The Railroad, the Telegraph, and Other Technologies

The Railroad, the Telegraph, and Other Technologies — page 1
INTRODUCTION The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 doubled the size of the United States Thomas Jefferson pursued the purchase from Napoleon of France in order to make room for the nation’s growing population population The slow steady push westward had been underway since the settlement of the American colonies colonies It increased as time passed and more European immigrants landed on American shores In 1845 the journalist John L O’Sullivan captured this restless spirit in a newspaper article stating that American expansion was the right of our manifest manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and self-government entrusted to us It did not take long for the term Manifest Destiny to root itself in the minds of Americans as a means of expressing this hunger for western lands Following O’Sullivan’s declaration further increases in territory 4