Westward Expansion

• Ideas from the west started to trickle up east

• The idea of "suffrage" or the right to vote began to change

• In 1828 Andrew Jackson ran against John Quincy Adams

• Adams was highly educated and wealthy

• Jackson had not gone to college, had taught himself law, and was a military leader

• Jackson led the Democratic party, encouraging everyone, even "common people" to vote

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Jackson vs Adams

The Railroad

●Early on railroads were simply horses
pulling a cart running along iron rails

●In 1830 Peter cooper built the first steam
powered locomotive

●As more railroads were constructed and
mapped out even more people began to
move west

●You could now take a train for a large part of your journey and travel by covered wagon the rest of the way

Manifest Destiny

●The population in the US exploded
from around 5 million to 23 million by the 1840s

●The idea of “Manifest Destiny” was
spread by politicians and authors

●It was the idea that the US is destined by God to continue to expand and promote democracy

●This idea was used to justify the
removal of Native Americans from their land.

The Oregon Trail

●By the 1840s the Oregon trail was the
most popular route to move west

●It ran from Missouri all the way into
Oregon

●Missionaries were the largest group to
travel the Oregon Trail

●The Great Migration of 1843

●About 1 in 10 people did not survive

●The popularity of the Oregon Trail died
down by the late 1860s as the first
transcontinental railroad was established