Please examine the following map (courtesy of Library of Congress Geography and Map Division). What purpose do you think the U.S. government had in granting a 40-mile wide swath of land to the railroad? What impact might this action have made?
For today, read T&S chapter 19. The following are questions to consider as you prepare for and reflect on today’s topic:
1. What did “manifest destiny” mean?
2. Why did so many Americans find the western frontier appealing in the 19th century?
3. What specific factors increased the appeal of the West after the mid-19th century?
4. What role did the federal government play in stimulating westward expansion?
5. In what ways did the western frontier come to resemble the eastern U.S. in the late 19th century?
6. How did westward expansion impact Native Americans in the 1860s-80s?
7. What significance did the historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s ideas about the frontier have in the 1890s?
8. In what sense did the West take on mythical proportions in the American imagination in the late 19th century? How did the “Old West” find its way into American popular culture?
