Discuss the Status of Foreign Claims Essay

1. Discuss the status of foreign claims and possessions in the trans-Mississippi west from 1811 to 1840. imbibe the development of American interests in the region during this era. Between the years 1811 to 1840, Americans had migrated into the trans-Mississippi West in order to obtain defined boundaries with Canada and Mexico more(prenominal) thanover, they went westerly to acquire the westbound edge of the continent. Commercial goals fuelight-emitting diode early(a) interest as traders firs seek beaver skins in operating theater territory as early as 1811 and then bison robes prepared by the Plains tribes in the area around the pep pill Missouri River and its tri scarcelyaries.Many of the men in the fur business get married Indian women, thereby making valuable connections with Indian tribes involved in trapping. In the Southwest, the collapse of the Spanish Empire gave American traders an opportunity they had re puckerive sought. Their economic activity prepared the wa y for military conquest. To the south-central, put down for cotton plant rather than trade or missionary fervor attracted beattlers and squatters in the 1820s at the real time that the Tejano population of 2,000 was adjusting to Mexican independence.On the Pacific, a some new-sprung(prenominal) England traders carrying sea otter skins to China anchored in the harbors of Spanish atomic number 20 in the early nineteenth century. By the 1830s, as the near extermi ground of the animals finished this trade, a commerce based on California cowhides and tallow developed. New England ships brought clothes, boots, hardware, and piece of furniture manufactured in the East to exchange for hides collected from local ranchers. Among the earliest easterners to settle in the trans-Mississippi West were tribes from the South and the Old Northwest whom the American regime forcibly relocated in the present-day Oklahoma and Kansas.2. discharge American westward expansion in the 1840s. Amer ican expansion was overdue to the rapid population growth, advances in transportation, communication, and the bolstering idea of national superiority, known as ostensible Destiny. This sense of uniqueness and mission was a legacy of early Puritan utopianism and Revolutionary commonwealthanism. By the 1840s, the successful absorption of the Louisiana territorial dominion also contributed to the American expansion towards the best. Publicists of Manifest Destiny proclaimed that the nation not only could but must absorb new territories.This Manifest Destiny, the slogan in which they used to justify this expansion, was begun by John L. OSullivan. He expressed the conviction that the countrys superior institutions and close gave Americans a God-given right, even an obligation, to spread their civilization across the entire continent. 3. From 1823 to 1845, Texas grew from a sparsely settled region of northern Mexico to an independent republic to a state in the American Union. Discuss the reasons for and the major events of this transformation.Texas was able to evidence from Mexico into the American Union by yearning for their own independence, winning the interlocking at San Jacinto, and their new republic they were able to create. It began in 1823, when the Mexican organisation resolved to strengthen border areas by increasing population. To attract settlers, it offered land in return for token payments and pledges to become Roman Catholics and Mexican citizens. In 1829, the Mexican government altered its Texas policy. Determined to curb American influence, the government abolished slavery in Texas in 1830 and forbade further emigration from the United States.Officials began to collect customs duties on goods crossing the Louisiana border hoowever, little changed in Texas. American slave owners freed their slaves and then forced them to sign intent roughness contracts. Emigrants still crossed the border and outnumbered Mexicans. With the victory at San Ja cinto, Texas gained its independence. The new republic started off shakily, financially unstable, and unrecognised by its enemies. For the next few years, the lonely(prenominal) Star Republic led a precarious existence. 4. Analyze professorship Polks actions in handling the operating theatre question.Was Polk luck or wise to(p) in achieving a peaceful compromise with Britain? Polk was not willing to go to war with Great Britain for Oregon, so he withdrawed his suggestion, while he created more difficulties and complicated the resolution, and achieved a peaceful compromise by sheer luck. Polk began by setting out the American position that settlement carried the presumption of possession. Polk recognized the reality that Americans has not hesitated to settle the disputed territories. His flamboyant posture and rarefied American claims complicated the conflicts resolution.He offered a compromise to Great Britain, but in a tone that antagonized the British. Discussions or so Oreg on occupied Congress for month. Debate gradually revealed deep divisions about Oregon and the possibility of war with Great Britain. Polk took the unorthodox step of forwarding this design to the Senate for a preliminary response. Escaping some of the responsibility for retreating from slogans by sharing it with the Senate, Polk cease the crisis just a few weeks before the declaration of war with Mexico. 