Westward Expansion Vocabulary
This belief said the United States was meant to spread across North America.
Answer: What is Manifest Destiny?
These gold seekers rushed to California after gold was discovered in 1848.
Answer: Who were the Forty-niners?
This famous trail helped many pioneers travel to the Pacific Northwest.
Answer: What is the Oregon Trail?
A person who worked to end slavery was called this.
Answer: What is an abolitionist?
This invention by Eli Whitney removed seeds from cotton much faster.
Answer: What is the cotton gin?
This word means to add land or a region to a country.
Answer: What does annex mean?
This Native American woman helped guide Lewis and Clark on their journey west.
Answer: Who was Sacagawea?
This important port city at the mouth of the Mississippi River allowed western farmers to ship goods to market.
Answer: What is New Orleans?
This religious revival movement encouraged moral responsibility and inspired many reform movements.
Answer: What is the Second Great Awakening?
This machine used steam power and became important in factories, trains, and boats.
Answer: What is the steam engine?
This word describes peaceful negotiation between nations to settle disagreements.
Answer: What is diplomacy?
This religious group moved west to Utah to escape persecution.
Answer: Who were the Mormons?
President Jefferson bought this huge region from France in 1803, doubling the size of the United States.
Answer: What is the Louisiana Territory?
This 1848 meeting launched the women’s rights movement in the United States.
Answer: What is the Seneca Falls Convention?
This machine made harvesting grain much faster than using a scythe by hand.
Answer: What is the reaper?
This word describes land owned or controlled by the United States that had not yet become a state.
Answer: What is a territory?
These fur trappers and explorers lived and worked in the Rocky Mountains.
Answer: Who were the mountain men?
This 1854 land purchase from Mexico helped make a southern transcontinental railroad possible.
Answer: What is the Gadsden Purchase?
This philosophy, connected with Emerson and Thoreau, emphasized self-reliance, nature, and individualism.
Answer: What is transcendentalism?
This term describes the period of rapid factory growth, machine use, and urbanization in the 1800s.
Answer: What is the Industrial Revolution?
This 1846–1848 war helped the United States gain a huge amount of land in the Southwest.
Answer: What is the Mexican-American War?
This Native American group in the Pacific Northwest was known for mostly peaceful relations with settlers.
Answer: Who were the Nez Perce?
This treaty ended the Mexican-American War and gave the United States land in the Southwest.
Answer: What is the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo?
This reformer fought for better treatment of the mentally ill and improved prison conditions.
Answer: Who was Dorothea Dix?
This word describes a farming-based way of life that depends on agriculture and rural communities.
Answer: What is agrarian?