The acquisition of the Oregon Territory in 1846 and
the Mexican Cession of 1848 expanded the United
States’ western border to the Pacific Coast, while the
annexation of Texas in 1845 and the Gadsden Pur-
chase of 1853, together with the Mexican Cession,
defined the country’s southern border. By 1867, with
the purchase of Alaska from Russia, all the land
that was to form the continental United States had
become part of the nation.
Industrial and Urban Growth
While the country was in the throes of its great
westward expansion, the landscape of the eastern
portion of the country was undergoing stupendous
change. In 1776 New York and Philadelphia were
the only cities with more than 20,000 inhabitants;
by 1860 there were forty-three metropolises with
populations of at least that size. Not only was the
number of cities growing, but the size of those cit-
ies was also expanding rapidly. The population of
New York City, for example, was estimated to be
75,770 in 1805; by 1850 it had risen to 515,000,
and by 1890, in Manhattan alone, it had reached
1,441,216. The 1890 population for the whole city
(which by then included Brooklyn) was over 2.5
million.
The growth of the urban population between
1840 and 1890 was in great part the result of a
tremendous flood of immigrants from western
Europe, which carried nearly 10 million newcomers
to America’s shores. It also reflected the nation’s
accelerating industrialization and shifting pat-
tern of employment. In 1861 the United States had
nearly 31.5 million people, 19.8 percent residing in
large towns and cities, and fewer than half living
on farms. By 1880, the population had swelled to
more than 50 million people, 28.2 percent of them
living in urban areas.
During the Civil War (1861-1865), which pit-
ted the increasingly urban North against the pre-
dominantly agrarian South, the need for armaments
and other wartime goods spurred the expansion of
industry and brought workers into towns and cities
to work in the factories. Especially in the larger cities
along the eastern seaboard, the vast majority of new
urban residents and industrial workers came from