Westward Expansion:
Final Review
Final Test: Format
• First section on terms and events: matching,
fill-in-the-blank, short-answer sections (if you
wish to take this section open-note, maximum
grade is a 3)
• Second section: two essays (prompts on
handout, giving out today) (open-note all)
• Expectation for class Monday: study for test
over the weekend and bring everything for the
westward expansion unit in your portfolio to
class
Agenda for today’s review session
• Term review; complete charts
• Video question review (complete openended questions on your own time over the
weekend, handing in Monday for a grade)
• Crossword answers
• Force the choice activity (group, then pairs)
• Essay prompt overview
Imperialism
Aggressive and coercive political,
economic, military diplomacy or
negotiation.
American Exceptionalism
Ideology or belief that the U.S. is
superior to other countries;
invoked during the period of
westward expansion to justify the
domination and manipulation of
American Indians. Frederick
Jackson Turner's “Frontier Thesis”
Cession
Formal giving up of property (in
the case of westward expansion,
Native American were coerced and
forced to cede their homeland)
Nationalism
Extreme or excessive pride in one's
country
Significance of the war of 1812?
Scientific Racism
Justified prejudice and differentiation of
human beings based on ideas of racial
hierarchy and superiority that were
alledgedly evident in science (pseudoscience).
Whites--> Native Americans-->African
Americans!!!!
Manifest Destiny
The ideology or belief that the
United States was predestined to
settle the land from the east to
west coast, as willed by the
(Christian) God.
Andrew Jackson
President from 1829-1837, General during the
war of 1812
The U.S. President who signed the Indian
Removal Act of 1830 and effectively ignored the
Worcester vs. Georgia Supreme Court decision
(1832) by allowing the state of Georgia to broker
the Treaty of Echota with the Cherokee nation
(1835).
The Indian Removal Act, enacted in 1830,
authorized the exploitation and removal of
Native Americans from their homelands.
African Americans
during westward expansion: What roles did they
occupy in U.S. society?
Slaves prior to the Civil War and the passage of the
Emancipation Proclamation
Buffalo Soldiers fighting in the U.S. army against
the Native Americans; can someone explain the
irony?
Cowboys and Pioneers (¼ of the pioneers who
utilized the land grants allocated by the Homestead
Act of 1862)
Walt Whitman’s Pioneers! O Pioneers!

“Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied,
over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden,
and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers!”
Walt Whitman’s Pioneers! O Pioneers!
“We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing we, and
piercing deep the mines within;
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin
soil upheaving, Pioneers! O pioneers!”
John Gast’s American Progress
Who is in this painting?:
Who painted this?
What values/ideals was the artist representing;
what was the painting's point?
• Romanticize:
Photo of Native Americans
Who: took the photo?/who's in the photo?
What does this photo represent?
Assimilation:
Americanization:
Dawes Act: adopted by Congress in 1887,
authorized the President of the United States to
survey Indian tribal land and divide it into
allotments for individual Indians (reservations
(later New Deal, FDR ended)
Photo of laborers
Who:
When and why?
What does this photo represent?
Immigration:
Who is immigrating and
why? What power
dynamics are represented
in this photo?
Leg: Chinese Exclusion
Act of 1882
Painting of the TC RR’s completion
• Date/location
American exceptionalism
• Who and what does this
Represent?
Imperialism: who has
The power here to
Negotiate
Cession: who is ceding
land?