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Santa Fe Trail
The trail ran from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New Mexico. American merchants loaded their wagon trains with cloth and other manufactured goods. In Santa Fe they exchanged these products with Mexican merchants for horses, mules, and silver. -
Manifest Destiny Begins
In 1843 South Carolina senator John C. Calhoun gave a speech to Congress. In it he described the great changes he had seen during his lifetime. "In the period of thirty-two years which have elapsed [passed] since I took my seat . . . [the] frontier has receded [moved] 1,000 miles to the west," he noted proudly. Then he talked about the future. "Our population is rolling toward the shores of the Pacific with an impetus [force] greater than what we realize." Calhoun believed that if the United Sta -
Texas Becomes a State
the United States of America annexed the Republic of Texas and admitted it to the Union as the 28th state. The U.S. thus inherited Texas' border dispute with Mexico; this quickly led to the Mexican-American War -
Oregon Treaty
a treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States that was signed on June 15, 1846, in Washington, D.C. The treaty brought an end to the Oregon boundary dispute by settling competing American and British claims to the Oregon Country, which had been jointly occupied by both Britain and the U.S. since the Treaty of 1818. -
California Becomes a State
On July 7, 1846, the U.S. annexation of California was proclaimed in Monterey after the surrender of a Mexican garrison. -
Mexican Cession
this land included the present-day states of California, Nevada, and Utah. It also included most of Arizona and New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. The United States also got the area claimed by Texas north of the Rio Grande. The Mexican Cession totaled more than 500,000 square miles. It increased the size of the United States by almost 25 percent. -
Gadsen Purchase
the U.S. government paid Mexico $10 million for the southern parts of what are now Arizona and New Mexico. With this purchase, the continental boundaries of the United States were finally fixed.
