1. Chapter 13: Moving West and the War with Mexico

2. Terms and People
Expansion: Extending the nation beyond its existing borders
dictatorship – one-person rule
annex – add on
forty-niner – a nickname given to people who went to California in search of gold

3. Terms and People (continued)
John Tyler – 10th president
James K. Polk – 11th president; U.S. president who negotiated the boundaries of Oregon Country; later, he provoked the Mexican-American War

4. Essential Question: How and why did people go west
Essential Question: How and why did people go west? What challenges did they face?
Since colonial times, settlers had been moving westward and encountering Native Americans and Mexicans.
The mixing of these cultures affected the development of the West and the entire United States.

5. - From the beginning, Americans have been interested in westward expansion.
By the 1840s, many people supported Manifest Destiny, the belief that the United States was destined to extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Americans moving west caused the population of the Natives to drop drastically.

6. Some people went west for the fur trade, others to become missionaries, and still others for the free and fertile land.
They all faced dangers including assault, diseases, accidents, and natural disasters.

7. Chapter 13-2
The first Americans to move into the Far West (California, New Mexico, Oregon) were traders looking for new markets to sell their goods.
When Mexico became independent, they began to trade with the United States.
William Becknell led a wagon train filled with merchandise from Independence, Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico
800 miles
Barely survived the desert
Had to find a way to pass the Rocky Mountains which were almost impossible to cross.
This eventually became known as a
busy international trading route.

8. The Oregon Trail
The first easterners to build permanent homes in Oregon were missionaries wanting to bring their religious beliefs to the Indians.
Marcus & Narcissa Whitman
Set up a mission in Oregon to serve the Cayuse Indians – treated them differently and made little effort to get to know their ways so they had a difficult time converting them.
As more settlers arrived, the Cayuses became very hostile
Measles killed off many of the Indians so they killed the Whitmans
Despite these drawbacks, many easterners moved west.
Some farmers came for the free and fertile land

9. Many settlers followed the Oregon Trail, a route that stretched more than 2,000 miles from Missouri to Oregon. Travelers left in Spring and had to reach Oregon in 5 months. If they did not make it, they risked a slow death. Disease and accidents killed about 1 out of every 10 people on the Oregon Trail.
- More than 50,000 people reached Oregon between 1840 and 1860.

10. Life in the West Pioneer life had a lot of hardships
Not a lot of possessions
Work with hand tools – no machines
Diseases, accidents, and natural disasters like storms, tornadoes, and floods
See textbook pg 451
Some gave up and went back to the east
Some made it as far as running for president or becoming a congressman.
Women in the West
Worked alongside men on farms
Women in the Wyoming Territory were given the right to vote in 1869 while women in the East were still fighting for political rights.

11. Life in the West continued
Native Americans
Natives in Northern Oregon were uneasy and unhappy with white settlers
Natives in Southern Oregon lived in peace with the white settlers.
Settlers
Discovery of gold in the 1850s brought whites from the East and Chinese from the West which brought wars between the Natives and the settlers
Eventually Natives were forced to sign peace treaties.

12. Chapter 13-4
Another reason why settlers moved west was in search of gold. In January 1848, there was a discovery of gold near Sacramento, and the news spread quickly throughout the United States and abroad.
In 1849, the California Gold Rush started and about 80,000 forty-niners went west in search of gold.
During the gold rush, miners swarmed onto Native American lands to search for gold.
Nearly two thirds of the Native American population of California—about 100,000 people—died during the gold rush.

13. Most forty-niners were young men, and by 1850, the ratio of men to women in California was 12 to 1.
Some women did go to California, where they found profitable work:
Some women mined.
Most worked in or ran boardinghouses, hotels, restaurants, laundries, and stores.

14. Most mining towns sprang up overnight and emptied just as quickly when miners heard news of a gold strike in another place.
Miners needed supplies and entertainment, so most mining towns were made up of a row of businesses and a saloon.

15. The gold rush also brought enormous ethnic diversity to California.
People came from Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America. By 1860, the population of California was almost 40 percent foreign-born.

16. California’s Diverse Population
Chinese Immigrants
After news of the “mountain of gold” reached China, about 45,000 Chinese men went to California.
Because of prejudice, they usually did not get high-paying jobs in the mines, only menial jobs.
The Chinese worked hard building railroads, doing farm labor, cooking, and doing laundry.
Free African Americans
Several thousand free African Americans lived in California by 1850.
They had their own businesses and churches, but they could not vote or serve on juries.
Slavery did not take root in California because miners believed if you wanted to profit from gold you had to do the labor.

17. Chapter 13-3
Essential Question: What were the causes and effects of the Texas War for Independence and the Mexican-American War?

