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westward expansion

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Oil on canvas (1993–94) depicting the third signing of the Louisiana Treaty in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Trade, Ambition, and the Rise of American Empire

High ideals have always gone together with economic self-interest in the history of the United States.
by Samuel Gregg via Law & Liberty on July 17, 2024
John Gast's 1872 painting "American Progress," in which Miss Columbia, a personification of the enlightening United States, is depicted leading pioneers over the western plains.

Two Years That Made the West

In a momentous couple of years, the young United States added more than a million square miles of territory, including Texas and California. 
by Elliott West via American Heritage on July 3, 2024
People celebrating the construction of the transcontinental railroad.

Lincoln’s Imagined West

In Lincoln’s view the West represented a space for opportunity, especially for the citizen-soldiers returning to their prewar pursuits.
by Cecily Nelson Zander via The Civil War Monitor on April 1, 2024
A herd of bison.

A Panoramic View of the West

A sweeping new history examines many untold stories of the American West in the late nineteenth century.
by Bradley J. Birzer via Law & Liberty on December 13, 2023
Illustration of Native Americans on horseback attacking a mail coach

How the U.S. Postal Service Forever Changed the West

A new book argues that mail service played a critical role in the U.S. government’s westward expansion and occupation of Native lands.
by Cameron Blevins, Laura Bliss via CityLab on April 21, 2021
Screenshot of map showing post offices between 1848 and 1895.

Gossamer Network

An interactive digital history project chronicling how the U.S. Post was the underlying circuitry of western expansion.
by Cameron Blevins, Yan Wu, Steven Braun via Northeastern University on March 31, 2021
Book cover for The Two Faces of American Freedom

The Two Faces of American Freedom, Ten Years Later: Part One

On the ten year anniversary of Aziz Rana's book, Henry Brooks interviews him on his influential book and what it might teach us about the legacies of populism.
by Henry Brooks, Aziz Rana via LPE Project on December 14, 2020
A covered wagon in the grass.

The Deadly Temptation of the Oregon Trail Shortcut

Dying of dysentery was just the beginning.
by Laura Kiniry via Atlas Obscura on December 2, 2020
Captain Medorem Crawford pictured with his brother, LeRoy, who he employed as his assistant on the Emigrant Escort Service expeditions in 1862-4

A White Man’s Empire

The United Stated Emigrant Escort Service and settler colonialism during the Civil War.
by Stefanie Greenhill via Muster on July 28, 2020

Slavery, and American Racism, Were Born in Genocide

Martin Luther King Jr. recognized that Imperial expansion over stolen Indian land shaped and deepened the American Revolution’s relationship to slavery.
by Greg Grandin via The Nation on January 20, 2020

The Visionary John Wesley Powell Had a Plan for Developing the West, But Nobody Listened

Powell’s foresight might have prevented the 1930s dust bowl and perhaps, today’s water scarcities.
by John F. Ross via Smithsonian on July 3, 2018

Why a Woman Who Killed Indians Became Memorialized as the First Female Public Statue

Hannah Duston was used as a national symbol of innocence, valor, and patriotism to justify westward expansion.
by Barbara Cutter via Zócalo Public Square on April 9, 2018
A sculpture depicting George Washington and the Seneca leader Guyasuta staring at each other.

‘Our Father, the President’

George Washington's fraught relationship with Native Americans.
by Susan Dunn via New York Review of Books on March 15, 2018

An Independence Day Alternative

How "enlightened" leaders of the early US ignored an Independence Day speech and set in motion indigenous peoples' brutalization.
by Nicholas Guyatt via Jacobin on July 4, 2017

Why the Civil War West Mattered – and Still Does

The West cared very much about the Civil War.
by Megan Kate Nelson via HistoryNet on June 30, 2017
Busy horse and buggy outside of North Station in Boston.

The Frontiers of American Capitalism

Noam Maggor’s new book captures how it took both sides of the American continent to revitalize the economy after the Civil War.
by Eric Foner via The Nation on June 1, 2017

"Nature’s Nation": The Hudson River School and American Landscape Painting, 1825–1876

How American landscape painters, seen as old-fashioned and provincial, gained cultural power by glorifying expansionism.
by Linda Ferber via Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History on May 1, 2016
Interactive map of the U.S. Overland Trails, 1840 to 1860, showing cross-country migration routes.
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The Overland Trails 1840-1860

An interactive map of overland trails that settlers followed on their western journeys.
by Ed Ayers, Robert K. Nelson, Justin Madron, Nathaniel Ayers via American Panorama on December 1, 2015
Patrick Henry giving a speech to a crowd of Virginians.

What Spurred the South to Join the American Revolution?

How a dispute with a Scottish lord over westward expansion, gunpowder, and the future of enslaved labor made the southern colonies’ embrace the radical cause.
by Andrew Lawler via Smithsonian on April 4, 2025
Six hands holding a sword with an eagle on the hilt.

The Democratic Promise of Manifest Destiny

All Americans with some education are aware that Manifest Destiny was one of the Bad Things in our past and very few know any more about it than that.
by Hamilton Craig via Compact on March 25, 2025
Members of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Daughters of Union Veterans gather in Colorado in the 1930s.

Veterans Visit an Idealized West

A gathering of Union veterans in 1883 sheds light on the country's vision of the American West—as a space for reconciliation and a prize won by the war.
by Cecily Nelson Zander via The Civil War Monitor on February 3, 2025
Brawny arm tattooed with Capitol building and fighter jets.

The Return of American Exuberance

Trump's foreign policy is not as unprecedented as it seems.
by Adam Rowe via Compact on January 20, 2025
Political cartoon of politicians fist fighting.
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The Culture Question: How Hot-Button Issues Divide Us

Culture wars have a long and divisive history in American politics, with gender, race and religion continuing to inflame public opinion.
via Retro Report on September 20, 2024
A screenshot from "Red Dead Redemption 2" of cowboy protagonist Arthur Morgan riding a horse in a western landscape.

What Red Dead Redemption II Reveals About Our Myths of the American West

On the making of a centuries-old obsession at the heart of American national identity.
by Tore C. Olsson via Literary Hub on August 28, 2024
White settlers traveling west in Conestoga wagons.

America as Filibuster Society

American expansionism goes beyond territory.
by Nick Burns via American Affairs on August 20, 2024
"American Progress" painting by John Gast, 1872.

Reconsidering Expansion

Historians question "expansion" as the defining process of U.S. growth, proposing alternative terms like "empire" and "settler colonialism."
by Rachel St. John via Teaching American History on August 20, 2024
John Dudley Sargent standing next to Edith Sargent.
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Something We Were Never Meant to See

Finding a story in the ways Robert Ray Hamilton, John Dudley Sargent, and Edith Sargent weren’t quite forgotten. 
by Maura Jane Farrelly via HNN on July 9, 2024
Cover of "A Great Disorder."

In Need of a New Myth

Myths to explain American history and chart a path to the future once helped to bind the country together. Today, they are absorbed into the culture wars.
by Eric Foner via London Review of Books on June 26, 2024
An advertisement for the sale of Indian land by the US Department of the Interior, 1911.

A Legacy of Plunder

In its reexamination of narratives about the expropriation of Native land, Michael Witgen’s work changes how Native people are in the arc of American history.
by Francisco Cantú via New York Review of Books on May 30, 2024
Election Day in Philadelphia, John Lewis Krimmel.

A More Imperfect Union: How Differing National Visions Divided the North and the South

On the fragile facade of republicanism in 19th century America.
by Alan Taylor via Literary Hub on May 21, 2024
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