Chapter 2: Expansion and the Civil War

Chapter 2: Expansion and the Civil War

The French still owned some land to the west of the colonies. In 1803, the French Emperor Napoleon offered to sell the land to the United States for $15 million. The president, Thomas Jefferson, accepted the offer and signed the Louisiana Purchase Agreement. This doubled the size of the country and people started to move west, By 1848, the country extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

As the New World expanded, the Native American population began to suffer. Their land and traditions were in danger. In the 1830s, the US Government created the first Indian territory in the area now called Oklahoma. They forced more than 15,000 Cherokee people to leave their homes in Georgia and walk 1,600 kilometres to their new territory. Around 4,000 Cherokee people died on the way and they called this journey the “Trail of Tears”.