18. Growing Conflict in Texas
1820
Spanish governor of Texas gives Moses Austin a piece of land to establish a small colony in Texas (he dies so Stephen Austin, his son takes over)
Stephen Austin
Leads 300 Americans into the colony
Promised that all colonists would become Mexican citizens and convert to the Catholic Religion
Growing Conflict in Texas
Religion and Slavery
thousands of Americans who settled in Texas were Protestant, not Catholic.
The Americans that settled in Texas owned slaves and wanted to grow cotton in Texas, but Mexico had abolished slavery.
A Ban on Americans
1830 – Mexico banned more Americans from coming to Texas
Tried to force settlers to worship the Catholic religion
Mexico also began to raise heavy taxes on American imports.

19. In 1833, General Antonio López de Santa Anna became president of Mexico, and he soon started a dictatorship.
These events crushede the hopes of:
American settlers who wanted more representation in the Mexican legislature
Tejanos (Texans of Mexican descent) who wanted a more democratic government
In 1836, Texans declared independence from Mexico and created the Republic of Texas.

20. Santa Anna’s troops laid siege to the Alamo, a San Antonio mission where 185 Anglo-Americans and Tejanos were gathered.

21. The defenders of the Alamo held out for 12 days, but they were all eventually killed. Even though the Texans were defeated, this event inspired Americans to join the Mexican army.
Later, the Texans defeated Santa Anna’s army at San Jacinto.

22. A few months later, Sam Houston and the Texas forces attacked San Jacinto and captured Santa Anna.
They forced him to sign a treaty recognizing Texan independence.
Remember the Alamo!

23. Sam Houston, president of the new Republic of Texas, hoped the United States would annex Texas.
Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren would not support annexation, fearing that the addition of a slave state would split the country.
Almost 10 years after Texas became independent, it still had not become an American state.

24. The Presidential Election of 1844 and the Annexation of Texas and Oregon
Whig party nominee Henry Clay tried to avoid the issue of Texas annexation.
When campaigning for President, the Democratic party nominee James K. Polk called for the annexation of both Texas and Oregon, and he won the election as 11th president of the United States
Annexation of Texas and Oregon
Shortly before Polk took office, President John Tyler asked Congress to annex Texas.
Congress voted in favor of the annexation in 1845, and Texas quickly agreed.
Polk negotiated with Britain to divide Oregon, and the land the U.S. received eventually became Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

25. The annexation of Texas increased tensions with Mexico, because it had never formally recognized Texan independence.
The United States and Mexico also disagreed on the location of the southern boundary of Texas.
Polk offered Mexico money to settle the dispute and to purchase California and New Mexico.
Not wanting to cede more land to the United States, Mexico refused Polk’s offer.

26. Mexican troops attacked Americans.
Polk then tried to provoke Mexico into war by sending troops into the disputed land.
Mexican troops attacked Americans.
Congress declared war on Mexico, saying Mexico had forced its hand.

27. Many northerners were against the war and thought Polk was trying to extend slavery.
Most Americans, especially southerners and westerners, supported the Mexican-American War because they wanted more land.

28. Troops attacked Mexico on two fronts.
John C. Frémont and Stephen Kearney moved west from Fort Leavenworth to take control of California. They captured Santa Fe, New Mexico and then California.

29. Before they even reached California, settlers near San Francisco began their own armed revolt.
The settlers declared California an independent republic.
After several defeats, Santa Anna left Mexico City. The Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo formally ended the war in which Mexico recognized annexation of Texas and ceded a vast territory known as the Mexican cession.

30. Mexico recognized the U. S
Mexico recognized the U.S. annexation of Texas and ceded a vast territory that included present-day California, Nevada, and Utah, as well as parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.
The Mexican Cession
In return, the United States paid $18 million to Mexico.

31. In the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, the United States paid Mexico $10 million for a narrow strip of present-day Arizona and New Mexico.
The United States had achieved Manifest Destiny.

32. After the United States gained the lands known as the Mexican Cession, large numbers of Americans settled in this vast region.
The influx of settlers led to an ethnically diverse population, fights over water rights, and a tragic decline in the Native American population.

33. Even before the end of the Mexican-American War, the Mormons started moving into the Utah Territory.
The Mormons were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Joseph Smith, who founded the church in 1830, said that he had received the Book of Mormon through heavenly visions.

34. Mormons had customs, including polygamy, that differed from those of most Americans. This put them in conflict with their neighbors.
Hostile communities forced the Mormons to move from New York to Ohio and then to Missouri.
By 1844, the Mormons moved to Illinois, where Smith was murdered by an angry mob.

35. In 1847, Brigham Young, the new Mormon leader, led some of them on a long, hazardous journey to valley of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. In 1848, as a result of the Mexican Cession, Utah became part of the United States, and Congress created the Utah Territory.

36. In 1848, Mexico also ceded California to the United States
In 1848, Mexico also ceded California to the United States. At this time, about 10,000 Californios, or Mexican Californians, lived in the territory.
After the Mexican Cession, easterners began to migrate to California, and the two groups shunned each other.
In 1850, when California became a U.S. state, Mexicans accounted for only 15 percent of the population. Many sold their land.