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President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law in 1830. This law granted the President the ability to exchange land west of the Mississippi for Indigenous territories within the boundaries of existing states. An additional act was passed in 1834. This act designated land, including what would later become the state of Oklahoma, as Indian Territory. As a result of the precedent set by these acts, over sixty tribes were either willingly or forcibly removed from their lands over the next fifty years.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum explains: “Catlin mistranslated Ah-jon-jon, whose name means ‘The Light,’ as ‘Pigeon's Egg Head.’ The Light was an Assiniboine leader who was invited in 1831 to represent his tribe in Washington. During a winter in the nation's capital, he traded his native dress for European clothes and customs. In Catlin's before-and-after portrait, the once proud warrior, with a liquor bottle in his pocket, swaggers in high-heeled boots and carries a fan and umbrella. For Catlin, this transformation illustrated the tragic gulf between Native American and white cultures.”

In 1835, in the “Treaty of New Echota,” a group of Cherokees – without consent of the majority of their nation – agreed that the Cherokee people would move West and vacate their land. This letter, a protest against the Treaty, was sent by Chief John Ross and other Cherokee leaders to Congress in an effort to declare that treaty invalid.

During the fall and winter of 1838 and 1839, the Cherokees were forcibly marched from their lands. Known as the “Trail of Tears,” this forced removal resulted in the deaths of thousands of Cherokee. The Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Creek, and the Seminole also were forced to travel along the trail of tears.

In 1839, the enslaved people aboard the Amistad were captured by Portuguese slave traders in Sierra Leone, and they were being taken to a Caribbean plantation. The enslaved Africans seized control of the ship, killed two of their captors, and ordered the ship to sail to Africa, but it was seized off of the coast of Long Island and the enslaved Africans were brought to trial in Connecticut. As the National Archives explains, “Had it not been for the actions of abolitionists in the United States, the issues related to the Amistad might have ended quietly in an admiralty court. But they used the incident as a way to expose the evils of slavery and generate significant opposition to the practice.” In an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court, John Quincy Adams “passionately and eloquently defended the Africans' right to freedom on both legal and moral grounds, referring to treaties prohibiting the slave trade and to the Declaration of Independence. The Supreme Court decided in favor of the Africans, stating that they were free individuals.”

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo held a direct correlation to westward movement and migration. Americans forged west with the discovery of gold in 1848 at Sutter’s Mill in California which was the first major gold rush in the United States. By the following year, tens of thousands of “forty-niners” had come to the area in hopes of striking it rich. Most did not become wealthy in California, but many stayed there. The region continued to grow rapidly, and, in 1850, California became a state. With the expansion of available land and the gold rush, people from all over the USA and the world came and new businesses developed, including the pony express, transcontinental railroad jobs, Chinese laundry, the cattle industry, and free and enslaved Africans seeking freedom.

The Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850 as part of the Compromise of 1850, a series of laws designed to ease sectional tensions between the North and South. The law benefitted southern enslavers by requiring northern law enforcement to assist in capturing and returning enslaved persons who had run away from their enslavers. Southern bounty hunters were also permitted to operate in the North. The law put both enslaved and free Blacks at risk. After the law was passed, thousands of freedom seekers attempted to escape to free states in the North and Canada as well, where they would be beyond the reach of the law.

During the peak of the Gold Rush, over 20,000 Chinese men immigrated to the United States to mine gold in California. Chinese immigrant labor contributed significantly to not only the mining industry, but also the expansion of the national railroad and the development of services supporting laborers. Nonetheless, xenophobic, anti-Chinese sentiment rose in California and nationally, ultimately leading to both the Chinese Massacre of 1871 (in which a violent mob lynched 18 Chinese men) and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

This book, The Fugitive Slave Law and its Victims, published in 1861, was an antislavery text, arguing for the abolition of slavery by providing accounts of the Fugitive Slave Laws’ effects and victims. The book was published by the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York.-

Popular images and music from the former Confederate states during Reconstruction created the image of the Northern “carpetbagger,” a derogatory term for an opportunistic outsider who has arrived from the Northern states to exploit the Southern states out of self-interest and greed.

