Lessons · Teaching · expansion west, and who paid for it

The country grew, and the growth had people living on it

Through purchase, treaty, annexation and war, the United States expanded west across the continent during the nineteenth century. That land was occupied, and expansion meant treaties made and broken, forced removals, and wars with the nations already there.

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What it is for

Expansion is usually taught as a map filling in, which is a way of not mentioning who was already on it. Both facts are true and both are examinable: the country did grow enormously, and that growth was at a cost paid by people who are usually left out of the sentence.

How to think about it

For each acquisition, ask three questions: how was it obtained, who was living there, and what happened to them. Use the word 'removal' where removal is what happened, and name treaties that were broken as broken.

Worked example

Land was acquired by purchase, by treaty, by annexation and by war

Four mechanisms, and they are examined by name.

The Louisiana Purchase roughly doubled the country's area at a stroke

Bought from France, which did not consult the people living on it.

Indigenous nations were removed by force from lands guaranteed by treaty

The Trail of Tears is the best-known removal and not the only one.

Expansion also spread the argument about slavery into every new territory

Which is what turned a regional disagreement into a national crisis.

Your turn

Name the purchase that roughly doubled the size of the country.

The  Purchase doubled the country's area

The trap

Describing westward movement into 'empty land'. It was not empty, and the emptiness in the older accounts is partly the result of the diseases two lessons back.

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