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Westward expansion
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Cotton gin invented
In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. -
XYZ Affair
The XYZ Affair was a political and diplomatic episode in 1797 and 1798, early in the administration of John Adams, involving a confrontation between the United States and Republican France that led to an undeclared war called the Quasi-War. -
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase is important because it gave the U.S. control of the Mississippi River and the port city of New Orleans, both of which were used by farmers to ship their crops and get paid. It also got rid of one country that might try to harm the new nation because France sold all of their North American territory. -
Louisiana purchase
The year that the Louisiana Territory was purchased by a treaty signed with France in by which the U.S. purchased for $15,000,000 the land extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, almost doubling the size of the United States. -
Adams-Onis Treaty
The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, also known as the Transcontinental Treaty, the Florida Purchase Treaty, or the Florida Treaty, was a treaty between the United States and Spain in 1819 that ceded Florida to the U.S. and defined the boundary between the U.S. and New Spain. -
Missouri Compromise
In an effort to preserve the balance of power in Congress between slave and free states, the Missouri Compromise was passed in 1820 admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. In 1854, the Missouri Compromise was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. -
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine is the best known U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere. Buried in a routine annual message delivered to Congress by President James Monroe in December 1823, the doctrine warns European nations that the United States would not tolerate further colonization or puppet monarchs. -
Indian Removal Act/Trail of Tears
In 1830 Congress, urged on by President Andrew Jackson, passed the Indian Removal Act which gave the federal government the power to relocate any Native Americans in the east to territory that was west of the Mississippi River. -
The Battle of the Alamo
The Battle of the Alamo was fought between the Republic of Texas and Mexico from February 23, 1836 to March 6, 1836. It took place at a fort in San Antonio, Texas called the Alamo. The Mexicans won the battle, killing all of the Texan soldiers inside the fort. -
texas declares independence
The Texas Declaration of Independence was the formal declaration of independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico in the Texas Revolution. It was adopted at the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 2, 1836, and formally signed the following day after mistakes were noted in the text. -
Trail of tears
The route along which the United States government forced several tribes of Native Americans, including the Cherokees, Seminoles, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Creeks, to migrate to reservations west of the Mississippi River in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s. -
Mexican-American War
A war fought between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. The United States won the war, encouraged by the feelings of many Americans that the country was accomplishing its manifest destiny of expansion. -
Agreement of 49th Parallel
The Treaty of 1818 set the boundary between the United States and British North America along the 49th parallel of north latitude from Minnesota to the "Stony Mountains" (now known as the Rocky Mountains). -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The war officially ended with the February 2, 1848, signing in Mexico of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty added an additional 525,000 square miles to United States territory, including the land that makes up all or parts of present-day Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. -
Texas annexed to U.S
The Texas annexation was the 1845 incorporation of the Republic of Texas into the United States of America, which was admitted to the Union as the 28th state on December 29, 1845. The Republic of Texas declared independence from the Republic of Mexico on March 2, 1836. -
California becomes a state
In 1849, Californians sought statehood and, after heated debate in the U.S. Congress arising out of the slavery issue, California entered the Union as a free, non-slavery state by the Compromise of 1850. California became the 31st state on September 9, 1850. -
Gadsden Purchase
The Gadsden Purchase, or Treaty, was an agreement between the United States and Mexico, finalized in 1854, in which the United States agreed to pay Mexico $10 million for a 29,670 square mile portion of Mexico that later became part of Arizona and New Mexico. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´.
