Railroads in USA.

Railroads in USA. Industrialization is coming.

By Carla Castro

Beginnings of American Railroads

• Native American were forced to give up their land.

• The building of the two Transcontinental Railroads did more to defeat the Indians than the campaigns of the soldiers.

Which were the first ones?

• In the middle of the nineteenths The American Government hired Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railway Company to extend railways across the United States.

• Central Pacific – Started in Sacramento

• Union Pacific – Started in Omaha

The Union Pacific and The Northern Pacific Railroads

Expansion Westwards.

Westward Expansion

• Homestead Act, land to American families.

• Purchasing of Land directly from the Government.

Railroadmania.

Before the war, rail travel from New York to Chicago had been barely possible.

Western railroads, Pennsylvania Railroad, The Erie Railroad, and Baltimore and Ohio Railroads completed connections with Chicago.

Economical Growth.

The simultaneous coordination and consolidation of rail-lines were economically significant.

Chicago.

The railroads were the most important thing that happened to Chicago between 1848 and 1856. Chicago was a center of ten main railroad lines. One hundred trains came and went per day. The railroads became Chicago's first major industry and the canal became the second. Chicago quickly became the largest railroad center and then the largest city in Illinois. Chicago started out with about one hundred people and now has about 3,000,000.

During the American Civil War in 1861-1865, cattle started pouring into Chicago's stockyards from the west, transported by railroads. Many things were transported to Chicago by train such as copper, iron, farm products, crops, and meat such as pigs. The first train that came to Chicago carried wheat from farms to the west for about 10 miles. In 1865 the Union Stockyards were completed. As the grain trade grew, the nation's most important grain market became the Chicago Board of Trade. Quickly, the city's manufacturing industries grew.

Necessity for Grain.

With the growth of American cities, the domestic demand for grain constantly increased.

Great Britain was becoming more dependent on American Harvests.

Andrew Carnegie.

A poor Scottish immigrant who became a wealthy man investing in railroads.

Manifest destiny

Manifest Destiny
by Juan Carvajal

What is “Manifest Destiny”

Ø Belief that the USA should expand its territory from the Atlantic seaboard to Pacific Ocean.

• It was used to justify other territorial acquisitions.

Advocates of Manifest Destiny believed that:

• Expansion was obvious (“manifest”)

• Expansion was certain (“destiny”)

• “Manifest Destiny” eventually became a synonym of the expansion of the United States.

• It was used to promote the annexation of the Western United States

• Oregon Territory

• The Texas Annexation

• Mexican Cession

Power of an idea

• Capture the imagination of people.

• To extend American Democracy to the rest of the continent was essentially an insatiable ambition for land.

• Extension of the area of Freedom also signified extension of the area of the Sla

very.

• The Assertion of the superiority of the American race.

• Denigration of Mexico

• Grateful way to justify something unjustifiable.

Origin

The origin could go back from the first settlers or pilgrims who arrive

d from England and Scotland.

They were mostly Protestants and Puritans.

John Cotton, a Puritan minister wrote in 1630:

“No nation has the right to expel another , if not by a special design of the sky like the one that had Israel, unless the natives worked wrongly.

In this case they will be entitled to begin,

legally, a war with them as well as to subdue them”.

John O'Sullivan was the first one who used this expression (1845).

".... the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and
to possess the

whole of the continent which Providence

has given us for the development of…

Manifest Destiny, key themes

• The virtue of the American people and their institutions.

• The mission to spread these institutions, thereby redeeming and remaking the world in the image of the U.S.

• The destiny under God to accomplish this work.

Thomas Paine

This is the opportunity to create a new, better society.

“ We have the power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand…”

Columbia

This painting (circa 1872) by John Gast called American Pr

ogress, is an allegorical representation of Manifest Destiny.

• American angel or woman

• She leads civilization westward wi

th American settlers

• She holds a school book

• She is stringing telegraph wire as she travels

• The different economic activities of the pioneers are highlighted and, espec

ially, the changing forms of transportation.

• In her wake come farms, villages and homesteads.

• The light of civilization dispel the darkness of ignorance and barbarity.

On the other hand the darkness is represented by:

• Wild animals (bears, wolves and buffalo).

• They have to be removed before Columbia so she

can bring the prosperity promised to the United States.

Clearly this painting represented the thinking of many Americans during the m

id-19th century.

James K. Polk Mr. Manifest Destiny

• Elected President in 1844

• James Knox Polk was the eleventh President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1845 to March 4, 1849.

• Added more territory to the US (by any means) than any other President

• Died 103 days after his single period ended

In Latin America

Homestead Act

Homestead Act

by Francisco Castro

United States federal law that gave about 160 acres in the North American West. Signed by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862

• Intended to liberalize the homesteading requirements of the Preemption Act of 1841.

• The South refused, fearing the increase in free farmers would threaten plantation slavery.

• George Henry Evans and Horace Greeley stand out as greatly responsible for the passage of the Homestead Act.

• The 160 acre farms created by the Homestead Act amounted to one quarter of a section of a township

• To avoid penalizing men who were serving in the army, the length of military service was deducted from the required five year residence period for veterans.

The first claim under the Homestead Act was made by Daniel Freeman for a farm near Beatrice, Nebraska, on January 1, 1863; the site is preserved as the Homestead National Monument of America.

Daniel Freeman as an older man

• By the end of the 19th century, over 570 million acres (about 2,300,000 km²) remained open to settlement, but very little of this was usable for agriculture.

• The Homestead Act helped to create more than 372,000 farms.

The end of homesteading

The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 ended homesteading; the government believed that the best use of public lands was for them to remain in government control.

Alaska was an exception until 1986.

Ten percent of the land in the United States was settled under this law. The red on the map shows all

the homesteading states. The red portion of the map represents the 30 states that homesteaded.

The last claim under the Homestead Act was made by Kenneth Deardorff for 80 acres (32 Hectares) of land on the Stony River in southwestern Alaska in 1988.

Fraud and corporate use

• The intent of the Homestead Act was to grant land for agriculture.

• However, in some arid places (west of the Rocky Mountains) 640 acres was too little land for a liable farm, in these places, Homesteads were used to control resources, especially water.

There was no systematic method used to evaluate claims under the Homestead Act.

The Homestead Act, 1862-1962 : 4 cents, U.S. postage.

Stamp image based on the John Bakken sod house photograph, originally taken by John McCarthy, but children removed.

Shows man leaning on shovel looking at woman outside door of sod house. Actual stamp attached to lower right corner of enlarged color print.