The westward expansion of the United States included obtaining several areas of land, including the Louisiana Territory, Texas, the Gadsden Purchase, and Alaska. These acquisitions changed the course of America forever.

"Describes the causes of and effects of the Louisiana Purchase on US history"--Provided by publisher.

Readers will learn all about the United States' westward expansion in this interesting nonfiction book that uses appealing images, helpful maps, and supportive text to keep children engaged from beginning to end! The captivating facts will have readers excited and eager to learn more about such topics as the Louisiana Purchase, Monroe Doctrine, and the Alamo. A supporting glossary and table of contents are featured to aid in further understanding of the content and vocabulary.

Manifest Destiny is the idea that the United States was destined to stretch "from sea to shining sea." To fulfill that destiny, the United States embarked on a period of rapid expansion in the 19th century. Readers discover the ways the dream of Manifest Destiny was achieved through informative text that supports common social studies curriculum topics. Historical images and primary sources help readers visualize how much the nation changed in such a short period time. Readers also discover how the idea of Manifest Destiny influenced U.S. foreign policy long after Americans reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

How American westward expansion was governmentally engineered to promote the formation of a white settler nation Westward expansion of the United States is most conventionally remembered for rugged individualism, geographic isolationism, and a fair amount of luck. Yet the establishment of the forty-eight contiguous states was hardly a foregone conclusion, and the federal government played a critical role in its success. This book examines the politics of American expansion, showing how the government's regulation of population movements on the frontier, both settlement and removal, advanced national aspirations for empire and promoted the formation of a white settler nation. Building an American Empire details how a government that struggled to exercise plenary power used federal land policy to assert authority over the direction of expansion by engineering the pace and patterns of settlement and to control the movement of populations. At times, the government mobilized populations for compact settlement in strategically important areas of the frontier; at other times, policies were designed to actively restrain settler populations in order to prevent violence, international conflict, and breakaway states. Paul Frymer examines how these settlement patterns helped construct a dominant racial vision for America by incentivizing and directing the movement of white European settlers onto indigenous and diversely populated lands. These efforts were hardly seamless, and Frymer pays close attention to the failures as well, from the lack of further expansion into Latin America to the defeat of the black colonization movement. Building an American Empire reveals the lasting and profound significance government settlement policies had for the nation, both for establishing America as dominantly white and for restricting broader aspirations for empire in lands that could not be so racially engineered.

The presidential election of 1844 was one of the two or three most momentous elections in American history. Had Henry Clay won instead of James K. Polk, we'd be living in a very different country today. It cemented the westward expansion that brought Texas, California, and Oregon into the union. It also took place amid religious turmoil that included anti-Mormon and anti-Catholic violence, and the "Great Disappointment" in which thousands of followers of an obscure preacher named William Miller believed Christ would return to earth in October 1844. Author and journalist John Bicknell details even more compelling, interwoven events that occurred during this momentous year-the murder of Joseph Smith, the religious fermentation of the Second Great Awakening, John C. Frémont's exploration of the West, Charles Goodyear's patenting of vulcanized rubber, the near-death of President John Tyler in a freak naval explosion, and much more. All of these elements illustrate the competing visions of the American future-Democrats v. Whigs, Mormons v. Millerites, nativists v. Catholics, those who risked the venture westward and those who stayed safely behind-and how Polk's victory cemented the vision of a continental nation. John Bicknell has written and edited for FCW, Congressional Quarterly, Roll Call, and was coeditor of the 2012 edition of Politics in America, CQ's 1200-page guide to the US Congress. He lives in Haymarket, Virginia.

"Describes the causes of and effects of the Louisiana Purchase on US history"--Provided by publisher.