1. Topic 3 – Expansion, Nationalism, Sectionalism
How did expansion cause sectionalism and eventually lead to the Civil War?

2. Topic 3a - Expansion
How did expansion cause sectionalism and eventually lead to the Civil War?

3. THE WEST

4. Expansion America was crowded along the coastline.
With newfound freedom the people wanted to move West as explorers & conquerors.

5. Louisiana Purchase Share the story of the Louisiana Purchase
- Mention why the land itself was so important
--- Purchased from France, explored by Lewis and Clark

6. Expansion
“Go west young man, go west and grow up with the country.” – H. Greeley
Lewis & Clark’s travels open the west for settlement.
Life was hard on the frontier
Yet it still attracted many Americans or was better where immigrants had come from.
Note that travelers would build a log cabin when they felt they had reached the right place and then would begin clearing the land for farming.
- Note some of the dangers of frontier life.

7. Consequences Native Americans Expansion Immigration
Already on the frontier
Not willing to give up land
Not used to “owning” land
Tribes like the Shawnee resisted
Tribes like the Cherokee willingly moved west or adopted American values.
Expansion
Moving west brings the people’s specific interests with them.
North: Industry, wage earners, thriving crowded cities, technology, progress.
South: Farming, slavery, tradition.
Immigration
America is the place to start a new life, an adventure, or to make it rich.
- As we will come to see over the course of topic 3, it is expansion west, and the differing competing interests of both the North and the South that will eventually cause the civil war. These sectional interests were so strong that caused the American people to choose a side and fight for either control or survival.

8. Consequences

9. Consequences War Mexican-American War The U.S. Civil War
Texas teams up with the U.S. to become its own nation
Is annexed by the U.S. and becomes a Southern State
U.S. “tricks” Mexico into war, takes its western territory after victory.
The U.S. Civil War
Expansion caused sectionalism which lead to the Civil War
loyalty to the interests of one's own region or section of the country, rather than to the country as a whole
The Plains Indians Wars