"There shall be sung another golden age," prophesied the poet George Berkeley in 1752, "westward the course of empire takes its way." With the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and subsequent explorations by Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, Stephen Long,...

As citizens of the United States and immigrants migrated westward in the first half of the nineteenth century, they brought to new communities and states educational experiments and plans that had first taken shape in Europe and the Eastern states....

Following the American Revolution, Americans swarmed to the West. Kentucky and Tennessee provided the beachhead for the vanguard of land-hungry settlers. After the War of 1812 subsequent waves of pioneers flowed into the Ohio River valley, the Great...

At the time of the founding of the United States diverse peoples with varying languages, religions, and levels of technology lived across the breadth of North America. On the Eastern seaboard, the former English colonists struggled with their new...

The early national period was marked by a fascination with the West. Thomas Jefferson said in his first inaugural address in 1801 that Americans possess a "chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth...

For white Americans in the early nineteenth century the West represented many things. For some it offered adventure or a chance to get rich quick; for others, the opportunity to own land. The stock figures of the Old West remain in American memory:...

Major Powers And...

This is a simplified list of United States territorial acquisitions, beginning with American independence. Note that this list primarily concerns land acquired from other nation-states; the numerous territorial acquisitions from American Indians are not...