A Research on Louisiana Purchase

America's Westward Expansion was a period between 1803 and 1890 whereby the United States erupted with growth. The primary focus of this expansion centers around the purchase of a Louisiana territory from the French Government by the president of 1803, President Thomas Jefferson. This purchase later became known as the Louisiana Purchase. Other factors such as the Manifest Destiny, slavery, the Mexican War, and the Compromise of 1850 would also later put their mark this historical event as well. This is how these factors eventually contributed to arguably one of the greatest eras of the United States.

The Louisiana Purchase (as mentioned before) was a purchase of a Louisiana territory from the French Government by the president of 1803, President Thomas. The land was bought by the president for fifteen million dollars and extended from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains as well from Canada to New Orleans which increased the size of America by a factor of two. Jefferson strongly and firmly believed that Westward Expansion was crucial to the nation's well being.1 He also believed that an independent and rectitude citizenry (the people of a location regarded mutually/ collectively) hinged on a republic to withstand to political turmoil and that that independence and rectitude tied in with ownership of land, primarily with that of homestead farms. America needed the keep expanding to meet the demand of land to support the exemplary population of rectitude or virtuous yeomen (a man having a small landed estate). Although Jefferson's plan of expanding west may have been an icon of the 19th century, it may ultimately be its downfall.

The second factor of America's Westward Expansion is the Manifest Destiny. Approximately seven million individuals (which is roughly forty percent of nation's population) were situated west of trans-Appalachian by 1840. The majority of these people previously vacated their eastern homes in hopes of a more economical future and soon related to the Westward movement, owning a lot of land, and prideful farming just like Thomas Jefferson. A dependently stable assembly of people began to take shape from huge numbers of European factory workers. In retrospect, the chance and hope of independence and a greater deal of mobility was offered by the westward movement in the United States. In fact, the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 incorporated roughly thirty thousand square mile of Mexican land to the United States. Many people were swayed into moving westward by a journalist by the name of John O'Sullivan in 1945 by the mark by which he engraved into the face of Westward Expansion. Sullivan enforced that moving westward was a crucial aspect of the republican ideologies and that it was America's' manifest destiny to move westward and to have, in procession, all the land which Province has given us.

The third factor, slavery, was questioned among early westward settlers. They wondered if slavery would be permitted in the growing western states. The Missouri Compromise aimed to answer this question in 1820 by allowing Missouri to join the union as a slave state whitest making Maine a free state which safeguarded the sensitive balance in the Congress. This compromise also demanded that slavery would be banned north of the southern edge of Missouri. It did not, however, pertain to developing territories which didn't associate with the Louisiana Purchase, thus, the problem of slavery lingered in the expanding nation. The economy in the south became more and more reliant on King Cotton2 and the indoctrinated labor which fueled it. During this time, an increasing number of Northern people began to speculate that the expansion of slavery violated their liberty which they owned, together as individuals (not represented by the pro-slavery Congress) and as yeomen farmers. They didn't oppose slavery per say, but rather opposed the way expansion appeared to intervene with their economic opportunities.

 

Many years since the Missouri Compromise, in spite of the conflict amounts growing sections, Americans continued to trek West. The Rockies to the Oregon Territory, owned by Great Britain, were hiked by countless numbers of people and countless more traveled into California, New Mexico, and even Texas which are all Mexican Territories at the time. American colonists in Texas became a part of their Tejano neighbors (Spanish-derived Texans) and gained independence from Mexico in 1837 and voted the join the United States as a state with slaves.

This, however, was bound to throw off the precise balance that the Missouri Compromise had accomplished. The united partnership of Texas with other Mexican Territories wasn't established as a political anchor until a visionary of westward expansion and planter of cotton, James Knox Polk, was elected in 1844. On February, 1846, Polk, alongside many of his allies, allowed Texas to unite with the Union as a state of slaves as Oregon became apart of the Union as a free state after a long discussion with Great Britain in June. Polk ignited a war against Mexico that same month, untruthfully asserting Mexico's army as having invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil. This were ended up becoming widely unflavored among the Northerners partly because they opposed to what they have seen, a war which grew slavery. David Wilmot, a Pennsylvania Congressman, added a condition to the war-granting bill stating that slavery should never be allowed in any territories in Mexico which the United States may gain. Although Wilmot's condition did not go through Congress, it outlined America's most horrific, dividing acts, slavery.

The last factor of Westward expansion, the Compromise of 1850, begins when the Treaty of Guadalupe 3 which to an end to the Mexican War in 1848. This treaty added over a million square miles to the United States and was larger than the Louisiana Purchase. The procurement or addition of this section of fertile land brought back to life, the proposition which the Missouri Compromise had apparently closed: In new developing American territories, what would be the condition or state of slavery? Henry Clay, a senator from Kentucky, after two full years of constant bickering and liable debates over the topic of slavery, put into perspective, a new compromise. This new compromise was comprised of four sections total. First, California would join the Union as a free state; second, the conditions of slavery in the remaining Mexican territories would be told amongst the people situated there; third, the trading of slaves would be obliterated in Washington, D.C., and finally, a completely redesigned Fugitive Slave Act would allow Southerners to own runaway slaves who had left to Northern states were slavery was not permitted (or even needed).

King Cotton was phrase which was adapted and later commonly used by a Southern Politicians and authors before the American Civil War. This demonstrates the economical and political weight of cotton manufacturing. After the cotton gin, which helped pull cotton, was invented in 1793, cotton beat tobacco as the primary cash grabber in the southern agricultural economy and soon holding over half of the total Exports in the United States.

The Treaty of Guadalupe was a treaty between Mexico and the United States and was established on February 2nd, 1848 and officially ended the Mexican War. The treaty gets its name from the place where it was signed was Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo which means Guadalupe Hidalgo town. Guadalupe Hidalgo was neighborhood north of Mexico City. This treaty was bought for fifteen million dollars to mark the line which divided Mexico from the United States at the Rio Grande and the Gilda River. This allowed American to gain up to five hundred and twenty five thousand additional square miles of fertile land from Mexico. In exchange, the United States agreed to pay off the more than three million dollar claim made by United States citizens opposing Mexico.

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