n the span of five years, the United States increased
its size by a third. It annexed Texas in 1845; negotiated
with Britain for half of the Oregon country; and acquired
California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Arizona, Colorado,
New Mexico, and Wyoming as a result of a war with Mexico.
America's dramatic territorial expansion intensified the
sectional conflict between North and South and raised
the fateful and ultimately divisive issue of whether slavery
would be allowed in the western territories.
Background
It took American colonists a century and a half to expand
as far west as the Appalachian Mounts, a few hundred miles
from the Atlantic coast. It took another fifty years to
push the frontier to the Mississippi River. Seeking cheap
land and inspired by the notion that Americans had a 'manifest
destiny' to stretch across the continent, pioneers by
1850 pushed the edge of settlement to Texas, the Southwest,
and the Pacific Northwest. |
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