Manifest Destiny means "obvious fate". To many Americans in 1845 it was obvious that they should continue to move and settle farther and farther west- all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
The United States took the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains through many different methods - war, purchases, treaties, settlement. For each of the land acquisitions: find out how the U.S. got the land, who gave up or lost the land, and what the circumstances were that led to control of the land changing hands.
The first row of the chart is completed for you as an example.
Land/year added to the United States | Purchased from whom? | What were the circumstances? War, Treaty, Purchase? Tell the story of how the U.S. got this land. | What do you think? Should the United States government have added this land in this way? Why or Why Not? |
Louisiana Purchase 1803 | Purchased from France | President Jefferson wanted to buy New Orleans from the French and he offered $7.5 million. Because France was on the brink of war with Great Britain and other problems that France was having in Haiti, the French offered all of Louisiana to the United States for $15 million. | U.S farmers and traders needed it because the Mississippi River gave them a way to ship their crops and supplies. The French willingly sold the land, but they didn’t take into account the Native Americans. Overall, yes, I think the US should have made this purchase in order to help the farmers. |
Florida 1819 |
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Texas 1845 |
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Oregon Country 1846 |
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Mexican Cession 1848 |
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Gadsden Purchase 1853 |
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Resources
US Studies by the Minnesota Partnership for Collaborative Curriculum is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
