Period 3
Prompt : During the 19th century, America expanded across North America. Analyze and evaluate the factors that encouraged the growth of the
United States between 1820 and 1869.
In your response make sure you consider geographic, political, economic, and social conditions that contributed to expansion.
Student Introduction Sample 1 (broad thesis)
Throughout the nineteenth century, the United States happened to grow into its modern day boarders. The original country of thirteen eastern states
burgeoned into a continent spanning nation. A variety of factors, including natural resources, slavery, and native peoples, influenced this massive
territorial expansion of the United States during the middle of the 1800's. While many of these factors were executions of political planning and due
to the zeitgeist of the time period, much of the expansion was circumstantial and due to uncontrollable factors.
Period 5
Prompt: During the 19th century, America grew across North America. Analyze and evaluate the factors that encouraged the expansion of the United
States between 1800 and 1855.
In your response make sure you consider geographic, political, economic, and social conditions that contributed to the expansion.
Student Introduction Sample 1
Throughout the 1800’s, the U.S. experienced a considerable amount of growth. The country expanded westward and its economy grew to become
more diverse as well. In the period preceding the Civil War, the growth was affected by many different economic, political, social, and geographic
influences. These factors did not each act independently of each other; they were all intertwined in encouraging the public to go west. Through this
growth, the country gradually assumed the shape that it holds today. Although America grew westward due to geographic and social factors, western
expansion was most influenced by political and economic factors from the start of the 19 th century to 1855.
Student Introduction Sample 2
In the first half of the 19th century, the United States tripled in size, its western border jumping from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean
between 1803 and 1848. As a result, Indian nations were decimated and sectional tensions grew even stronger. Although economic opportunity and
geographic conditions made expansion a desirable and practical option, political motives and ideas of American Exceptionalism were both the
immediate causes of the push westward and the means of justifying the methods employed in the endeavor.
Student Introduction Sample 3
Throughout the nineteenth century, the United States was pushing to expand westward in order to create a stronger foundation and fulfill its Manifest
Destiny (coined by John O'Sullivan in 1845). Although each part of Manifest Destiny occurred for various reasons, from 1800 to 1855, the events
seem to be divided into three sections, possibly because of the increasing population and their increasing involvement in expansion. The first section
of the time period contains events that occurred primarily for political and economic reasons (approximately 1800 to the 1820s), the second for
geographic reasons (approximately 1830 to the 1840s), and the third for social reasons (1840s to 1855).
Period 8
During the 19th century, America expanded across North America. Evaluate the factors that encouraged the expansion of the United States
between 1845 and 1869.
In your response make sure you consider geographic, political, economic, and social conditions that contributed to expansion.
Student Introduction Sample 1
Between the years 1845 and 1869, the United States vastly increased its size and, thus, experienced the numerous complications that both
hindered and helped that expansion. Although this era is often marked by a single, unified drive for westward expansion under the premise of
manifest destiny, there were various other social, geographic, economic, and political forces (the latter two being the most important) constantly at
work in the nation, both luring and driving the population into new territory. The resulting boundaries of the new United States were neither an
accident nor an unavoidable act of fate.
Student Introduction Sample 2
The three decades following the 1845 annexation of Texas was a time period marked by substantial transformation in the United States. Among the
most significant of these changes were the vast territorial additions and the movement of people westward. Although the expansion of the United
States between 1845 and 1869 is commonly seen as a single, unified movement centered on the spirit of Manifest Destiny, the expansion was
actually the result of many complex factors and pragmatic decisions that resulted in the pushing and pulling of people westward.