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HAPTER 7
Nationalism Pushes America West
While Presidents Adams and Monroe established policies that expanded U.S. ter-
ritory, American settlers pushed into the Northwest Territory (present-day Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan), felling forests, turning lush prairies
into farms and waterfronts into city centers.
EXPANSION TO THE WEST
While some settlers went west to escape debts or
even the law, most pushed westward in search of economic gain—for land was not
only plentiful and fertile but cheap. There were also social gains to be made. For
example, one could change occupations more easily on the frontier. Jim Beckwourth
(1798–1867), the son of a white man and an African-American woman, ventured
westward with a fur-trading expedition in 1823. He lived among the Crow, who gave
him the name “Bloody Arm” because of his skill as a fighter. Later he served as an
Army scout. In California in 1850, he decided to settle down and become a
rancher, yet this was not the last of his occupations.
A PERSONAL VOICE JIM BECKWOURTH
“ In the spring of 1852 I established myself in Beckwourth Valley, and
finally found myself transformed into a hotel-keeper and chief of a trading-
post. My house is considered the emigrant’s landing-place, as it is the
first ranch he arrives at in the golden state, and is the only house
between this point and Salt Lake. Here is a valley two hundred and forty
miles in circumference, containing some of the choicest land in the world.
”
—quoted in The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwour th
THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE
When a territory’s population reached
about 60,000, the people of the territory could petition the Union for admission,
draft a state constitution, elect representatives, and become part of the United
States, once Congress approved. In 1819, however, when settlers in Missouri
requested admission into the Union, conflict arose. In Missouri, the new spirit of
nationalism was challenged by an issue that had previously confronted the
framers of the Constitution. That issue was the question of slavery.
Until 1818, the United States had consisted of ten free and ten slave states. The
government admitted Illinois as the eleventh free state in 1818. Southerners then
expected that Missouri would become the eleventh slave state, thereby maintain-
ing the balance between free states and slave states in Congress. However, New York
Congressman James Tallmadge amended the Missouri statehood bill to require
Missouri to gradually free its slaves, a bill that passed the House. Southerners, per-
ceiving a threat to their power, blocked the bill’s passage in the Senate. As argu-
ments raged, Alabama was then admitted to the Union as a slave state. With 11 free
to 11 slave states, Missouri’s status became crucial to the delicate balance.
The slaveholding states claimed that Northerners were trying to end slavery.
Northerners accused Southerners of plotting to extend the institution into new ter-
ritories. Hostilities became so intense that at times people on both sides even men-
tioned civil war and the end of the Union. Indeed, the issues that came to light
during these debates foreshadowed the war to come. “We have the wolf by the
ears,” wrote the aging Thomas Jefferson of this crisis, “and we can neither hold
him, nor safely let him go.”
Under the leadership of Henry Clay, however, Congress managed to tem-
porarily resolve the crisis with a series of agreements collectively called the
Missouri Compromise. Maine was admitted as a free state and Missouri as a
slave state, thus preserving the sectional balance in the Senate. The rest of the
Louisiana Territory was split into two spheres of interest, one for slaveholders
and one for free settlers. The dividing line was set at 36° 30´ north latitude. South
Jim Beckwourth
