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1 posted on 02/28/2008 3:21:49 PM PST by decimon
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To: decimon
What caused westward expansion in the United States?

< high-pitched, smarmy liberal voice >Everyone knows that it was caused by the imperialist caucasians of European extraction and their desire to rape Mother Gaia and to subjugate and murder the peaceful, non-confrontational Native Americans who only wanted to coexist with their neighbors and live in harmony with the biosphere!< /voice>

2 posted on 02/28/2008 3:29:37 PM PST by uglybiker (I do not suffer from mental illness. I quite enjoy it, actually.)
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To: decimon

Civil war vets were offered land out West. That is how some of my people wound up in the Washington Territory.


3 posted on 02/28/2008 3:32:51 PM PST by passionfruit (When illegals become legal, even they won't do work American's won't do)
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To: decimon
What caused westward expansion in the United States?

In the 1970s it was color television images of the warmth and sunshine at the Rose Parade every January 1st.

4 posted on 02/28/2008 3:34:18 PM PST by ElkGroveDan (When you choose the lesser of two evils, you still have evil.)
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To: decimon
My ancestors started their westward trek before the Revolutionary War and didn’t stop until they found Texas in the 1820’s. None of us have left since.
5 posted on 02/28/2008 3:35:38 PM PST by Ditter
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To: decimon
...What caused westward expansion in the United States?

New York.

7 posted on 02/28/2008 3:37:33 PM PST by SGCOS
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To: decimon

Too many furriners from Europe invading the East coast pushing us out!


10 posted on 02/28/2008 3:40:27 PM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar (Only infidel blood can quench Muslim thirst-- Abdul-Jalil Nazeer al-Karouri)
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To: decimon
Manifest Destiny
11 posted on 02/28/2008 3:42:25 PM PST by DouglasKC
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To: decimon
Did anybody ever say that population growth wasn't a factor?

Clearly, if you didn't have a growing population you wouldn't have seen that kind of rapid expansion.

And if you didn't have open land, there also wouldn't have been anywhere to expand to.

So it doesn't seem like the most productive question to ask.

Perhaps more interesting after all these years is the Fogel thesis:

Fogel's first major study involving cliometrics was Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History (1964). This tract sought to quantify railroads' contribution to U.S. economic growth in the nineteenth century. Its argument and method were each rebuttals to a long line of non-numeric historical arguments that had ascribed much to railroads without rigorous reference to economic data. Examining transportation costs for primary and secondary goods, Fogel compared the actual 1890 economy to a hypothetical 1890 economy in which transportation infrastructure was limited to wagons, canals and rivers. The difference in cost (or "social savings") attributable to railroads was negligible - about 1%.

15 posted on 02/28/2008 3:45:01 PM PST by x
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To: decimon
Got sick of too much government in their lives (probably 1% of what we have to put up with these days) and moved to where it was less "civilized"? Certainly wasn't for the topography.

Wish that damned ocean weren't there so we could do the same thing today.

16 posted on 02/28/2008 3:45:06 PM PST by Still Thinking (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
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To: decimon

My family stayed in the South. We had no ambition.


17 posted on 02/28/2008 3:45:09 PM PST by Conspiracy Guy (I voted Republican because no Conservatives were running.)
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To: decimon

“What caused westward expansion in the United States?”

Because going east was pretty much a non-starter.

Duh.


18 posted on 02/28/2008 3:45:39 PM PST by Lee'sGhost (Johnny Rico picked the wrong girl!)
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To: decimon

This has got to be one of the more understated analysis I’ve seen in a long time. For example, East of the Mississippi, movement by water had long be the fastest practical means of transport. West of the Mississippi, forget it, you have to go overland.

To further complicate things, westward expansion might have been through wilderness, but it often had a destination: the West Coast. Between the British and the Spanish, what is now Texas, the southwest, California and the Pacific northwest were places, destinations, to travel to.

A lot more people wanted to go there than stop in the Great Plains. The degree of difficulty for starting fresh was very high, evidenced by the Mormon settlement of Utah—they almost starved. They probably survived by being able to provide supplies, at a price, to settlers passing through, eventually being able to support themselves.

Only technology such as the railroads and the windmill allowed for much of the Great Plains to be occupied at all. The windmill to get water to grow crops, and the railroads to transport those crops once grown.

While certainly life by today’s standards was utterly awful on the eastern seaboard, by the standards of the day it was luxurious compared to setting out on your own across the frontier.

Much of the West only opened up after the post-Civil War, Indian Wars forced the deployment of much of the Union Army West. Once the Army was there, settlers finally had an interior place to go.

Texas was an “odd man out” for much of this, as were the Oklahoma Indian territories. They had their own paradigms of expansion and growth. The great rush to occupy them as home stakes, granted by the US government, could only happen in due course.

Texas, especially, for a while was carved up by enormous ranches like the XIT (for “Ten (Counties) in Texas”), who engaged in shameless land grabbing and exploitation. But the great cattle drives to Kansas City only lasted a short while before being ended by barbed wire fences.

As more infill happened, the primary concern of the settlers was creating a civilized town for themselves and their children. This ended many of the antics surrounding frontier settlement, culminating in the Census of 1890, which was no longer able to determine a “line” of settlement. This meant that westward expansion and the frontier were finished. It all was settled. From there it was just a matter of growth.


21 posted on 02/28/2008 3:50:38 PM PST by yefragetuwrabrumuy
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To: decimon
From 1800 to 1900, the United States tripled in size, from less than one million square miles to more than three million square miles.

And from 1836 on, it was all done without a Federal Reserve - remember that, the next time some bankers' shill claims that the ecomomy would fall apart without a central bank.
23 posted on 02/28/2008 3:52:38 PM PST by canuck_conservative
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To: decimon

Settlement of “the West” was much faster than popularly imagined. Indiana University (oldest university West of the Alleghenies) was founded, for the most part, by a crew from Harvard, who also founded what’s now called Bloomington Normal University (in Illinois), several others on the way, and when they were done some of them were still youthful enough to be professors at Stanford.


26 posted on 02/28/2008 3:54:11 PM PST by muawiyah
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To: decimon
What caused westward expansion in the United States?

Neo Conservatives

27 posted on 02/28/2008 3:54:48 PM PST by NoLibZone (If the Clinton years were so great for the libs why is Obama doing so well?)
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To: Peanut Gallery

Ping


28 posted on 02/28/2008 3:55:40 PM PST by Professional Engineer (www.pinupsforvets.com)
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To: decimon
I thought it was Gold in Kalifawnia that had the biggest influence in the 1850s then word got back east that the land was so fertile and the climate was made for growing crops you could drop a seed in the ground today and pick corn tomorrow...
29 posted on 02/28/2008 3:56:36 PM PST by tubebender
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To: decimon

It was Benjamin Franklin and his Ohio Company.


31 posted on 02/28/2008 3:59:02 PM PST by RightWhale (Clam down! avoid ataque de nervosa)
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To: decimon

The Society of Cincinnati had a hand in westward expansion.


35 posted on 02/28/2008 4:05:40 PM PST by Moonman62 (The issue of whether cheap labor makes America great should have been settled by the Civil War.)
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To: decimon

Under the Homestead Act, the price of land was free. How is that “not important”?


36 posted on 02/28/2008 4:06:14 PM PST by PzLdr ("The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am" - Darth Vader)
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