*After the War of 1812, America experienced a period of both economic and physical expansion.  As population increased, more and more people needed new opportunities in the west.  This was made easier by the many roads, old and new, that crossed the Appalachian Mountains.

*Among these roads were Braddock’s Road, following the path Braddock took to his death in 1754, the Cumberland Road or the National Road, part of a grand system of roads envisioned by Henry Clay as a way of linking the United States together, and the Great Valley Road through Virginia and Tennessee to the Cumberland Gap, where settlers took the Wilderness Road cut by Daniel Boone after the Transylvania Purchase of 1775.

*Americans first settled the Northwest Territory, which quickly was turned into states according to the Northwest Ordinance.  Settlers the pushed across the Mississippi, and pushed the Indians ahead of them.  Through force, bribery, and trickery almost all American Indians east of the Mississippi River would be removed west of it before 1850.

*As Americans pushed westward, they also pushed to the south, specifically, into Florida.

*Florida had always belonged to Spain since its discover by Ponce de Leon except for a brief period between 1763 and 1783.  In 1795, Thomas Pinckney arranged the Pinckney Treaty with Spain.  It fixed the border between the US and Spanish Florida, allowed American citizens to use the Mississippi River, and made both Spain and America promise not to send their Indian allies to attack each other.  However, both sides broke their promises.

*American began to settle illegally in Florida, and by 1810 part of West Florida had so many Americans in it that they seceded from Spanish Florida.  At about the same time, Indians living in Florida began attacking American settlements across the border in Georgia.  By 1818 America was sick of this, and Andrew Jackson, hero of New Orleans, invaded Florida.  He was not supposed to do this, but claimed he was just chasing some Indians and got carried away, accidentally capturing a couple forts, hanging a couple Englishmen, and taking control of most of the area.
*Spain, being busy with revolts in Latin America, decides to cut her losses, and in 1819, John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, and Luiz de Onís sign the Adams-Onís Treaty, in which the United State got all of Florida, even the parts Jackson had not completely conquered yet.

*Aware of Lewis and Clark’s discoveries, and amazed by the vastness and wealth of the land across the Appalachians, and later the Mississippi, Americans began to have a new idea, that of manifest destiny.  This literally means a destiny that is completely obvious.  The destiny that was manifest to mid-nineteenth century Americans was one in which liberty, democracy, and the American republic stretched from sea to shining sea.

*Some Americans would settle in the Oregon Country.  Unfortunately, this was claimed by the US, Great Britain, Spain and Russia.  Spain gave up claims to this land in the Adams-Onís Treaty, and Russia gave up hers in 1825, but Britain and the United States would dispute the ownership of this land until dividing it equally in 1846, which we’ll discuss more later.

*Long before ownership of Oregon was settled, the land was.  Settlement of Oregon (not counting occasional trappers and traders) began in the 1830s, and increased immensely after 1842 or 1843, when people began to follow the Oregon Trail by the thousands.  Several thousand more went to California during the same period, and other settled in other parts of the West.  Some came for land, either to farm or to re-sell to later settlers at a profit, some came to trade with the Indians, and some came for other reasons.  Among these were the Mormons.

*Mormonism began in New York under the leadership of Joseph Smith.  Because Smith and his friends were sometimes rowdy, and because they held religious beliefs that others found strange and even wicked, the Mormons were persecuted wherever they went.  The left New York for Ohio, but fled to Missouri, and then to Illinois, where Smith was eventually killed.  After this, they went west to the Utah Territory, where they established their own communities and became very prosperous, even though they were still sometimes harassed by the Federal Government.  Occasionally this was too much for the Mormons.  In one case in 1857, a group of Mormons, along with Paiute Indians, attacked a group of settlers moving west and killed them all—over one hundred of them—in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

*By 1848 a few thousand Americans had moved to California.  However, in that year something happened that would bring far more people to that state.  In January, John Sutter, leader of a small group of colonists, found gold in the stream outside his mill.  Soon thousands of prospectors came to Sutter’s Mill to see if they could find gold, and this mania spread throughout California.  This came to be called the California Gold Rush, and it caused California’s population to rise from 14,000 in 1848 to over 200,000 in 1852.  Because the first big year of the Gold Rush was 1849, these prospectors are sometimes known as forty-niners.  However, many did not find gold, and those who did often spent it in the wild and overpriced towns that sprang up around mining camps.  Furthermore, many of these towns did not last, as they would be abandoned to become ghost towns whenever the local gold ran out.

*As American moved west, they found other peoples already there.

*There were many tribes of Indians in the West, and most were characterised by a nomadic lifestyle, riding horses (which they got from the Spanish) as they pursued the buffalo along their yearly migrations.  Some still practised farming in villages, but in time most were killed either by the white men or by other Indians.  Both groups were also decimated by European diseases.  Eventually, a couple powerful tribes of horse-warriors came to dominate the Great Plains:  the Sioux in the north and the Comanche in the south.

*The Spanish had been in the Southwest since the 1500s.  They had created chains of mission stations and fortresses called presidios throughout the Southwest and up the coast of California (including Los Angeles).  In these missions and presidios, the Spaniard converted the Indians, but also treated them harshly, often no better than slaves.

*Between 1810 and 1821 Mexicans fought against Spain for their independence, and eventually won on 24 August, 1821.  As part of the Treaty of Córdoba, Mexico got all of Spain’s old territories in the Southwest, including the presidios, missions, and trading posts.  Soon afterwards, American traders and then settlers began to move into these areas.

*Most Americans who settled in Mexico did so in Texas.  The first group was led by Stephen Austin in 1822, and they began to grow cotton along the southern coast of Texas.  Most of the early Texans are from the South, and many of them bring slaves and slavery with them.

*Initially Mexico encouraged Americans to settle in Texas, as long as they promised to be loyal to Mexico, which most did, not really meaning it.  However, as Americans begin to vastly outnumber Mexicans in parts of Texas, they begin to desire a government of their own.

*Eventually Mexico tries to stop American immigration, but it is too late.  Finally, Mexico goes too far, and tries to outlaw slavery.  Worse, General Antonio López de Santa Anna becomes dictator of Mexico and abolishes local governments in Texas, or tries to.  With both their liberty and property under threat, the American settlers in Texas declare independence and Santa Anna marches his army north and the Texas War for Independence begins in 1835.

*Santa Anna first finds Texans defending an old Spanish mission called the Alamo that had been converted into a fortress, and lay siege to them.  Although Santa Anna has about 4,000 troops and the Texans under Colonels William Travis and Jim Bowie, and the Tennessean Davy Crocket have less than 200 men, the Texans hold out for thirteen days and inflict heavy casualties before being defeated and killed almost to the last man on 6 March, 1836.

*Santa Anna seems sure to win, but on 21 April, 1836, he is surprised during his siesta by Sam Houston by the San Jacinto river, and forced to surrender and recognise Texan independence.  Texans then formed their own government with their own constitution based on that of the United States, and continue on independently as the Republic of Texas for almost ten years, in part because the US are reluctant to let Texas in because it is a slave state.
 

BACK TO SYLLABUS