VUS 8A American Growth & Expansion

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, economic opportunity, industrialization, technological change, and immigration
fueled American growth and expansion.

AMERICAN GROWTH & EXPANSION

Four factors influenced American growth and expansion in the late 1800s and 1900s:
❖ Westward Movement
❖ IMMIGRATION
❖ Growth of CITIES
❖ Admission of New States

SETTLERS MOVE WEST

❖ After the Civil War, the WESTWARD movement of settlers INTENSIFIED in the
region between the MISSISSIPPI River and the PACIFIC Ocean.
❖ By the 1900s, the Great PLAINS and ROCKY Mountains regions of the American
West were no longer, but were fast becoming regions of farms, RANCHES, and
towns.

THE ERA OF THE COWBOY

❖ The years immediately before and after the Civil War were known as the era of the
American COWBOY.
❖ This era marked by long CATTLE drives for hundreds of miles over UNFENCED
open land in the West, which was the only way to get cattle to market.
THE HOMESTEAD ACT
❖ Many Americans had to rebuild their lives after the Civil War.
❖ They took advantage of the HOMESTEAD ACT of 1862, which gave FREE
public land in the western territories to settlers who would live on and farm the
land.
❖ SOUTHERNERS, including Americans, moved west to seek new opportunities
after the Civil War.

Admission of New States

❖ As the population moved west, many new STATES in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains regions were added to
the United States
❖ By the early 1900s, all states that make up the CONTINENTAL United States today, from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
were added.
Removal of Native Americas
❖ Many settlers felt that NATIVE Americans gave up their rights to the land because they hadn’t “IMPROVED” it.
❖ The forcible REMOVAL of the American Indians from their lands onto government RESERVATIONS continued
through the rest of the 1880s, as settlers continued to move west after the Civil War.

Tech Helps the Move West

❖ New technologies such as the RAILROAD, TELEGRAPH, and mechanical REAPER opened new lands in the
West for settlement.
❖ The inventions made farming profitable by increasing the EFFICIENCY of production and linking resources and
MARKETS.