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http://www.animatedatlas.com/movie.html

http://www.mrnussbaum.com/history/trails.htm

Texas won independence from Mexico in 1836.

Many Texans didn’t wanted to join the United States.

Northern states didn’t want Texas to join because it would be a slave state.

Texas was finally annexed to the United States in 1845

Many Americans believed that it was the will of God for America to spread her political, religious and cultural practices from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

They argued that the Pacific was the “natural boundary” of the United States.

In 1848 the United States threatened to fight Great Britain for sole control of the Oregon Territory. The battle cry was “54 – 40 or fight.” President Polk didn’t want a war with England. Instead he settled for half of the Oregon Territory. The 49th parallel was extended from the Rockies to the Pacific as the border between Canada and the United States.

Now, the only thing between the United States and a full border along the Pacific was the Mexican territory in what is now Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, part of Arizona, and California.

President Polk picked a fight with Mexico and a war broke out.

The U.S. won. Mexico ceded her territory to the United States

In 1853, the United States purchased the little area in what is now southern Arizona from Mexico for 10 million dollars.

The U.S. needed this land to build a railroad.

Need for railroad = ten million dollars = Gadsden Purchase

A New Spirit of Change

The opportunity for cheap or even FREE land brought immigrants to the United States by the thousands.

People took their life savings to purchase passage in the steerage compartment of ships headed to America.

Freedom of religion and social mobility.

Economic Opportunity – Immigrants sought a land where they could support their families and have a better future.

Abundant Land – The acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican Cession gave the United States Millions more acres of land. Land was scarce in European countries.

•Pull factors are factors that attract people to a new place. The United States offered:

Push factors are factors that make people want to leave a place. Push factors which caused people to leave their homeland and come to America were: Population growth – European land was overcrowded. Agricultural Changes – large farmers bought out small farms

and pushed small farmers off their land. Crop Failures – poor harvests caused hunger and poverty.

Many people wanted to start over in America. Industrial Revolution – Many artisans were put out of work

by factories. Some left for America. Religious and Political Turmoil – To escape religious

persecution, Quakers fled Norway and Jews left Germany. After a failed revolution in Germany in 1848, many Germans left for America

39%

31%

16%

4% 1% 9%

IrelandGermanyGreat BritainThe AmericasScandinaviaOther

0

500,000

1,000,000

1,500,000

2,000,000

2,500,000

3,000,000

1821 - 1830 1831 - 1840 1841 - 1850 1851 - 1860

Some Americans discriminated against immigrants. Those people who didn’t like Catholics, were afraid of the Catholic influence of the Irish.

Many people thought immigrants would take their jobs.

These people formed a political group called “nativists” that used politics to discriminate against immigrants.

1. List three pull factors that attracted immigrants to the United States.

2. List three push factors that made people want to leave their homelands.

3. What two countries had the largest number of emigrants in between the years 1820 and 1860.

4. Approximately how many immigrants came to America between the years 1851 and 1860

5. Why did some people discriminate against immigrants?

The Second Great Awakening was a revival of religious feeling in the 1790’s and early 1800’s.

This revival led to greater social awareness which in turn led to movements to reform society.

The temperance movement was an attempt to stop people from drinking alcohol.

Labor unions were formed to improve working conditions in factories. The Lowell girls were some of the first form a labor union.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Horace Mann is known as the father of education. He promoted education a the “great equalizer” and believed it (education) should be free for all.

Reformers like Dorthea Dix worked to improve conditions in prisons and mental hospitals.

The movement to end slavery – abolition – began in the late 1700’s.

Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, William Lloyd Garrison and others fought to end slavery.

Newspapers like The North Star advocated an end to slavery.

The Underground Railroad was a series of safe houses located in different locations from the enslaved South to the free North.

Many women who were abolitionists also fought for equality for women.

Women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton held a convention in Seneca Falls, New York to fight for women’s suffrage.

They wrote The Seneca Falls Declaration of Independence and patterned it after the American Declaration of Independence.