WESTWARD EXPANSION: The “Manifest Destiny of Americans?”

1. WESTWARD EXPANSION: The “Manifest Destiny of Americans?”

3. Manifest Destiny – a phrase used by leaders and politicians in the 1840s to explain continental expansion by the United States – revitalized a sense of "mission" or national destiny for Americans.

6. The people of the United States felt it was their mission to extend the "boundaries of freedom" to others by imparting their idealism and belief in democratic institutions to those who were capable of self-government.

7. But there were other forces and political agendas at work as well. As the population of the original thirteen Colonies grew and the economy developed, the desire and attempts to expand into new land increased.

8. After the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory, ample land seemed available for the taking…For many colonists, land represented potential income, wealth, self-sufficiency and freedom.

9. Even before Lewis and Clark finished their epic journey to the Pacific, mountain men were traveling up and down the Missouri River in search of fur.

10. They were a rough-hewn bunch of adventurous entrepreneurs--that came to be called "Mountain Men."

11. These solitary fur-trappers lived thousands of miles from civilization. Most had no home, no money and no possessions—except what they could carry on their backs. They lived completely off the land

12. In 1806, Albert Pike was sent west to explore the great plains and Rocky Mountains.

13. Unfortunately, in his reports Pike referred to the plains as "the Great American Desert," a name that stuck. Even though much of the region is nothing like a desert, people back east conjured up images of sand dunes and cactus. No emigrant in their right mind would try to cross a severe wasteland--and so the big move west was delayed.

14. Pike's opinion that the west was a vast desert was confirmed by Maj. Steven Long, who led an expedition west in 1819.

15. Long and his men passed through what is now Oklahoma, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma. He concluded that the entire region was unfit for human habitation.

16. The second major westward expedition was was backed by the world's richest man--John Jacob Astor. Astor had read about Lewis and Clark's journey and by 1810 he saw an opportunity to make money.

17. His plan was to set up a fur-trading enterprise at the mouth of the Columbia River. Just one problem--how to get his men across the uncharted American West.

18. Robert Stuart led the Astor expedition.Along the way, Stuart made an incredible discovery--he found a 20-mile wide gap in the Rocky Mountains--the one passage where wagons could get through. Named South Pass, this find would become the key to western migration.

19. Explorer John Fremont became one of America's biggest heroes because of his journeys west. (He got the job largely because his wife's father was the powerful Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton.)

20. Benton believed America had an innate right to all the lands of the west, an idea that came to be called "Manifest Destiny." And so Fremont was under strict orders to make the west seem attractive--worth settling…

21. Even though the reports bear his name, Fremont didn't write them. He gave up and left the work to his wife--the intelligent and articulate Jesse Benton Fremont. It was she—as much as anyone—who lit the spark of America's big move west.

22. In addition, Horace Greeley, founding editor of the New York Tribune, one of the first "penny daily" newspapers, influenced his nearly one million readers throughout the United States with his ideas about the lure and value of westward expansion…

23. In the 1840s, he urged an entire generation to "Go West, young man!" “Do not lounge in the cities! There is room and health in the country, away from the crowds of idlers and imbeciles. Go west, before you are fitted for no life but that of the factory.” (New York Tribune, 1841)

24. In 1845, California appeared on the map as a northern province of Mexico. Already there was a small but prosperous community of Spanish-speaking cattle ranches.

26. The Oregon country was a huge tract of wilderness that extended north from California to the Alaska border. No one knew for certain to whom the land really belonged…

27. It was claimed by both the United States and Great Britain who had signed an unusual treaty of “joint occupation.” The American pioneers were really emigrants leaving their own country to a foreign land…

28. The influx of Americans into Oregon in the 1840s ignited a dispute that eventually led to demands by both countries for war.

30. The dispute originated in the fact that the boundaries of Oregon had ever been clearly fixed. The southern boundary of Russia extended to the 54 degree, 40 minute parallel of latitude.

31. The Democratic Party even made the phrase, “Fifty Four, Forty, or Fight” their 1844 campaign slogan…The dispute was quietly settled with the boundary set at 49 degrees; the original proposal by the United States.

32. When Oregon itself became an official section of the United States in 1846, the 2,000 miles of the Oregon Trail made it the longest thoroughfare in the republic.

33. The first emigrants to Oregon came by ship before atrail was established. Ships continued to to travel to Oregon even after the overland migrations began, but they were not popular among the pioneers.

34. First, the fare for a sea journey to Oregon was quite expensive—few pioneer families could afford it. Second, most Oregon-bound pioneers came from the central states—far from any sea port. Lastly, the sea journey often took up to full year—versus 4-6 months by wagon.

35. The journey west on the Oregon Trail and California Trail was exceptionally difficult by today's standards. One in 10 died along the way; many walked the entire two-thousand miles.

36. The overland move began in 1841 when a party of 69 hardy souls left Missouri, led by a farmer, John Bartleson, and a schoolteacher, John Bidwell.

38. The financial collapse and depression of 1837 had prompted people to look for opportunities in the west, but the discovery of gold in California in 1848 sent the emigration numbers up to 55,00 per year over the Oregon Trail !

41. Over the next 25 years more than a half million people went west on the western trails. Some went all the way to Oregon's Willamette Valley in search of farmland—many more split off for California in search of gold.

43. Still other emigrants headed west because of religious persecution in the United States. The Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) were driven from their homes in Nauvoo, Illinois in 1846.

44. The church was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith…

45. …but its ideas about communal economics and plural marriage drew hostility from non-believers.

47. After Joseph Smith was arrested and murdered by an angry mob in Illinois…

48. the religious group resolved to move westward, often by handcarts…

49. …where three years later, Salt Lake City would be built as their new home.

50. The political and religious leader Brigham Young would oversee the building of a prosperous city and state of Utah…