Images like this one helped to portray the West as vast, unpopulated, uncharted territory ready for U.S. expansion.

According to the Digital Public Library of America, “Benjamin Singleton established the Edgefield Real Estate and Homestead Association to help organize travel and settlement for African Americans departing Tennessee for Kansas.” Singleton was a formerly enslaved man who escaped to freedom in 1846, and he helped to organize the migration of approximately 300 African Americans to Kansas in 1877 - 1878. These migrants were not only seeking opportunity, but they were also fleeing the racial violence of white supremacists.

The United States Government policies and practices of Indian removal forced multiple indigenous nations Westward, off of their land and into smaller, isolated reservations in the Western territories and states.

According to the Library of Congress, this chart was “prepared by [W.E.B.] Du Bois for the Negro Exhibit of the American Section at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900 to show the economic and social progress of African Americans since emancipation.”

In the early nineteenth century, many people left their home countries seeking a better life in the United States, perceived to be a land of opportunity and wealth. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, it is estimated that nearly 12 million immigrants arrived in the United States from Germany, Ireland, and England. In the 1900s immigrants from Italy arrived in large numbers.

While immigrants often came seeking a better life or escape from oppression and economic hardship, Immigrants faced many challenges in the United States. Lack of jobs and discrimination posed barriers to many immigrant communities and many faced pressures of assimilation and hostility.

Throughout shifting immigration policies over the course of American history, there is also an ongoing debate about how best to assimilate new Americans.  According to the Library of Congress, “though nativists may have abhorred the increasing ethnic diversity in the United States, others saw the opportunity to steep newcomers in American traditions. With four million Americans of Irish descent, hundreds of thousands of Jewish Americans with strong ties to Eastern Europe, and ten million citizens hailing from nations aligned with the Central Powers, organizations like the New York National Americanization Day Committee hoped to use patriotic holidays such as the Fourth of July as a means to unify the country's diverse populations.”

During the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Mexican Americans were deported from the United States to Mexico. As unemployment increased during the 1930s, white Americans viewed Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans as competition for scarce agricultural jobs and resources. In response, many local and state governments, often with the federal government's support, initiated a program of repatriating immigrants to Mexico. Some Mexicans, many of whom were recruited as farmworkers in the 1910s and 1920s, were offered free train rides to the border. In addition, Mexican Americans were coerced into giving up their jobs and land, forcing them to move to Mexico or find work elsewhere in the United States.

Between 1936 and 1967, The Green Book was published annually for African Americans traveling throughout the United States and North America. The Green Book’s original author, Victor Hugo Green, intended for the publication to act as a travel guide for African Americans during the Jim Crow Era, when laws prohibited many establishments from offering service to Black patrons. The Green Book offered suggestions to travelers seeking places and businesses which were safe for African Americans and which would treat Black patrons with dignity.

During the 1930s, the fallout from the Great Depression and environmental disaster struck the Great Plains region of the United States. Severe drought and resulting dust storms rendered the land in the Great Plains unfit for farming. Due to the drastic loss of jobs and income as well as the overwhelming amount of dust, which made living conditions unsafe and unbearable, millions of people left the Great Plains and headed west to California. Migrants faced a long and often dangerous journey to California as well as discrimination once they arrived.

Dorothea Lange, a photographer whose work was funded by the New Deal’s Farm Security Administration, documented struggling workers during the Great Depression.  In this photograph, a Mexican family seeks work in the fields of California.

As a response to increasing anti-Japanese sentiment after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. Using national security as a justification, the order called for the relocation of persons of Japanese descent living in the United States. The newly formed War Relocation Authority moved nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans, the majority of whom were citizens, to “relocation centers”, most of which were located throughout the West.

The Japanese Americans who were affected by the Civilian Exclusion Order were given little time to leave their homes and dispose of their property before being transported from assembly centers to more permanent relocation centers.

While they were not required to work, the movement of the incarcerated Japanese Americans was limited by barbed wire and guard towers.

This treaty established a tenuous peace between Americans and Native Americans. As explained in Smithsonian Magazine, “The Treaty with the Delaware Nation, signed at Fort Pitt in September 1778, represents a time when the newly independent United States needed American Indian allies to drive British troops from forts and outposts west of the Appalachian Mountains. Despite the treaty’s provisions, however, conflict continued in the Ohio Territory, leading the Delaware people to look for safer lands farther north and west.”

