Week nine was not an interesting week in my opinion. It focused a lot on manifest destiny and America’s progression to modern society. Both of those topics are extremely significant, but they are the least interesting to discuss in my opinion. Since manifest destiny is the belief that White Americans are supposed to populate all of North America, non white settlers were at risk of losing their land. Along with that, they were also at risk of going to war if they did not cooperate with the new “policies.” These policies were not viewed as “fair” to everyone, so there were consequences on both sides.
One of the first and largest Act’s that was passed was The Indian Removal Act. The Indian Removal Act caused a lot of outrage within the lands. Due to the westward expansion, Native Americans were forced to abandon their ancestral land. However, the Indigenous people were not going to let them just take the land away. Force and power were used against the Natives, which ended up in a numerous amount of casualties. At the time, Thomas Jefferson was president and his goal was to expand the U.S. The first action he took was following through with The Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Louisiana was a large enough state where it significantly increased the amount of land that the U.S. had. After this purchase, many debates of Indigenous land rights began. There were many court cases due to all of the historical damages that were taken to trial. These trials led to more acts getting passed since there were no laws protecting Indigenous settlers.
Manifest Destiny was bound to happen since God has everything happen for a reason. However, it was influenced primarily by Americans so they could have more land. They kind of used it as an excuse to abuse other races that were not as dominant within the land. Since the Americans structured it into their favor, there was really no chance for Indigenous people to lock down any of their land. The U.S. also had a powerful military which made it tougher to rebel against the Americans.