A History of America in 100 Maps

A

mericans were on the move in the mid-nineteenth

century, in every sense of the word. Beginning in the

1830s, westering migrants began to claim land in

Texas, Oregon, and Utah, well before those regions

were part of the United States. A few years later, prospectors

from around the world descended upon the gold fields of

California, just months after that territory was acquired

from Mexico. The growing demand for labor in the emerging

industrial centers of the north drew thousands of Americans

off the farm, while millions of Europeans joined them in search

of greater opportunity.

While migration is often narrated in terms of liberation,

for many it signaled a profound loss of freedom. President

Andrew Jackson made room for land-hungry settlers and

prospectors in Georgia by dispossessing Native Americans

and sending them west. Planters establishing new cotton

and sugar plantations in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas

forced the sale and migration of hundreds of thousands of

slaves from the upper to the lower South. Nearly 300,000

prospectors, farmers, and Mormons heading to the Far

West dramatically disrupted Native American lands on the

Great Plains.

Several of the maps in this chapter explore the relationship

between nineteenth-century migration and national

expansion. Much of this expansion was driven by technological

innovation and the rise of a market economy. As shown on

page 120, the Erie Canal enabled farmers to produce not

just for their own subsistence and barter but also for distant

markets. Similarly, Eli Whitney’s cotton gin significantly

expanded the amount of land cultivated in the South, so that

by 1860 one-third of the nation’s cotton crop was grown west

of the Mississippi River. This increase in cultivation stimulated

Northern textile manufacturing, which in turn made cotton

the nation’s largest export. In 1858 James Henry Hammond

declared that “Cotton is king,” meaning that not even the

English monarchy could challenge the economic might of the

American South. By then the US was producing 75 percent of

the world’s cotton supply.

Westward expansion was often led by migrants who

crossed national borders to settle new land. In the 1820s

Moses Austin led a group of Southerners to Tejas (the

territory of today’s Texas) at the invitation of Mexico, which

hoped to stabilize and develop its northern frontier. In 1836

those migrants joined with Mexican-born settlers to declare

themselves independent. Many in this new Republic of

Texas sought annexation by the United States, but American

presidents were understandably reluctant to provoke war with

Mexico or antagonize Northerners who keenly opposed the

entry of a new slave state into the Union.

Just north of Texas, Congress organized a territory

dedicated to the “civilized” tribes displaced by the Indian

Removal Act of 1830. The map on page 130 shows the

geopolitics—not to mention the injustice—involved in

President Jackson’s policy of removal. The War Department

was responsible for protecting these emigrant tribes, while

also separating them from white settlers to the immediate east

in Arkansas and Missouri. The result was a complex hierarchy

of internal and external boundaries that continued to shift as

the nation expanded westward in the 1840s.

The annexation of Texas in 1845 prompted a controversial

war with Mexico, and commercial firms quickly issued maps to

meet public demand (page 134). At the same time, the federal

government issued detailed maps to encourage overland

migration to Oregon and ultimately American control of that

territory (page 132). The subsequent victory over Mexico

in 1848 gave the United States control over California, the

Intermountain West, and an enlarged Texas. The timing was

remarkable: no sooner had the US acquired California than

gold was discovered at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada

Mountains. Within weeks the US military had sponsored

the most detailed map yet of those mining districts

(page 136). Each of these three maps was designed to

advance the nation’s control over the Far West.

Some Americans celebrated this dramatic territorial

growth as a sign of Providence, while others worried that

it only extended the life of slavery. As slavery grew, so too

did Southern regional distinctiveness. In response, many

Northerners began to assert a contrary identity, one grounded

in the principle of “free labor.” To be sure, the concept of

“free labor” was more than a little ironic given that low-wage

jobs proliferating in the North gave workers little mobility.

However, by 1850, sectional differences were undeniable.

As the map on page 138 shows, waves of German and

Irish immigrants sought the harbors of Boston, New York,

5. 
   

Expansion, Fragmentation, and Reunification