1. Type 1
What comes to mind when you hear the expression, “The American West?”

2. The Imperatives of Expansion

5. The late 1830s were marked by the confident nationalism of the Jacksonian era.
There was a popular faith in the inevitability of progress.
This led to the attitude that it was a national duty to claim and occupy the continent.

8. Regional Differences
Southerners viewed expansion as the only way to perpetuate slavery and survive within the expanding nation.
Opponents of slavery were equally committed to expansion in order to admit more free states.

9. The United States’ “Manifest Destiny” legitimized acquisition of new territory, either by diplomacy or war.
A major factor in realizing this expansion was technological advance, both in transportation and communications.