Westward Expansion Notes

Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, 1840-1900

• Manifest Destiny: The belief that Americans had a divine right and responsibility to settle the West with Protestant democratic values.
• Newspaper editor Horace Greely encouraged Americans to fulfill this dream, coining the phrase “Go west, young man.”
• Artists idealized western expansion, often ignoring the difficulties of life on the trail.

The Westward Spirit

• Early Views of the West:
  • Initially, the land west of the Mississippi was largely unexplored and viewed as an arid wasteland suitable only for American Indians.
  • Major Stephen Harriman Long described the Great Plains as a “great American desert.”
• Shift in Perception:
  • Beginning in the 1840s, economic opportunity and ideological encouragement changed American views of the West.
  • The federal government offered incentives to seize lands from Native American and Hispanic owners.
  • The economic Panic of 1837 led some to seek commercial farming opportunities in the West.
• Manifest Destiny:
  • Rooted in traditions of territorial expansion, the phrase “Manifest Destiny” implied divine encouragement for expansion.
  • Coined by John O’Sullivan in 1845, it suggested that Americans were destined to spread across the continent and expand democratic institutions.
  • Land developers and railroad magnates used this idea to encourage westward settlement for financial gain.
• The Oregon Trail:
  • The Oregon Trail was a famous western route, stretching 2,000 miles from Missouri.
  • Between 1845 and 1870, over 400,000 settlers traveled west on this trail.
  • Native Americans often served as guides or traded with emigrants.
• Federal Government Assistance:
  • The Homestead Act (1862) allowed any head of household or individual over 21 (including unmarried women) to receive 160 acres for a nominal fee.
  • Recipients were required to “improve the land” within five years.
  • The Pacific Railway Act commissioned the Union Pacific Railroad to build west from Omaha, Nebraska, and the Central Pacific Railroad to build east from Sacramento, California.
  • The act provided land grants and payment through loan bonds, prorated on the difficulty of the terrain.
  • The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 at Promontory, Utah.
• U.S. Government Presence:
  • The U.S. government actively built forts throughout the West to aid settlers and facilitate trade.
  • Forts like Fort Laramie and Fort Apache aimed to limit conflict between migrants and local American Indian tribes.
• Who Were the Settlers?:
  • The initial wave of settlers consisted of moderately prosperous, White, native-born farming families from the East.
  • By 1870, the Homestead Act and the transcontinental railroad opened western migration to Americans of more modest means.
  • Nearly 400,000 settlers had made the trek westward by 1870.
  • Recent immigrants from Northern Europe and Canada also migrated west.
  • Significant numbers came from Germany, Scandinavia, and Ireland.
  • Several thousand African Americans, known as exodusters, migrated west to escape racism and violence in the South.
  • By 1890, over 500,000 Black people lived west of the Mississippi River.
  • Hispanics had already settled in the American Southwest.
  • The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) granted American citizenship to those who chose to stay.

Homesteading: Dreams and Realities

• Challenges Faced by Farmers:
  • Settlers faced difficult farming conditions, few building materials, and harsh weather.
  • High railroad prices made it expensive to ship crops to market.
  • Many farms failed, while some grew into large “bonanza” farms by hiring labor.
• The Difficult Life of the Pioneer Farmer:
  • Pioneers, known as “sodbusters,” faced a difficult life on the frontier in the Midwest.
  • Low rainfall and harsh temperatures made crop cultivation hard.
  • Irrigation was a requirement, but building systems proved difficult and expensive.
  • Farmers relied on dry-farming techniques to grow corn, wheat, and sorghum.
• Housing and Environment:
  • The first houses were typically made of mud and sod with thatch roofs.
  • Rain caused mud to fall into food, and vermin infested bedding.
  • Weather patterns brought tornadoes, droughts, blizzards, and insect swarms.
  • Locust swarms devoured crops.
• Financial Struggles:**
  • Farmers faced the threat of debt and farm foreclosure by banks.
  • Farm necessities were costly and difficult to obtain.
  • Railroads charged high rates for farm equipment and livestock.
  • Farmers borrowed from banks with the intention of repaying after the harvest.
  • As more farmers moved westward, market prices of produce declined.
• Agricultural Advancements:**
  • The arrival of an extensive railroad network aided farmers by bringing supplies and farm machinery.
  • James Oliver’s improvements to the plow transformed life for homesteaders.
  • Advancements in hay mowers, manure spreaders, and threshing machines improved farm production.
• Migrant Labor:**
  • Large commercial farms, known as “bonanza farms,” began to develop.
  • Farmers hired migrant farmers to grow wheat on farms in excess of twenty thousand acres each.
  • Many would-be landowners became migrant farmers instead.
• A Pioneer Wife
  • Women faced physical hardships related to weather, illness and dangers with the added complication of childbirth.
  • Sometimes there was no doctor or midwife available/ Women died from manageable complications.
  • Farm wives spent typically nine hours per day on cleaning, sewing, laundering and food preparation.
  • Two additional hours per day were spent cleaning the barn/chicken coop, milking cows, caring for the chickens, and tending the family garden.

