Western Expansion Essay

Words: 878
Pages: 4

Westward Expansion Traveling West in search of a better life showed the spirit of the American Dream: to create a better life for oneself. Starting in the early 1800’s Americans swarmed West settling across the continent. The men and women knew that they possessed the power to expand the country and nothing was going to get in their way. The term Manifest Destiny was coined, by the newspaper editor John O. Sullivan, to encourage expansion. Western expansion was greatly beneficial to America because it more than doubled the amount of land and created an economic boost than far outweighed the consequences. The belief that white settlers had the right to settle across America was not shared among all of the people living on the continent. There …show more content…
This came from indigenous people including: Mexicans and Native Americans. The Mexicans lost their lands in Texas and were forced to move South. Unfortunately for the Native Americans that were all across the current United States being put into reserves was the method that the Indian Removal Act had set forth. It was no easy task changing their lifestyle, but to make matters worse many Native Americans died on their way to the reserves. One of the most infamous times was the Trail of Tears in 1838, which lead to the death of 4,000 Native Americans in grueling ways such as: cold, hunger, and disease. The reserves densified the population and ruined the thousand year long culture that they had been developing. The amount of land and their way of life was not the only thing that Americans changed. The Bureau of Indian Affairs instituted a policy to destroy Native American culture and to “civilize them.” This meant taking their children and putting them into special schools to integrate them into society. Although this may have seemed like a good idea, it ended up destroying the culture. Slavery was also a controversial topic when it came to expansion. The people did not know how to settle the arguments until they decided on the Missouri Compromise, that made slavery illegal above the parallel 36°30′. This did not last long and soon after the idea of popular