US History

U.S. History Study Guide

gold seekers from the Eastern U.S. and from many foreign countries swelled California's population from fourteen thousand to one hundred thousand. Once in the gold fields these "forty-niners"(named after the year 1849) had some rough characters, and the expectation of quick and easy riches, made California a wild and lawless place. In September 1849, having more than enough population and being in need of better government, California petitioned for admission to the Union as a state. Since few slaveholders had chosen to risk their property in the unstable atmosphere of California, the people of the area sought admission as a free state, agitating an already uneasy situation. 10.27 The Oregon Trail 1843 Pioneers traveled across the Oregon Trail, one of the main overland migration routes on the North American continent, in wagons in order to settle new parts of the United States of America during the 1800’s. The Oregon Trail helped the United States implement its cultural goal of Manifest Destiny, to expand the nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The five to six month journey spanned over half of the continent as the wagon trail went two thousand miles west through territories and the land which would later become six U.S. states (Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon). Significance • It became the symbol of American westward expansion in the 1800’s, a period of Manifest Destiny when the nation realized her mission of stretching from ocean to ocean. • It was the largest and longest mass migration in United States history up to that time and provided the means for strengthening American claims on the Pacific Northwest with all the U.S. settlers living in the region. The Settlement of Oregon Oregon had been visited by Lewis and Clark and in later years by American fur traders. Their reports sparked interest in Oregon's favorable soil and climate. During the first half of the 1840’s Americans had taken the two thousand mile, six-month journey on the Oregon Trail: which extended from, Independence, Missouri, across the plains along the Platte River, through the Rockies at South pass, and down the Snake River to their new homesteads. The area had been under the joint occupation of the U.S. and Great Britain since 1818 when Democrats, in the election of 1844, had called for U.S. ownership of all of Oregon. Though this stand had helped him win the election, Polk had little desire to fight the British for land he considered unsuitable for agriculture and unavailable for slavery which he favored. Oregon Polk’s presidential campaign slogan, “Fifty-four Forty or Fight,” referred to the latitude coordinates of the Northwest Territory claimed by both the U.S. and Great Britain. The area included present-day Oregon, Washington, and Idaho; parts of Montana and Wyoming; and much of western Canada.

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