Westward expansion, the 19th-century movement of settlers into the American West, began with the Louisiana Purchase and was fueled by the Gold Rush, the Oregon Trail and a belief in "manifest destiny."
Westward Expansion summary: The story of the United States has always been one of westward expansion, beginning along the East Coast and continuing, ...
During the 19th Century, more than 1.6 million square kilometers (a million square miles) of land west of the Mississippi River was acquired by the United States federal government. This led to a widespread migration west, referred to as Westward Expansion.
The original thirteen colonies of the United States were settled along the east coast of North America. For many years, few colonists went beyond the Appalachian Mountains. However, as the country gained independence....
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson purchased the territory of Louisiana from the French government for $15 million. Known as the Louisiana Purchase, this new territory stretched....
Japanese immigrants first came to the Pacific Northwest in the 1880s, when federal ... As new irrigation projects expanded sugar beet production in the West ...
In the mainland of the United States, Japanese immigration began much more ... mines, canneries, and railroads of the American West, sometimes becoming ...
"This guide is a compilation of many of the resources on the Indians of North America available at the Library of Congress as well as selected resources outside the Library."
By 1790, the United States government had claimed all Indian territory east of the Mississippi River, establishing tribal reservations and selling land to settlers.
This multimedia guided tour proceeds chapter-by-chapter through each episode in the series, offering selected documentary materials, archival images and commentary, as well as links to background information and other resources of the web site.
The map shows United States growth throughout the 1800s
About Primary Sources
What are Primary Sources?
Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. Primary sources may include:
letters
manuscripts
diaries
journals
contemporaneous newspaper artiles
speeches
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pamphlets
government documents
photographs
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moving pictures or video recordings
research data
objects or artifacts such as works of art or ancient roads, buildings, tools, and weapons
and other other documents of the time.
These sources serve as the raw material to interpret the past, and when they are used along with previous interpretations by historians, they provide the resources necessary for historical research.
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