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Period: to
Manifet Destiny
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Louisiana Purchase
The purchase by the United States from France of the huge Louisiana Territory in 1803. President Thomas Jefferson ordered the purchase negotiations, fearing that the French, then led by Napoleon, wanted to establish an empire in North America. -
Santa Fe Trail
The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century transportation route through central North America that connected Franklin, Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Pioneered in 1821 by William Becknell, it served as a commercial highway until the introduction of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880. -
Battle of Alamo
The arrival of General Antonio López de Santa Anna's army outside San Antonio nearly caught them by surprise. Undaunted, the Texians and Tejanos prepared to defend the Alamo together. The defenders held out for 13 days against Santa Anna's army. -
Battle of San Jacinto
The battle in 1836 that gained Texas its independence from Mexico. The US forces led by Sam Houston defeated a larger Mexican army led by General Santa Anna. The battle was fought near the San Jacinto River in south-east Texas, and a tall monument was later built there. -
Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail was the way westward for many Americans in the 1840s. It began in Independence, Missouri, followed the Platte River westward, eventually crossed the Rocky Mountains, and then crossed Wyoming and ended in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. -
Annexation of Texas
The United States Congress passed a "Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States" and Texas was subsequently admitted it to the Union as the 28th state. The Texas border dispute with Mexico quickly led to the Mexican-American War during the presidency of James Polk. -
Mexican-American War
War between Mexico and the United States over the independence of Texas and other territorial claims. The war lasted officially from 1846 to 1848 but had its unofficial beginnings mainly over the governing of Texas as early as the 1830s. Texas declared itself independent from Mexico in 1835, and the famous massacres at the Alamo and Goliad took place in 1836. Americans secured Texas independence at San Jacinto later in 1836. The U.S. annexed Texas in 1844. -
Treaty of Guadulupe-Hildalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which brought an official end to the Mexican-American War was signed on February 2, 1848, at Guadalupe Hidalgo, a city north of the capital where the Mexican government had fled with the advance of U.S. forces. -
Fort Laramine Treaty
The Treaty of Fort Laramie (also called the Sioux Treaty of 1868) was an agreement between the United States and the Oglala, Miniconjou, and Brulé bands of Lakota people, Yanktonai Dakota, and Arapaho Nation signed on April 29, 1868. -
Brigham Young (Mormon)
After the assassination of Joseph Smith in 1844, Young was chosen leader of the Mormons and continued as president. He directed the migration of 16,000 Mormons from Illinois to Utah from 1852 to 1856. -
Gadsden Purchase
The Gadsden Purchase, or Treaty, was an agreement between the United States and Mexico, finalized in 1854, in which the United States agreed to pay Mexico $10 million for a 29,670 square mile portion of Mexico that later became part of Arizona and New Mexico. Gadsden’s Purchase provided the land necessary for a southern transcontinental railroad and attempted to resolve conflicts that lingered after the Mexican-American War.