Washington, arguably the most respected foundational leader, was very clear about not getting involved in “foreign entanglements.” It’s important to contemplate his prescriptive advice and how close (or far) America has lived up to his vision.

Article 11 of this treaty established the United States as not being considered a “Christian Nation” by a foreign country. This would play an important part in diplomatic relations, especially with “non-Christian nations.” As one of our earlier treaties, this is also important because it sets the tone for foreign policy.

This item details “Monroe’s Doctrine” in President Monroe’s annual  message to Congress. President Monroe buried a very serious global policy within the text of a routine speech. In it, he warned European powers to recognize the western hemisphere as America’s sphere of influence. His words are important to study how U.S. policy shifted in a drastic way.

This cartoon is a satirical look at presidential power. IN it there is “A satirical view of the scramble among newly elected President James K. Polk's 1844 campaign supporters, or "patriots," for "their beans," i.e., patronage and other official favors.”

Many people who were annexed by the United States tried to resist. This document shows how native Hawaiians did not want to be part of the United States.

A session held by the Anti-imperialist league, this meeting consisted of people who spoke out against the U.S. annexation of the Philippines. It represents a domestic attitude about imperial ambitions.

Simply titled, “Pacifists,” this photo shows how many Americans wanted a more democratic process to foreign involvement with the implicit understanding that Americans do not desire foreign involvement.

Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen points were statements of principles that outlined why the United States was entering the first World War. In other words, it was a clear statement of what Americans were fighting for. To many historians, this marked the end of isolationism.

This picture shows how kids were recruited to help make “victory gardens” and help win the war effort. It’s useful for demonstrating how Americans at home supported war goals.

This source shows a time when an American argued in favor of American intervention on behalf of Haiti, Liberia, and Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

These images are telegrams sent from Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady, to President Roosevelt, and his response.  According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “in February 1939, the First Lady joined a list of prominent Americans who supported the passage of the Wagner-Rogers Bill, which proposed to ‘permit the entry of 20,000 German refugee children, ages 14 and under, into the United States’ over a two-year period and outside of the existing, restrictive immigration quota system. Though she was often outspoken on behalf of causes she cared about, this was the first time she publicly endorsed a piece of pending legislation as first lady. Eleanor Roosevelt told reporters that the bill was ‘a wise way to do a humanitarian act.’ The president never officially commented on the proposed legislation. The bill was never voted on.”

This Presidential Proclamation, which followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, set the stage for the incarceration of Japanese Americans. Under this proclamation, even Japanese-American citizens were treated as “enemy aliens,” deprived of their Constitutional rights, and removed from their homes into internment camps for the duration of the war.

These two iconic images are most closely associated with their use during World War II, though the “Uncle Sam” character was first created during World War I. The Department of Defense refers to these images, intended to recruit soldiers to fight and women to work in the factories to support the war effort, as the “social media of the time.” The “We Can Do It” poster introduced the character of Rosie the Riveter, intended to attract more women to fill jobs left vacant by men leaving for the armed forces.

On February 11, 1945, President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin signed the Yalta Agreement. The three world leaders negotiated plans for the governance of Europe following the end of World War II.

In this draft of a speech WEB DuBois was critiquing war as a means to perpetuate supremacy. He argued against involvement.

This source shows the impact television made on foreign policy. Nixon and Kruschev debated about the merits of their respective economic types.

This satirical cartoon shows the seemingly inevitable nature of nuclear war, after getting entangled with The Soviet Union. It can be used to show how close the United States came to nuclear war and the results of brinkmanship policy.

A massive movement against the war in Vietnam, protestors took to the streets to voice their outrage in U.S. policy, arguing for less intervention in global affairs.

This meeting between the U.S. president and leaders from Egypt and Israel successfully produced the basis for an Egyptian-Israeli peace, in the form of two “Framework” documents, which laid out the principles of a bilateral peace agreement as well as a formula for Palestinian self-government in Gaza and the West Bank.