Making a Living in Gold and Cattle

• The California Gold Rush and Beyond:
  • The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California, led to the California Gold Rush.
  • A rush of prospectors descended upon new discovery sites.
  • Towns of some magnitude established themselves, bringing law and order.
  • The original Forty-Niners sifted gold through “panning” or sluice boxes.
  • In 1859, Henry T. P. Comstock discovered the first significant silver discovery in Nevada.
  • Subsequent mining in Arizona and Montana yielded copper.
• Shift to Larger Operations:
  • By the 1860s and 1870s, individual efforts to locate precious metals were less successful.
  • Investment capital and machinery were required to dig mine shafts.
  • Larger businesses underwrote mining operations, leading to greater urban stability.
  • Miners were paid daily or weekly wages to work underground.
  • Miners organized into unions and led strikes for better conditions.
• Towns to Ghost Towns:
  • As ore dried up, most mining towns turned into ghost towns.
  • The true lasting impact was the U.S. government's desire to bring law and order to the “Wild West.”
  • Nevada was admitted to the Union in 1864, with Colorado following in 1876.
• The Cattle Kingdom:
  • Wild cattle roamed the Spanish borderlands.
  • The completion of the first transcontinental railroad changed the game dramatically.
  • Ranchers and businessmen realized it was profitable to round up wild steers and transport them by rail.
• The Cattle Drives:
  • The Chisholm Trail provided a quick path from Texas to railroad terminals in Kansas.
  • Cowboys would receive their pay in “cowtowns.”
  • Cattlemen like Joseph G. McCoy built stockyards, hotels, and banks to support the business.
• Life as a Cowboy:
  • Between 1865 and 1885, as many as forty thousand cowboys roamed the Great Plains.
  • Close to one-third of them were Hispanic or African American.
  • Cowboy culture borrowed much from the Mexicans.
• Fencing and the End of Free Range:
  • Ranchers developed the land, limiting grazing opportunities.
  • In 1873, barbed wire allowed ranchers to fence off their lands.
  • The cattle industry grew increasingly dominated by eastern businessmen.
  • Capital investors from the East expanded rail lines and invested in ranches.
• Violence in the Wild West Myht and Reality:
  • The popular image of the Wild West portrayed in books, TV, and film has been of violence and mayhem.
  • Clashes often occurred as people struggled for scarce resources or dealt with sudden wealth or poverty.
  • Violence was concentrated largely in mining towns or during range wars among large and small cattle ranchers.
  • In Bodie, California, there were twenty-nine murders between 1877 and 1883.
  • John Wesley Hardin allegedly killed over twenty men in Texas.
    Violence Between Ranchers and Small Farmers*
  • In Clay County, Texas, cowboys began destroying fences erected along public lands.
  • Confrontations resulted in three deaths.
  • The Texas legislature passed laws to outlaw fence cutting and forced ranchers to remove fences illegally erected.
  • In Johnson County, Wyoming, cattle ranchers organized a “lynching bee” to make examples of cattle rustlers.
• Women in the Wild West
  * As wealthy men brought their families west, the lawless landscape began to change slowly.
  * Middle-class women arrived in the 1880s with their cattle baron husbands.
  * Churches, schools, civic clubs, and other community programs were created to promote family values
  * Efforts were made to prohibit prostitution and all other vices that they felt threatened the values that they held dear.

