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Essay about The Jacksonian Era

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Three specific ways in which American expansion shaped the Jacksonian period was through the advancement of technology, by way of slavery, and the Indian Removal Act. Jackson used any political and economic means necessary in order to see American frontier regions expand across the nation. Jackson’s Indian Removal policy had some of the most important consequences and paved the way toward American expansion. In the beginning of the Jacksonian era, colonial Americans’ settlements had not yet extended far beyond the Atlantic seaboard, partly because bad roads and primitive technology limited their ability to expand, and because both hostile Indians and British imperial policy discouraged migration beyond Appalachian Mountains. However, all …show more content…

The Erie Canal unquestionably brought prosperity and expansion to the Jacksonian period. It also brought together people who might have otherwise remained apart from this urban area. Rural and urban areas were now more closely linked together as one American nation. Technology shaped the Jacksonian period into not only expanding, but connecting. The Erie Canal was not the only new development that attracted people; America built some of the first factories as well. Factory production before now was almost nonexistent. A cotton-spinning mill was first built in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Over the next decades textile was the dominant industry of the country. This made way for hundreds of companies being built across the nation. (C-114) The iron industry also helped make way for better jobs which lead to more immigration. Pennsylvania’s furnaces and rolling mills were fast supplanting small local forges. Philadelphia had developed a high pressure steam engine that was used for a variety of industrial purposes. Within a few years it powered ships, sawmills, flour mills, and printing presses. The demand for labor in these facilities created more and more immigration. Until about 1830, the increase in population was fed mainly by newcomers from New England. However, the tide shifted in the 1840’s, millions of people from Ireland, Germany, and other countries moved to America. In just over ten to twenty years, major

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