B. Westward Expansion After the Civil

CK_5_TH_HG_P231_324.QXD 2/13/06 1:55 PM Page 254 I. Westward Expansion The war lasted from May 1846 to September 1848. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), which ended the war, Mexico ceded to the United States all or part of what became the following states: California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona. General Zachary Taylor was known to his soldiers as “Old Rough and Ready.” He was a soldier for forty years, fighting in the War of 1812, subduing Native Americans in the Midwest, and defeating the Seminole in the Second Seminole War in Florida. He became a national hero after his defeat of General Santa Anna in the Mexican-American War. Taylor was nominated as the Whig candidate for President in 1848 and won. Although it was his success that added large tracts of land to the United States, he opposed the expansion of slavery into any territory seeking admission to state- hood. He died after only sixteen months in office. Opposition to the War Opposition to the war was strong among some Americans. Southerners and Westerners felt they would benefit from a larger United States and supported the war. Many Northerners, on the other hand, opposed the war on moral grounds; they opposed the addition of more slave states to the Union. One of those who was against the war was Henry David Thoreau. In his “Essay on the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau asked whether a man had the right to disobey a law or government he felt was wrong. He concluded that there was such a right: Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obliga- tion which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. Thoreau went on to explain his opposition to a government more concerned, in his eyes, with conquest than justice. 54 The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consent- ed to this measure. Thoreau had actually declined to pay his taxes, and spent one night in prison. Was he ashamed of this? On the contrary, Thoreau wrote: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is . a prison.” Thoreau’s opposition did little to affect the war, though his ideas about civil disobedience would influence the thinking of others, including Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., who chose nonviolent resistance, such as going to jail, rather than cooperation with unjust laws. B. Westward Expansion After the Civil War Homestead Act of 1862 Settlement of the Great Plains—the land between the Mississippi and the Rockies—did not take place to any great degree until after the Civil War. During 254 Grade 5 Handbook the War, Congress passed the Homestead Act in 1862, which encouraged people CK_5_TH_HG_P231_324.QXD 2/13/06 1:55 PM Page 255 to settle in the Plains. The government announced it would give 160 acres of land to any citizen or immigrant who was willing to farm it for five years. Land could also be bought for $1.25 an acre after six months of living on it. Before this law was passed, people had either bypassed the Great Plains in favor of the fertile Northwest or were lured to California by the get-rich-quick tales of the gold rush. But the Homestead Act changed that. In the next 40 years, the U.S. government gave away 80 million acres of land under the act. In the late 1800s, largely because of the Homestead Act, many thousands of white Americans, as well as many freed slaves (known as Exodusters) and European immigrants, relocated to the Great Plains. These settlers established farms and ranches on the plains. Because trees were scarce on the Great Plains, many settlers built “sod houses” by cutting and piling up blocks of grass and turf. Farmers battled with great swarms of grasshoppers and other insects that devoured their crops. They raised windmills to bring water up from below the earth’s surface, and they used a new invention called “barbed wire” to help fence in their livestock. Life on the Great Plains was hard. Some parts of the plains were fertile and received enough water for successful farming, but other parts suffered occasional droughts, which made farming impossible and led to blinding dust storms. When these droughts struck, they drove farmers out of business. “Go West, young man!”—Horace Greeley Horace Greeley was the founder and editor of the New York Tribune, an influ- ential newspaper during the mid-1800s. In 1851, he wrote an article advising young men how to make their fortune. He said the following: If you have no family or friends to aid you . turn your face to the great West and there build up your home and fortune. In time, this advice was boiled down to “Go West, young man!” Thousands of young men and women did just that. Cross-curricular Railroads Teaching Idea Many teachers like to teach railroad Railroads had several advantages over roads, rivers, and canals. Railroads songs while students are studying the were dependable, cheap, and convenient. The first railroads were built in British history of the railroad. Download coal mines, but in 1831, the Mohawk and Hudson line was inaugurated between units from the Core Knowledge Albany and Schenectady, New York. In 1853, when the Baltimore and Ohio Foundation’s website on railroad Railroad reached Wheeling, West Virginia, it achieved what the Erie Canal had songs, and have your class teach done years earlier—it crossed the Appalachians to join east and west. A rail net- them to younger students. For exam- work spread quickly across the Northeast and the upper Midwest in the 1840s. ple, teachers following the Sequence The 1850s were the great railroad-building years in the Southeast. teach “I’ve Been Working on the By 1861, some 300,000 miles of railroad track had been laid down in the Railroad” and “John Henry” to Grade United States. The Midwest was the focus of much of this track laying, making it 2 students and “She’ll Be Comin’ easier for people to travel there from the East. As a result, land in the Midwest ’Round the Mountain” to Grade 1 stu- became more expensive as more and more settlers arrived. The fast, cheap trans- dents. (These songs can also be portation the railroads provided allowed for goods, such as wheat and corn, to be reviewed in this grade.) After teach- easily shipped to the Northeast for sale. Manufactured items, such as farm tools ing the songs, fifth graders can share from the Northeast, could, in turn, be shipped to consumers in the Midwest. Over a few interesting facts about rail- time, larger, faster, and more powerful engines pulling heavier cars required roads with the younger students. tracks made from stronger iron, and eventually steel rails. Coal powered the History and Geography: American 255.

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