Westward Expansion

In the span of five years, the United States increased its dimensions by a third. It annexed Texas in 1845; negotiated with Britain for half of the Oregon country; and came by California, Nevada, Utah, and components of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming as an outcome of a conflict with Mexico. (Cayton, pp. 13)

America's spectacular territorial expansion intensified the sectional conflict between North and South and increased the fateful and finally discordant topic of if slavery would be permitted in the western territories. It took American colonists a 100 years and a half to elaborate as far west as ...