8.4 Expansion of the United States

Read the following section and answer the questions that follow.
Expansion of the United States
In the 1800s, the United States was a beacon of hope for many people. The American economy was growing rapidly, offering jobs to newcomers. The Constitution and Bill of Rights held out the hope of political and religious freedom. Not everyone shared in the prosperity or the ideals of democracy. Still, by the turn of the nineteenth century, important reforms were being made.

Territorial Expansion
From the earliest years of its history, the United States followed a policy of expansionism, or extending the nation’s boundaries. At first, the United States stretched only from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana territory from France. In one stroke, the Louisiana Purchase virtually doubled the size of the nation.
By 1846, the United States had expanded to include Florida, Oregon, and the Republic of Texas. The Mexican War (1846–1848) added California and the Southwest. With growing pride and con-
fidence, Americans claimed that their nation was destined to spread across the entire continent, from sea to sea. This idea became known as Manifest Destiny. Some expansionists even hoped to absorb Canada and Mexico. In fact, the United States did go far afield. In 1867, it bought Alaska from Russia and in 1898 annexed the Hawaiian Islands.

Expanding Democracy
In 1800, the United States had the most liberal suffrage in the world, but still only white men who owned property could vote. States slowly chipped away at requirements. By the 1830s, most white men had the
right to vote. Democracy was still far from complete, however.
By mid-century, reformers were campaigning for many changes. Some demanded a ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages. Others called for better treatment of the mentally ill or pushed for free elementary schools. But two crusades stood out above all others because they highlighted the
limits of American democracy—the abolition movement and the women’s rights movement.

Calls for Abolition 
In the early 1800s, a few Americans began to call for an immediate and complete end to slavery. One of these abolitionists was William Lloyd Garrison, who pressed the antislavery cause through
his newspaper, the Liberator. Another was Frederick Douglass. He had been born into slavery, had escaped, and he spoke eloquently in the North about the evils of the system.

Settling the West 
During the 1800s, settlers flocked to newly acquired western lands. The discovery of gold in California drew a flood of easterners. Other people, like the Mormons, sought a place to practice their religion freely. Still others headed west in the spirit of adventure. The waves of settlers brought tragedy to Native Americans. Following a pattern that began in colonial days, newcomers pushed the Indians off their lands, sometimes by treaty, but more often by force. Some Native Americans resisted the invaders, but they were outgunned and outnumbered. As settlers moved westward, they destroyed the buffalo herds on which the Plains Indians depended. By the 1890s, most surviving Native Americans had been driven onto reservations,usually in the least desirable parts of a territory.
By the 1850s, the battle over slavery had intensified. As each new state entered the union, proslavery and antislavery forces met in violent confrontations to decide whether slavery would be legal in the new state. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped convince many
northerners that slavery was a great social evil.

Women’s Rights Movement 
Women worked hard in the antislavery movement. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton traveled to London for the World Antislavery Convention—only to find they were forbid-
den to speak because they were women. Gradually, American women began to protest the laws and customs that limited their lives.
In 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York, Mott and Stanton organized the first women’s rights convention. The convention passed a resolution, based on the Declaration of Independence. It began, “We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men and women are created equal.” The women’s rights movement set as its goal equality before the law, in the workplace, and in education. Some women also demanded the vote.

The Civil War and Its Aftermath
Economic differences, as well as the slavery issue, drove the Northern and Southern regions of the United States apart. The division reached a crisis in 1860 when Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Lincoln opposed extending slavery into new territories. Southerners feared that he would eventually abolish slavery altogether and that the federal government would infringe on their states’ rights.

North Versus South 
Soon after Lincoln’s election, most southern states seceded, or withdrew, from the Union and
formed the Confederate States of America. This action sparked the Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865.
The South had fewer resources, fewer people, and less industry than the North. Still, Southerners fought fiercely to defend their cause. The Confederacy finally surrendered in 1865. The struggle cost more than 600,000 lives—the largest casualty figures of any American war.

Challenges for African Americans 
During the war, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation by which enslaved African Americans in the South were declared free. After the war, three amendments to the Constitution banned slavery throughout the country and granted political rights to African Americans. Under the Fifteenth Amendment, African American men won the right to vote.
Still, African Americans faced many restrictions. In the South, state laws imposed segregation, or legal separation of the races, in hospitals, schools, and other public places. Other state laws imposed conditions for voter eligibility that, despite the Fifteenth Amendment, prevented African Americans from voting.

Economic Growth and Social Reform
After the Civil War, the United States grew to lead the world in industrial and agricultural production. A special combination of factors made this possible including political stability, private property rights, a free enterprise system, and an inexpensive supply of land and labor—supplied mostly by immigrants. Finally, a growing network of transportation and communications technologies aided businesses in transporting resources and finished products.

Business and Labor 
By 1900, giant monopolies controlled whole industries. Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie built the nation’s largest steel company, while John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company dominated the world’s petroleum industry. Big business enjoyed tremendous profits. 
But the growing prosperity was not shared by all. In factories, wages were low and conditions were often brutal. To defend their interests, American workers organized labor unions such as the American Federation of Labor. Unions sought better wages, hours, and working conditions. Struggles with management sometimes erupted into violent confrontations. Slowly, however, workers made gains.

Populists and Progressives 
In the economic hard times of the late 1800s, farmers also organized themselves to defend their interests. In the 1890s, they joined city workers to support the new Populist party. The Populists never became a major party, but their platform of reforms, such as an eight-hour workday, eventually became law.
By 1900, reformers known as Progressives also pressed for change. They sought laws to ban child labor, limit working hours, regulate monopolies, and give voters more power. Another major goal of the Progressives was obtaining voting rights for women. After a long struggle, American suffragists finally won the vote in 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment went into effect.

America.
For many Irish families fleeing hunger, Russian Jews escaping pogroms, or poor Italian farmers seeking
economic opportunity, the answer was the same—America! A poem inscribed on the base of the Statue
of Liberty expressed the welcome and promise of freedom that millions of immigrants dreamed of:
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
—Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”

(define) expansionism

(define) Louisiana Purchase

(define) Manifest Destiny

(define) secede

(define) segregation

(Standards Check) Describe the United States’ physical expansion during the 1800s.

(Standards Check) How did the abolition and women’s rights movements highlight the limits of American democracy?

(Standards Check) What changes did the Civil War bring about for African Americans?

(Standards Check) Describe the factors that helped the United States become an industrial and agricultural leader.

(Assessment) Describe how the United States grew in each of these areas in the 1800s: (a) territory, (b) population, (c) economy.

(Assessment) Describe two ways that democracy expanded.

(Assessment) (a) How did immigrants benefit from economic growth in the United States after the Civil War? (b) What problems did workers face?

(Standards Check) Trace the evolution of work and labor, including the demise of the slave trade and the effects of immigration, mining and manufacturing, division of labor, and the union movement.

(Focus Question) How did the United States develop during the 1800s?

(explain) The theme and meaning behind Emma Lazarus's poem