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Expansion Of Westward Expansion

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The United States became a continental nation with the purchase of Louisiana from France in 1803 and the settlement of the lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Westward expansion fueled conflict with Native populations and led to their forced removal. By 1820, 2 million Americans lived west of the Appalachians, out of a total national population of 10 million. The regional cultures that had developed along the Atlantic Coast New England, Middle Atlantic, Chesapeake, and Carolinas were transplanted into the Old Northwest, which included; Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin and the Old Southwest which included; Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas. But although Americans had begun to identify themselves as a nation, they were divided by sectional interests that deepened with rapid industrialization and the question of slavery. Americans steadily achieved economic independence from Europe. Rural Americans, once exclusively farmers, began manufacturing, merchants constructed regional market economies, and state governments promoted economic development. Industrialists remade rural villages into burgeoning factory towns such as Lowell, Massachusetts, the center of cotton textile manufacture. However, many textiles continued to be made in individual households and small weaving workshops. Mill owners called upon machines and factory operatives to boost production. Government leaders and entrepreneurs campaigned for the construction of

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