The Homestead Act promoted westward expansion and further displaced Indians. It allowed any American, including freed slaves to claim 160 acres of federal land. Eventually, 256 million acres would be claimed. After claiming their land the settler would then have to live on that piece of ground for five years continuously for them to have finally owned their claimed ground. In the winter of 1862, President Lincoln appoints one of his friends, John Evans to become the Territorial Governor of Colorado.
This act striped tribes not only of their land, but of their heritage. This is when the Dawes rolls were enacted, making members claim only one tribe as their heritage, meaning that if a person was one fourth Cherokee and one fourth Choctaw they had to choose only one to register as (“Dawes Commission”). Many people did not even sign the Dawes Rolls for fear of further Indian
Despite this causing a terrible genocide of Cherokee Indians along the Trail of Tears, when looking at this decision through solely an economic view, it clearly helped the American economy thrive. Jackson made this decision to evict the Native Americans due to the fact that they lived on fertile lands that weren’t being used to their full potential. Jackson thought that these potential farm lands would be much more useful if American farmers settled the area (Whaples 546-547). Thus, by removing the Indians, Jackson cleared up an abundance of fertile land to sell to the American citizens. As stated by author Robert Whaples in his article Were Andrew Jackson’s Policies “Good for the Economy”?, during Jackson’s presidency, “the federal government sold almost 50 million acres to the public out of the 88 million acres sold from 1820 to 1849” (Whaples 548).
It is inevitable to know about historical significance behind the novel; which provides the better understanding of the socio-cultural issue prevails in it. The novel set during the historical period when the Dawes Act (General Allotment Act) of 1887. The objectives of the Dawes Act are to lift the Native Americans out of poverty and to stimulate assimilation of them into that so called mainstream American society. It allowed tracts of arable land that had been communal reservation property to be allotted to individual tribal
Finally, with the ratification of the 24th Amendment in 1964, the right to vote could not be determined by the ability to pay poll taxes. This was a major advancement for Black voters, as taxes were often used to deny them the right to vote, despite it being a right outlined in the Fifthteenth Amendment. Historically, African Americans were not taught to read and write, and slave children were denied access to education. In a similar manner, women were not well educated as it wasn’t needed to carry out their duties at home. As a result, tests were used to deny Blacks and women from voting at polls.
The 24th amendment reads as followed “The Twenty-fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax”. The Amendments that led up to the 24th were just as significant, but brought no real change. This was huge for the equal rights movement and gave African-Americans a real opportunity to vote and have a voice in politics to one day change the lives of them and their children to come. Poll taxes were a capital tax that applied equally to adults. They were a decent form of revenue for some governments until the mid-1800s.
Northern and Southern states developed different social and political beliefs which led into larger disagreements. Although many different factors contributed to the Civil War, the main causes were over issues such as humanitarian or ‘moral’ concerns towards slavery, conflicts between states versus federal rights and the election of 1860, making Abraham Lincoln as president and eventually causing Southern secession. The American Civil War began in 1861 and lasted 4 years, ending in 1865. It was one of the most deadly and bloodiest war since more than 600,000 died, but at the same time, it served to determine what kind of nation America would become. The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to ban slavery in the territories that had not yet become states.
The Emancipation Proclamation is probably one of the most important documents in the history of the United States of America; in spite of that, it is also one of the most complicated and misunderstood. On January 1, 1863, as the United States approached its third year of brutal civil war, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation stated that “all persons held as slaves are, and henceforward shall be free,” this was within the rebellious states. The Emancipation Proclamation made the nation change views and affected various aspects of the United States. When Lincoln proposed the Emancipation Proclamation he didn’t receive the support he thought he was going to get from his advisors.
We know, however, that America was already inhabited by Natives whose ancestors had arrived thousands of years earlier. There the march of settlement and exploitation continued, propelled by a lust for land and a passion for profit. Between 1870 and 1900, Americans settled more land in the West than had been occupied by all Americans up to 1870. Conflicts over land ownership, religion, and culture, combined with broken promises by the U.S. government, moved the Indian
The idea of Manifest Destiny changed the American Landscape. But, you may think, is it possible for a spiritual belief and religious to have the ability to dramatically influence the manner in which a country is built and the way its people think? I can give you three elements on how I think this new way of thinking came to be. First, the Louisiana Purchase. In this transaction with France, signed on April 30, 1803, the United States purchased 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million.