The West The westward expansion brought about many things to the history of the United States. Bringing people of diversity and religious background together in the quest for land and a new way of living. Going west meant leaving everything behind, and looking toward the future. People were able to leave behind their lives of business and well breed upbringing and fight, once again, for their survival. " In the conflict with the wilderness, birth, education, wealth, and social standings have counted for little in comparison with strength, vigor and aggressive courage."ÃÂ(Paxson, The Last American Frontier, pg 2.) According to Paxson, the frontier was a new way of living, socially and culturally.
During the westward expansion, the military was thriving. The men had wives and those wives, who once lead simple lives that consist of tea and dinner parties, change once in the west. They no longer worried about being proper they worried about survival.
Billy Sunday and wife (LOC)
English: Cartoon published in the Melbourne versio...
"Sunday school, Indians and white[s]." Indian Terr...The women would hunt, cook, and clean over open fires, out in the wild. The women kept social gatherings on the fort and had Sunday schools for the black children. The women of the west used their education to teach the uneducated. "When women organized Sunday school for the blacks or cared for the laundresses who where ill, they where inspired as much by a sense of noblesse oblige as empathy."ÃÂ(Eagles, pg. 129) Women on the frontier learned to live on her own, due to the fact the men where out serving the military. They learned to fight and hunt for them selves. Frontier women brought new ideas of how women lived. They brought new ideas to women independence that leads to the rights of women, and women suffrage.
Animated map/timeline of the territorial evolution...
USA Westward Expansion 1803 to 1807
USA Westward Expansion 1815 to 1845