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Antebellum Period
Westward expansion which includes government policies, legislation, popular sovereignty, and territory acquisitions, that led up to the Civil War during the Antebellum Period. -
The Second Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening and the religious enthusiasm that followed, was another incentive to move west. The followers believed that they were obligated by God to move west and spread their religious teachings. They wanted to teach the "heathen" Native Americans, as well as Mexicans that lived in California, New Mexico, and Texas their religious and cultural views. -
The Oregon Trail
A 2,000 mile route took a small party of 70 pioneers west along the Platte River, through the Rocky Mountains, and then northwest to the Columbia River. Pioneers later called this route the Oregon Trail. Later, larger wagon trains of 1,000 in 1043 and 3,000 in 1845 also made the dangerous trek to the West. After that, the migration to Oregon was an annual event and the trail remained heavily traveled until 1884. -
The Great Emigration of 1843
A huge wagon train including 120 wagons, about 1,000 people and thousands of livestock, began their trek to Oregon. This journey lasted five months. -
President James K. Polk
President James K. Polk negotiated with the British during the Oregon Territory Border dispute. He was also president during victorious war with Mexico from 1846 to 1848. These two events led to the United States territory stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. -
Second Middle Passage
The Second Middle Passage took slaves from the Upper South to the expanding plantation economies of the Deep South and Texas. This was a result of the high slave and cotton demand, improved transportation, plentiful land,and the high land and slave prices. By 1860, over two million slaves, 55 percent of the whole U.S. slave population, lived in states other than the original 13. -
Manifest Destiny
The term "Manifest Destiny" was created John L. O'Sullivan. This implied that the U.S. had the God-given right and obligation to expand to the West, spread their beliefs and culture, and obtain new land. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 consisted of laws admitting California as a free state, creating Utah and New Mexico territories with popular sovereignty, settling a Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute in Texas' favor, ending the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and making it easier for southerners to recover fugitive slaves. -
The Kansas Nebraska Act
The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed people in the Kansas and Nebraska territories to decide for themselves whether or not would be allowed in their borders. Many abolitionists and pro-slavery supporters rushes to populate Kansas. This Act had turned westward migration into a political battle over the future of the United States -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas, a result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, was a guerrilla war in the Kansas territory that lasted over a decade. -
The Gold Rush
The Gold Rush was the discovery of gold in California in 1848 that led to the migration of approximately 300,000 people who traveled thousands of miles west in 1849 based on the chance that they might find gold. These people were known as '49ers. This caused San Francisco to grow from a small settlement of about 200 people to a city of 30,000.
