western states.
The Central Pacific started work in Sacramento, California, in January 8, , but progress was slow due to the resource and labor shortage caused by the Civil War. The California Gold Rush and the building of the Transcontinental Railroad brought the first great waves of emigration from Asia to America. Learn more about the Transcontinental Railroad. Since construction began in earnest after the end of the war, most of the workers on the Union Pacific were Army veterans and Irish immigrants who had come to the U.
When the railroad was completed on May 10, , with the ceremonial driving of the last spike at Promontory Summit, Utah, it had already facilitated further population of the western states in concert with the Homestead Act. The railroads led to the decline and eventual end to the use of emigrant trails, wagon trains, and stagecoach lines, and a further constriction of the native population and their territories.
Telegraph lines were also built along the railroad right of way as the track was laid, replacing the first single-line Transcontinental Telegraph with a multi-line telegraph. The Homestead Act of was intended to make lands opening up in the west available to a wide variety of settlers, not just those who could afford to buy land outright or buy land under the Preemption Act of , which established a lowered land price for squatters who had occupied the land for a minimum of 14 months.
In the s, Southerners had opposed three similar efforts to open the west out of fear that western lands would be established as free, non-slaveholding areas. Most of those objecting to such legislation left Congress when the Southern states seceded, allowing the Homestead Act to be passed during the American Civil War.
Learn more about the Homestead Act. The Homestead Act required settlers to complete three steps in order to obtain acre lots of surveyed government land. First, an application for a land claim had to be filed, then the homesteader had to live on the land for the next five years and make improvements to it, including building a 12 by 14 shelter.
Finally, after five years, the homesteader could file for patent deed of title by filing proof of residency and proof of improvements with the local land office, which would then send paperwork with a certificate of eligibility to the General Land Office in Washington, DC, for final approval.
The land was free except for a small registration fee. On New Years Eve, he met local Land Office officials and persuaded them to open early so he could file a land claim.
By the end of the century, more than 80 million acres had been granted to over , successful homesteaders. In total, about 10 percent of the U. Pony Express : The Pony Express was a system of horse and riders set up in the mids to deliver mail and packages. It employed 80 deliverymen and between four and five hundred horses. Read more about Pony Express. It resulted in Mexico taking control. Read more about Battle Of The Alamo. It took place in North America and involved many Native American people.
Read more about French Indian War. The Sand Creek Massacre : The Sand Creek Massacre was the brutal attack of Cheyenne Indians consisting mostly of women and children by Union Soldiers that occurred, despite the flying of an American flag to show that they were peaceful and a white flag after the attack began, in Colorado in Read more about The Sand Creek Massacre.
Oregon Territory : The Oregon Territory was the name given to the area that became the state of Oregon. It became an official state in February of Read more about Oregon Territory. It was used by thousands of people to populate the western frontier. Read more about The Oregon Trail. They were led by a Sauk warrior named Black Hawk.
In , 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 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. But the larger question remained unanswered. In , Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas proposed that two new states, Kansas and Nebraska , be established in the Louisiana Purchase west of Iowa and Missouri.
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 and to vote fraudulently in favor of slavery. A decade later, the civil war in Kansas over the expansion of slavery was followed by a national civil war over the same issue.
Start your free trial today. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.
Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries people were kidnapped from the continent of Africa, forced into slavery in the American colonies and exploited to work as indentured servants and labor in the production of crops such as tobacco and cotton. By the midth century, Bleeding Kansas describes the period of repeated outbreaks of violent guerrilla warfare between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces following the creation of the new territory of Kansas in In all, some 55 people were killed between and The struggle intensified The Louisiana Purchase of brought into the United States about , square miles of territory from France, thereby doubling the size of the young republic.
0コメント