Crisis and Expansion - Essay Example

As new modes of communication arrived on the scene, they allowed faster and more secure ways of sending and receiving information. It is also the time when various stratified groups of citizens started realizing their rights, particularly the African Americans and women. This gave rise to several black and women’s rights movements demanding greater rights for the minority or neglected group. The 19th century is also important due to the numerous expansions, exterminations, and exclusions took place.

The Gold Rush also occurred during the same century when a great number of people flocked into California in order to find gold, but the incident also resulted in the death of several hundred Native Americans. Further activities during the century included the American Civil War and the rise of capitalistic ideas which influenced its own following. Thus, the nineteenth century was characterized by geographical expansion, industrial development, and activism. A significant portion of the 19th century was occupied by the westward territorial expansion of American settlements.

Following the American independence from the colonization of Great Britain, the US was a free land which faced the problems of rising inflation and a weak economy (The significance of the frontier in American history pg 1). However, it is also during this time when American settlements sprawled further westwards in order to find suitable dwellings that met their need for sufficient resources. The American population kept growing and expanding in numbers and the American society found itself to be sharply extending to western continents as they went through the societal development process.

The society and the people were also subject to the rapidly changing external environments which spurred them to expand to places where they could conquer the “wilderness”. Thus, in response to the changing social, economic,