Decade of Discord: Mini Civil War Rages over Kansas Vote
Outsiders attempt to influence territorial elections in Kansas in 1855 and as a result a pro-slavery territorial legislature is fraudulently elected. President Pierce decides to accept election results rather than intervene and stir up trouble, but ...
Decade of Discord: Transcontinental Railroad, The
Democrat Franklin Pierce wins the presidency in 1852 vowing to maintain national harmony. But as Western territories once considered unfit for cultivation begin to open up, questions of slave versus free again take center stage. Even the route of th...
Determined to be Heard: Counterculture, The
In the 1960s and 1970s, the youth counterculture openly scorns the values and conventions of middle-class society. This counterculture becomes identified with San Francisco, with Los Angeles, and later rural communes. Social experimentation, alterna...
Manifest Destiny?: Manifest Destiny and the Colonization of Texas
During the 1840s, the United States gains more than a million square miles of new territory, the greatest wave of expansion since the Louisiana purchase. Much of the land is annexed in a struggle between the U..S. and its neighbor to the south-Mexic...
From Days Before Time: Impact of Spanish Colonization on Native Populations
Two centuries of conflict leave its mark on both Native American and Spanish cultures. The Indian population is ravaged not only by warfare and enslavement, but also by diseases introduced with the arrival of Europeans. Europeans also introduce the ...
Legendary Frontier, The: Government Policies Undermine Indian Way of Life
The United States Indian policy is never genocidal; in fact government officials want them to survive but on their terms, abandoning tribal identify and assimilating. As the Western territory becomes more populated there is greater pressure to open ...
Legendary Frontier, The: Dispersal of the Tribes, The
The United States recognizes Indian peoples as semi-sovereign nations that have basic rights and own the land they have ceded to the United States, but these legal protections are subverted by the government when it gets in their way. One of the mos...
Legendary Frontier, The: Decline of the Western Farmer
Worldwide overproduction leads to a drop in prices for most agricultural products in the late 1880s. Farm families are painfully aware that something is wrong, but instead of blaming the glut of products on the market they tend to blame the railroad...
Legendary Frontier, The: Changing Western Economy, The
The events that transforms the far West and its economy begin in the mid 19th century with the discovery of gold in California. A second major economic surge occurs with the emergence of the cattle industry, but like the mining industry, the early e...
Pressures from Within: Population Surge West of Appalachians
Once the War of 1812 diminishes the threat of Indian uprisings, there is a dramatic surge in population west of the Appalachians, particularly in the region known as the "Old Northwest." Indians who had moved to the Ohio and Tennessee valleys when t...