The Assault on American Indian Life and Culture

• Claiming Land, Relocating Landowners:
  • As many as 250,000 Native Americans populated the Great Plains.
  • The Indian Removal Act of 1830 resulted in forced removals, including the “Trail of Tears.”
  • The U.S. government negotiated treaties to move tribes out of the path of White settlers.
  • In 1851, the chiefs of most of the Great Plains tribes agreed to the First Treaty of Fort Laramie.
  • Annual payments of 50,000 were promised, but many never reached the tribes.
  • Settlers attacked tribes out of fear or to force them from the land.
• Conflicts Betwen Settlers and Americans Indians
  • In 1862, Dakotas in Minnesota rebelled in what became known as the Dakota War, killing White settlers.
  • President Lincoln intervened, releasing all but thirty-eight of the men; hung the remaining Dakota men
  • In Colorado, Arapahoe and Cheyenne tribes fought back against land encroachment.
  • The Sand Creek Massacre: Colonel John Chivington led a militia raid upon a camp where the Cheyenne leader Black Kettle had already negotiated a peaceful settlement where close to one hundred people were murdered.
• Additional Treaties:
  • The U.S. Congress commissioned a committee to investigate the causes of such incidents.
  • The Second Treaty of Fort Laramie moved the remaining Lakota people to the Black Hills.
  • The Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek moved the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Comanche people to Indian Territory.
• The Battle of Little Bighorn:
  • Settlers seeking gold moved upon the newly granted Sioux lands with support from U.S. cavalry troops.
  • Sitting Bull urged Native Americans to join his men in defense of their lands.
  • Colonel George Custer attacked what he thought was a minor encampment at the Little Bighorn River.
  • The warriors surrounded and killed Custer and 262 of his men.

American Indian Submission**

*  Neither the Lakota people nor any other Plains tribes followed this battle with any other armed encounter. *

Final Indian War**
*The final episode in the so-called Indian Wars occurred in 1890, at the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota
* 7th Calvary prepared to round up Lakota people performing the “Ghost Dance”.
* When the 7th Cavalry caught up to them at Wounded Knee, South Dakota on December 29, 1890.
* U.S. soldiers began firing indiscriminately upon the Native Americans; troops massacring between 150 and 300 men, women, and children
The United States awarded twenty of these soldiers the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military honor. , the Indian Wars came to a close.

• Americanization
  • Argument from reformers that the government should help Native Americans through an Americanization policy aimed at assimilating them into American society
    *Individual land ownership, Christian worship, and education for children became the cornerstones of this new assault on Native life and culture.
  • Government helped reformers remove Native American children from their homes for placement in boarding schools.
  • Native American boys and girls were forced to abandon their tribal traditions and embrace Euro-American social and cultural practices
    Reform Through Land Ownership
  • The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 permitted the federal government to divide the lands of any tribe and grant 160 acres of farmland or 320 acres of grazing land to each head of family.
    *Only then would they obtain full title and be granted the citizenship rights that land ownership entailed. It would not be until 1924 that formal citizenship was granted to all Native Americans.

The Impact of Expansion on Chinese Immigrants and Hispanic Citizens

• Chinese Immigrants in the American West:

  • Chinese immigrants were attracted to the notion of quick fortunes during the gold rush.
  • By 1880, over 300,000 Chinese lived in the United States, most in California.
  • Many found employment building the first transcontinental railroad.
  • Chinese immigrants faced harsh discrimination and violence from American settlers in the West.
  • The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 forbade further immigration from China.
    Economic Hardships and Racial Discrimination among Chinese Communities
    *As Chinese workers began competing with White Americans for jobs in California cities, the latter began a system of built-in discrimination.
  • White Americans formed “anti-coolie clubs” (“coolie” being a racial slur directed towards people of any Asian descent), through which they organized boycotts of Chinese-produced products and lobbied for anti-Chinese laws
  • Racial Discrimination became new Constitution in 1879 denied naturalized Chinese citizens the right to vote or hold state employment

• Hispanic Americans in the American West:

  • The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) promised U.S. citizenship to Hispanics living in the American Southwest.
    Economic Hardships and Racial Discrimination among Hispanic Citizens
  • Californios lost their land to White settlers-repeated efforts at legal redress mostly fell upon deaf ears.
    *Much like Chinese immigrants, Hispanic citizens were relegated to the worst-paying jobs under the most terrible working conditions.

• *Violence and Political Strategies Used Against White Citizens
  * Mexican Americans form las Gorras Blancas (the White Caps) to try and reclaim their land and intimidate White Americans against further land seizures. Although captured and beaten by White Americans, some White Caps adopted a more political strategy, gaining election to local offces
  * Laws passed in the United States intended to deprive Mexican Americans of their heritage; laws such as Sunday laws. Greaser laws permitted the imprisonment of any unemployed Mexican
  *