Wyandotte woman describes tensions over slavery, 1849 In 1860, the Chinese merchant Pun Chi drafted this petition to congress, calling on the legislature to do more to protect Chinese immigrants. Life for these immigrants was particularly difficult, as even financially successful Chinese immigrants faced considerable discrimination. This number only grew after railroad companies turned to Chinese laborers to build western railroads. The California Gold Rush of 1849 brought a major influx of Asian immigrants to the new state. She was pregnant the entire trip and gave birth to her eighth child on the side of the road near the journey’s end. In these diary excerpts we find the experience of Amelia Stewart Knight who traveled with her husband and seven children from Iowa to Oregon. The experience of migrating west into territory still controlled by Native Americans was difficult and dangerous. Diary of a woman migrating to Oregon, 1853 He explained this idea in the following essay where he advocated adding Texas to the United States. He called this America’s “manifest destiny.” This idea motivated wars of American expansion. John Louis O’Sullivan, a popular editor and columnist, articulated the long-standing American belief in the God-given mission of the United States to lead the world in the transition to democracy. John O’Sullivan declares America’s manifest destiny, 1845 In this document, Cherokee leaders protested the loss of their territory using a very American tactic: petitioning. The Cherokee did more to adapt than perhaps any other Native American group, creating a written constitution modeled off the American constitution and adopting American culture in dress, speech, religion and economic activity.
Others worked to adapt to American culture and defend themselves using particularly American weapons like lawsuits and petitions. Native Americans responded differently to the constant encroachments and attacks of American settlers. Cherokee petition protesting removal, 1836 These sources demonstrate the conflicts over antebellum American expansion.ĭocuments 1. New methods of transportation and communication, the rapidity of the railroad and the telegraph, the rise of the international market economy, and the growth of the American frontier provided shared platforms to help Americans think across local identities and reaffirm a national character.
Democracy had to be timeless, boundless, and portable. According to these Americans, the United States was the embodiment of the democratic ideal. Manifest destiny attempted to make a virtue of America’s lack of history and turn it into the very basis of nationhood. The chauvinism of policies like Native American removal, the Mexican War, and filibustering, existed alongside growing anxiety. Debates over expansion, economics, diplomacy, and manifest destiny exposed some of the weaknesses of the American system. Other Americans protested these expansions as betrayals of American values. Many Americans believed that the United States was destined to conquer the American continent and perhaps beyond.
0 kommentar(er)
