Westward Expansion: The First Half Of The 19th Century

American society and culture changed tremendously during the first half of the 19th century. Geographically, the country rapidly expanded beyond the Mississippi River. Western settlement provided access to new resources and opportunities, and it inspired the Transportation and Market Revolutions. In this dynamic context of change, westward expansion triggered dramatic and consequential historical change. Although America’s westward expansion inspired some positive political changes for whites, its negative impacts on American Indians and African American slaves were even more significant because they promoted increased sectionalism and set the stage for the Civil War. Westward expansion in the early 1800s gave rise to the politically transformative …show more content…
Even more consequential were the westward advance of slavery and the related development of sectionalism. Jefferson’s letter to John Holmes called the Missouri Compromise a terrifying development. In the context of his times, Jefferson saw the compromise over the westward expansion of slavery as dividing the nation and ultimately leading to a devastating Civil War. The Missouri Compromise guaranteed the rise of the cotton kingdom because it virtually guaranteed that slavery would not be ended through federal legislation. As slavery in the South expanded westward, cotton soared in economic significance—a fact that motivated Henry Clay to promote the Transportation Revolution via his American System. This not only dramatically affected the lives of southern African American slaves like Harriet Jacobs, it prompted textile industrialization in Northern cities like Lowell, Massachusetts. Thanks to Clay’s transportation network, North and South became economically wedded during the first half of the 1800s, thus diminishing the chances that slavery would be abolished without a bloody Civil