1. Unit 3: Transformation and
Expansion 1800-1848
Section 1: The Reshaping of Everyday
Life in the Early Republic

2. Essential Questions
• How did innovations in industry, technology
and transportation affect Americans’ lives?
• What explains the difference in Northern and
Southern social and economic development
and how did it affect political unity?

7. Unifying of a Nation
• Advances in communications and
transportation enabled Americans to expand
westward.
• These advances also united the country and
allowed information and products to be
transported greater distance in shorter
periods of time.

8. Section 2
SLAVERY AND THE CONSTRUCTION
OF RACE IN AMERICA

9. Essential Questions
• Why did the idea of race and the practice of
racism develop along with African slavery in
America?
• Could the South have thrived without slavery?

12. Section 3
MANIFEST DESTINY AND ITS
CONSEQUENCES

13. Essential Questions
• What were the costs and benefits of westward
expansion? Why did so many Americans move
west?
• How should we understand the West and the
frontier? Was it a place of
democracy, equality, and adventure, or rather
a place of oppression and conquest?
• Did the “pioneer spirit” stop once the nation
spanned the continent?

14. Reasons for Westward Expansion
A. Economic factors
1) Exhaustion of good soil by cotton farmers led to search for new
land
2) Effects of the Panic of 1837. Many settlers pushed west as they
faced economic losses.
B. Psychological factors--manifest destiny. Sentiment that the U.S.
should rule from coast to coast (and maybe pole to pole) became a
key part of national thinking.
C. Attractive regions for new settlement--east Texas, California, Oregon
D. Advertising the West
1) Santa Fe traders brought back tales of the West
2) Mountain men--fur trappers and traders

15. Our Manifest
Destiny [is] to
overspread the
continent
allotted by
Providence for
the free
development of
our yearly
multiplying
millions
John L.
O’Sullivan
1845

16. Manifestations of Destiny
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze: Westward
John Gast: American Progress the Course of Empire Takes Its Way
(1872) (1861)

17. Section 4
NATIVE AMERICANS’ STRUGGLE TO
SURVIVE

18. Essential Questions
• Why did some Native Americans fight against
white society while others tried to assimilate?
Which was the right choice?
• Can the federal government ever make
amends for its treatment of Native
Americans?

19. Cultural Assimilation of
Native Americans
1. Assimilation involved the
following:
• Settling the land and
farming
• Adopting Christianity
• Learning English and
European cultural norms
• Abandoning traditional
tribal cultures
2. Assimilations efforts included:
• Indian Removal Act 1830:
Allowed the U.S.
government to forcibly
relocate natives to
reservation lands in the
west
• Dawes Act of 1887:
Allotted plots of land to
individual natives in
exchange for abandoning
tribal control.