Westward Expansion Timeline

  • Cotton Gin invented

    Cotton Gin invented
    A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, allowing for much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.[2] The fibers are processed into clothing or other cotton goods, and any undamaged cotton was used for clothes. Seeds may be used to grow more cotton or to produce cottonseed oil and meal.
  • XYZ Affair

    XYZ Affair
    The XYZ Affair was a political and diplomatic episode in 1797 and 1798, early in the administration of John Adams, involving a confrontation between the United States and Republican France that led to an undeclared war called the Quasi-War.
  • Louisiana Purchase

    Louisiana Purchase
    The Louisiana Purchase (1803) was a land deal between the United States and France, in which the U.S. acquired approximately 827,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million.
  • Adams-Onis Treaty

    Adams-Onis Treaty
    The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, also known as the Transcontinental Treaty, the Florida Purchase Treaty, or the Florida Treaty, was a treaty between the United States and Spain in 1819 that ceded Florida to the U.S. and defined the boundary between the U.S. and New Spain.
  • Missouri Compromise

    Missouri Compromise
    The Missouri Compromise was an effort by Congress to defuse the sectional and political rivalries triggered by the request of Missouri late in 1819 for admission as a state in which slavery would be permitted. At the time, the United States contained twenty-two states, evenly divided between slave and free.
  • Monroe Doctrine

    Monroe Doctrine
    The Monroe Doctrine was a U.S. foreign policy regarding domination of the American continent in 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression, requiring U.S. intervention.
  • Indian Removal Act/Trail of Tears

    Indian Removal Act/Trail of Tears
    Image result for Indian Removal Act/www.pbs.org
    The Indian Removal Act was passed by Congress on May 28, 1830, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. The law authorized the president to negotiate with southern Indian tribes for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for their ancestral homelands.
  • The Battle of the Alamo

    The Battle of the Alamo
    The Battle of the Alamo (February 23 – March 6, 1836) was a pivotal event in the Texas Revolution. Following a 13-day siege, Mexican troops under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna launched an assault on the Alamo Mission near San Antonio de Béxar (modern-day San Antonio, Texas, United States), killing all of the Texian defenders.
  • Texas Claims Independence

    Texas Claims Independence
    The Texas Declaration of Independence was the formal declaration of independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico in the Texas Revolution. It was adopted at the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 2, 1836, and formally signed the following day after mistakes were noted in the text.
  • Trail of Tears

    Trail of Tears
    In 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy, the Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate to an area in present-day Oklahoma. The Cherokee people called this journey the "Trail of Tears," because of its devastating effects
  • Texas annexed to U.S

    Texas annexed to U.S
    The Texas annexation was the 1845 incorporation of the Republic of Texas into the United States of America, which was admitted to the Union as the 28th state. Boundaries of Texas after the annexation in 1845
    After declaring their independence from the Republic of Mexico in 1836, the vast majority of Texas citizens favored the annexation of the Lone Star Republic by the United States.
  • Mexican-American War

    Mexican-American War
    A war between the U.S. and Mexico spanned the period from spring 1846 to fall 1847. The war was initiated by Mexico and resulted in Mexico's defeat and the loss of approximately half of its national territory in the north.
  • Agreement of 49th Parallel

    Agreement of 49th Parallel
    On June 15, 1846, Britain and the United States sign the Treaty of Oregon establishing the 49th parallel as the primary international boundary in the Pacific Northwest. Since 1818, the entire region, including what is now Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, and large portions of British Columbia, has been under joint occupancy, in which citizens of both countries travel and trade freely.
  • Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

    Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
    The war officially ended with the February 2, 1848, signing in Mexico of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty added an additional 525,000 square miles to United States territory, including the land that makes up all or parts of present-day Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
  • California becomes a state

    California becomes a state
    Though it had only been a part of the United States for less than two years, California becomes the 31st state in the union (without ever even having been a territory) on this day in 1850.
  • Gadsden Purchase

    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.
  • Kansas-Nebraska Act

    Kansas-Nebraska Act
    The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 (10 Stat. 277) created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois.