American expansion in the 19th century essay

In the East, male Irish laborers were hired by Irish contractors to work on canals, railroads, streets, sewers and other construction projects, particularly in New York state and New England. The Irish men also worked in these labor positions in the mid-west. They worked to construct towns where there had been none previously. Kansas city was one such town, and eventually became an important cattle town and railroad center.

From colonial times, African Americans arrived in large numbers as slaves and lived primarily on plantations in the South. In slave and free blacks together comprised about one-fifth of the U.

As the nation split between Southern slave and Northern free… Names and labels As Americans of African descent reached each new plateau in their struggle for equality, they reevaluated their identity. The slaveholder labels of black and negro Spanish for black were offensive, so they chose the euphemism coloured when they were freed.

“American blood on American soil”: Polk and the prelude to war

Capitalized, Negro became acceptable during the migration to the North for factory jobs. Afro-American was adopted by civil rights activists to underline pride in their ancestral homeland, but black—the symbol of power and revolution—proved more popular.

All these terms are still reflected in the names of dozens of organizations. In the 21st century the terms black and African American both were widely used. The early history of blacks in the Americas Africans assisted the Spanish and the Portuguese during their early exploration of the Americas.

In the 16th century some black explorers settled in the Mississippi valley and in the areas that became South Carolina and New Mexico. The uninterrupted history of blacks in the United States began inwhen 20 Africans were landed in the English colony of Virginia.

These individuals were not slaves but indentured servants—persons bound to an employer for a limited number of years—as were many of the settlers of European descent whites.

By the s large numbers of Africans were being brought to the English colonies. In blacks numbered almostand made up nearly one-fifth of the population of the United States.

Attempts to hold black servants beyond the normal term of indenture culminated in the legal establishment of black chattel slavery in Virginia in and in all the English colonies by Black people were easily distinguished by their skin colour the result of evolutionary pressures favouring the presence in the skin of a dark pigment called melanin in populations in equatorial climates from the rest of the populace, making them highly visible targets for enslavement.

Enslaved blacks were put to work clearing and cultivating the farmlands of the New World.

The early history of blacks in the Americas

Of an estimated 10 million Africans brought to the Americas by the slave tradeaboutcame to the territory of what is now the United States. The overwhelming majority were taken from the area of western Africa stretching from present-day Senegal to Angola, where political and social organization as well as art, music, and dance were highly advanced.

With the increasing profitability of slavery and the slave trade, some Africans themselves sold captives to the European traders. The captured Africans were generally marched in chains to the coast and crowded into the holds of slave ships for the dreaded Middle Passage across the Atlantic Oceanusually to the West Indies.

Shock, disease, and suicide were responsible for the deaths of at least one-sixth during the crossing. Page 1 of 8.19th Century America. Updated July 30, JUMP TO.. Primary Documents - Timelines - Maps, - From Jefferson to the coming of the Civil War, Manifest Destiny & the Wild West, Industrial Revolution, Women's Rights, Inventions & Railroad History, The Gilded Age, Spanish-American War & Imperialism, The Progressive Era - Populism, Various Misc.

Topics. African Americans, one of the largest of the many ethnic groups in the United regardbouddhiste.comn Americans are mainly of African ancestry, but many have nonblack ancestors as well.

African Americans are largely the descendants of slaves—people who were brought from their African homelands by force to work in the New World. America’s Public Bible is under contract with Stanford University Press to be published in their digital publishing regardbouddhiste.com version of the site is a prototype created as the first-prize winner of the Chronicling America Data Challenge, sponsored by the National Endowment for the regardbouddhiste.com version in preparation for Stanford University .

The Frontier Thesis or Turner Thesis, is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in that American democracy was formed by the American frontier. He stressed the process—the moving frontier line—and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process.

He also stressed results, especially that American . Mexican-American War, also called Mexican War, Spanish Guerra de or Guerra de Estados Unidos a Mexico (“War of the United States Against Mexico”), war between the United States and Mexico (April –February ) stemming from the United States’ annexation of Texas in and from a dispute over whether Texas ended at the Nueces River (Mexican claim) or the Rio Grande (U.S.

claim). HISTORY ERAS • The First Americans • Colonial Era • American Revolution • Early National Period • Pre-Civil War Era • Slavery • Civil War • Reconstruction • Gilded Age • America Becomes a World Power • Progressive Era • World War I • s • Great Depression • World War II • Post-War Era • s • Vietnam War • • The 21st Century.