5.What led so many Americans to sell most of their possession and embark on an unknown future thousands of miles away in Oregon or California during the 1840s? The lands east of the Mississippi began to fill up, and American automatically called on known ideas to justify expansion they moved west for more lands to settle and more opportunity. Americans lost little time in moving into the new territories. During the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, thousands of Americans leave their homes for the West. By 1860, California alone had 3800,000 settlers.At the same time, thousands of Chinese headed south and east to destinations like North and South America to escape the opium wars in the 1840s with Great Britain, internal unrest, and poor economic conditions. Most who came to California called it the gilt Mountain. Most of the emigrants who headed for the Far West, where slavery was prohibited, were white and American-born. They came from the Midwest and Upper South. They had very different routes to arriving West, but they all had the same intention, to reach the riches and the break away opportunities to live. 6.Contrast the different lives and tasks face by pioneers on the agri pagan, mining, and urban frontiers in the West of the 1840s and 1850s. In contrast to the agricultural settlements, where early residents were isolated and the conjunction expanded gradually, the discovery of gold or silver spurred rapid, if usually short-lived, growth. exploit camps, ramshackle and often hastily constructed, soon housed hundreds or even thousands of miners and slew se rving them. Merchants, saloon keepers, cooks, druggists, gamblers, and prostitutes hurried into boom areas as fast as luckors.Usually, about half the residents of any mining camp were there to prospect the miners rather than the mines. Given the motivation, character, and ethnic diversity of those flocking to boom towns and the feeble attempts to set up local government in what were perceived as makeshift communities, it was hardly surprising that mining life was often disorderly. If mining life was usually not this violent, it tolerated behavior unacceptable farther east. Miners were not difficult to re-create eastern communities but to get rich. 7. Emigrants passing through do encountered a Mormon society that seemed familiar and orderly, yet foreign and shocking. formulate The visitors were able to relate and admire the attractively laid of town with irrigation and tidy houses, but as they noted the decorous nature of everyday life, they gossiped about polygamy and searched for signs of rebellion in the faces of Mormon women. Emigrants who opposed slavery were fond of study the Mormon wife to the black slave. They were amazed that so few Mormon women seemed interested in escaping from the bonds of plural marriage. Non-Mormon emigrants passing through Utah tack much that was recognizable.The government had familiar characteristics. Most Mormons were farmers many of them came originally from New England and the Midwest and shared mainstream customs and attitudes. But outsiders also perceived silent differences, for the heart of Mormon society was not the individual farmer on his own homestead but the cooperative village. 8. Describe the culture and policy-making organization of the Plains Indians. Discuss how and why their relationship with white Americans changed from the 1840s to 1851. White American first came in contact with this Plains tribes, and witnessedthat their culture differed from that of all the other Indian tribes. This ordinary encou nter on the overland trail minds to the social and cultural differences separating white Americans moving west and the native peoples with whom they came in contact. Confident of their determine and rights, emigrants had little regard for those who had lived in the West for centuries and no compunction in seizing their lands. The Plains tribes were similar in other tribes because the had adopt a winding way of life after the introduction of Spanish horses in the ordinal century.Mobility also increased tribal contact and conflict. And war played a central part in the lives of the Plains tribes. This pattern of conflict on the Plains disapprove political unity. But they had signed no treaties with the United States and had few hail-fellow-well-met feelings toward whites. Their contact with white society had brought gains through trade in skins, but the trade had also introduced alcohol and destructive epidemics of smallpox and scarlet fever. 9. carry through a brief overview o f American westward expansion from 1820 to 1860 from the Mexican point of view.For working-class Hispanic Americans, who became laborers for Anglo farmers or mining or railroad companies, we realize less and did more unpleasant jobs than Anglo workers. By 1870, the average Hispanic-American workers property was worth only about one-third of what its value had been 20 years earlier. Some of us resisted American expansion into the Southwest. Other Hispanics adopted different tactics. In New Mexico, members of Las Gorras Blancas ripped up railroad ties and cut the barbed-wires fences of Anglo ranchers and farmers.The religiously oriented Penitentes tried to work through the ballot box. Ordinary men, women, and children resisted efforts to convert them to Protestantism and clung to familiar customs and beliefs even as they learned some of the skills needful to survive in a changing culture. This movement seemed to benefit everyone, that for us. We were treated like dirt and was not able to obtain the full moon potential opportunity everyone else had. We had to struggle to make a living. This American westward expansion was tough on us Mexicans.