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Westward Expansion

Blaine Jacob

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

SPCH 219

Due Date
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Westward Expansion

The California gold rush was established in 1848 due to the discovery of significant gold

deposits near the Sacramento. It played a great role in improving the economy of California as it

integrated the economy of California to that of the eastern United States. The gold mining took

place up to the eighteen fifty’s when gold declined in such mines (Caughey, 2020). The

California gold rush was amongst one of the biggest migration that took place in the history of

America. As the gold mine began, there were non-existence of banks in California and also, there

were very few women when the California Gold Rush began.

Some of the historic events that fueled the Westward Expansions include manifest

Destiny, the Gold Rush, and the Oregon Trial. The Oregon Trails was a 2000 miles route that

was from Independence, Missouri o Oregon City and was used by hundreds of thousands of

American pioneers. Also, as the news of new discovery spread concerning the newly discovered

gold mine, the prospective gold miners traveled over land or by sea into San Francisco and the

areas that surrounded it. The new mining population and the methods used in these mines

managed to cause an alteration in the manner of landscape that was present in California.

Manifest destiny is a phrase that stated that the idea of the United States had ben destined by God

(Ortiz-Bobea et al., 2018), and that it was objected towards the capitalism in North American

continent, spreading of democracy and expanding of dominion. This led to the rapid expansion

of the United States that later contributed to the issue of slavery due to the addition of new states

to the union.

The belief of manifest destiny was with regards to the idea that the United States had

been destined by God (Handlin, 2019). Those that had advocated for the manifest Destiny also

believed that they could spread the idea of democracy and expand the dominion and capitalism
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across the larger North American content. It had also believed in the existence of the superiority

of the white Americans and also that they had been destined by God so that they could concur

North America. The Unites States managed to be granted the opportunity of expanding their

boarders in through to the Pacific Ocean and beyond. The manifest destiny managed to touch on

the issues relating to morality, religion, patriotism, race and money. At the time when the Texas

had been admitted to the union in 1845, inevitably expanded to the western side all the way deep

into the Pacific Ocean with the firm holding diversified people.
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References

Caughey, J. W. (2020). The California Gold Rush. In The California Gold Rush. University of

California Press.

Ortiz-Bobea, A., Knippenberg, E., & Chambers, R. G. (2018). Growing climatic sensitivity of

US agriculture linked to technological change and regional specialization. Science

advances, 4(12), eaat4343.

Handlin, O. (2019). The Nineteenth-Century Immigration. In Immigration and US Foreign

Policy (pp. 26-39). Routledge.

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