preview

Westward Expansion Essay

Good Essays

WESTWARD EXPANSION
The movement of people that has resulted in the settlement of America is one of the most fascinating and significant topics in the history of the United States. Nowhere else has an area of equal size been settled as a result of the initiative of small groups and individuals. Westward expansion helped stimulate the American economy.
The first organized migration to California originated in Platte County, on the far western frontier of Missouri. Reports described California as "a perfect paradise, a perpetual spring." The people of Platte County formed the Western Emigration Society, which sent out information about California throughout the Mississippi Valley (Wexler,139). Several merchant and landowners …show more content…

Such a resolution required only a majority vote in both houses of Congress, which avoided the necessity for the two-thirds Senate majority vote required for treaty ratification (Bender214). The strategy worked, on March 1, 1845 Lame-duck President John Tyler signed the joint Resolution inviting Texas to join the Union. This was the first of this procedure to acquire a territory. The issue of whether to admit Texas remained divisive, with opponents of slavery condemning the admissions of Texas as a territorial grab intended to create a new slave state.
Following the ratification of the treaty, some politicians felt the manifest destiny of the United States was to annex all of Mexico. The territory gains between 1845 and 1848 were enough to satisfy all but the most zealous advocates of manifest destiny. John O'Sullivan criticized the opponents of Texas annexation. He went beyond the immediate issue of Texas to argue that it is the fate of America to grow to encompass much, if not all of the North American continent. O'Sullivan is credited with inventing the term "manifest destiny" to describe his expansionist views for America. This phrase was coined in a New York Morning News editorial. (Wexler,153).
The added territories gained from the war with Mexico caused the controversy over the question of slavery between the North and the South. Following the Mexican War there were bitter debates in Congress, in state legislatures

Get Access