American History

This is the period when American population started moving westward from their original 13 territories states that was spelt out in the treaty of 1783 with the Great Britain. The first explorers to visit those areas were Lewis and Clarke, who described the Natives of the region as hostile people, living in hostile environment. The settlers soon moved in droves, and survival in that wild where life was hard and difficult.                  

To the American population, the westward expansion was described as a Manifest destiny. Most Americans believe it was the sole purpose of the US to possess the region between the Pacific and the Atlantic this was later to become the principle to guide the quest for westward territories. This was aided by the Alamo siege the Mexican war and the California gold rush, these were some of the defining events that mark the expansion to the west.

One advantage of this expansion was that America was able to cater for the needs of its people through the establishment of branch mint. The early immigrants to America found a sparsely settled and undeveloped land. Aided by lack of land aristocracy, as well as federal policies that encouraged settlement, many immigrants found it easy to own land. This is a good opportunity to get rich through agriculture and through land grants to railroad magnates.

The west frontier was opened up for trade and more settlement by transcontinental railroads. The economic opportunities were therefore increased for workers and business people, and this fostered the American dream  that burning desire to succeed through sheer determination.

Again the American dream was greatly aided by immigrants from Europe who came in search of the American dream. The potato famine experienced in Ireland, the Napoleon war and its aftermath, as well as the highland clearances of Scotland precipitated the migration of western Europeans to the United States in the 19th century. This new immigrants settled in the Midwest as farmers and some of them were recruited as workers in new industries in a region that was now booming with rapid industrial growth and large scale farming to cater for its ever surging population.

The great expansion was helped by the combination of different forces. The homestead act of 1862 allowed and encouraged farming in the Midwest. Families or persons were given 160 acres of land in exchange of becoming a citizen, paying a small fee, and living on the land or cultivating it for five years. This ensured rapid growth of these regions that was also opened up by the railroad companies which were all eager to transport settlers to the west.

The westward advancement and all its advantages also brought a lot of problems not only to the natives but also to the natural resources in this region. There was the ruthless exploitation of the American Natives by the Europeans who later developed a capitalist system which replaced the natives communalism and socialism. The natives found this punitive as well as oppressive to their way of life. The Europeans took advantage of the fact that, there was a vast and a natural wilderness with inhabitants who were uncivilized and would not be able to develop the lands. The truth of the matter is that most the west was inhabited and some of these tribes were practicing farming like the Eyaks, Tlingitis and Haidas who occupied the Pacific North West. The invasion of the Americans natives west imposed on them stigma of social, ethical as well as cultural inferiority. As Morgan (1995) cites in the International Socialism Journal

The conquest of these people by the Europeans brought changes to their way of life. Not least of these were the many diseases that the Europeans brought with them. In California, the native population was reduced by at least half--from 300,000 to 150,000 between 1769 and 1821 along the Pacific North West the destructive force of smallpox, tuberculosis, malaria, and other diseases hit various native American groups in epidemics that ran their course in a year or two.

Again, the policy employed mostly in Europe whereby there was a widespread settlement for cultivation and full exploitation of the land as a resource, brought a lot of conflicts between the natives and the settlers. This was the European brought with them some of the properties rights into this new land.