Oppressed People in the Growth of the Early Republic

1
Oppressed People in the Growth of the Early
Republic
2
Policy At The Frontier

• Most Federal land sold in large tracts to highest
  bidders
• Railroads bought land and sold to settlers
• Some got land by squatting
• Opportunities for speculators, railroads and
  steamship owners to make lots of money

3
Conquest of Native Americans

• Notion of Manifest Destiny Gods will that the
  continent be settled by Anglo-Saxons who would
  build a model of capitalism, Protestantism
  democracy
• Bolstered by 1803 Louisiana Purchase and vast
  added new land
• Jefferson favored removal of native people

4
Southern Tribes

• Cherokees forcibly marched to Oklahoma from
  Georgia beginning 1830
• Cherokees had treaties that they thought would
  protect them
• Appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court but its ruling
  ignored by Andrew Jackson
• Choctaws, Chickasaws and Creeks similarly
  affected

5
West of Mississippi

• Settlers wanted Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas and
  areas further west
• Signed treaties to go onto reservations
  alternative was genocide
• Buffalo killed, depriving them of food
• Continuing attempts to turn Native Americans into
  small farmers -- then take land

6
Mexican Territories

• Mexico became independent from Spain in 1821
• Americans settled in Texas and subsequently took
  it from Mexico by war
• Other lands ceded by Mexico in California,
  Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, Utah

7

• Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was supposed to
  protect civil rights of Spanish speaking and
  native residents
• In fact, many forced off land and ended up as
  laborers for Anglos at low wages

8
Other Sources of Labor for Frontier

• Texans imported slaves
• Chinese men began coming to California in 1849 as
  laborers, especially for railroad
• Were 10 of California's population in 1870
• Major discrimination due to race, legal rights
  nonexistent
• 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act Japanese substituted
  and outnumbered Chinese by 1902

9
Frontier Policy

• Did result in yeoman farmers
• Involved much speculation greed
• Little compassion for poor because of bolstered
  faith in individualism
• Racism major feature of settling the West that
  was bolstered by immigration policy and court
  rulings favoring Anglos and ruling classes