Thomas Jefferson and the pastoral ideal according to Henry Nash Smith
  Jefferson was primarily interested in the political implications of the agrarian ideal. He was the cultivator of the earth, the husbandman who tilled his own acres, as the rock upon which the American republic must stand. “The small land holders,” he wrote, “are the most precious part of the state.” Such men had the independence, both economic and moral, that was indispensable in those entrusted with the solemn responsibility of the franchise. Thus the perception of Franklin and Crèvecœur that the waiting West promised an indefinite expansion of a simple agricultural society became the most certain guarantee that the United States would for a long age maintain its republican institutions. Not for many centuries would the vacant lands be filled and an overcrowded population fall into the depravity of crowded Europe. The policy of the government should obviously be to postpone this unhappy day as long as possible by fostering agriculture and removing all impediments to westward expansion. Jefferson‘s program for the state of Virginia included … the proposal that every landless adult should be given fifty acres from the public domain. Although he was not able to persuade the Virginia legislature to adopt this early homestead proposal, Jefferson did succeed in establishing a federal policy favoring westward expansion. He framed the Northwest Ordinance that opened the trans-Allegheny to settlement and provided for the eventual admission of new western states; he devised the system by which the public lands were to be conveyed to individual owners; and later he consummated the Louisiana Purchase, which more than doubled the area awaiting settlement in the West.
The agrarian doctrines of Jefferson and his contemporaries had been developed out of the rich cluster of ideas and attitudes associated with farming in European cultural tradition: the conventional praise of husbandry derived from Hesiod and Virgil by hundreds of poetic imitators, the theoretical teaching of the French Physiocrats that agriculture is the primary source of all wealth, the growing tendency of radical writers like Raynal to make the farmer a republican symbol instead of depicting him in pastoral terms as a peasant virtuously content with his humble status in a stratified society. The restatement and revision of these ideas in America during the period of the revolution gave them a nationalistic coloring by insisting that the society of the new nation was the concrete embodiment of what had been in Europe a utopian dream. The second stage in the development of American agrarian theory began with the perception that settlement beyond the Alleghenies promised an even more perfect realization of the agrarian ideal on a scale so vast that it dwarfed all previous conceptions of possible transformations in human society.
Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: the American West As Symbol and Myth (1950, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1970) 128-29.

1777 - THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION 1777(March 1, 1781/ March 4,1789)

The first Constitution of the United States was the Articles of Confederation, but right from the start it was obvious that they could not work  and keep the new nation united.

1786 Shay's Rebellion

In Massachusetts, farmers led by Daniel Shays had closed the courts to prevent the collection of farmers' debts. The state militia was called to suppress the farmers' uprising. But this rebellion shocked conservatives everywhere. They feared disorder, riots, mobs, anarchy.

The Constitution (1787)

1787 The Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia to amend the Articles of Confederation (1777, the first Constitution of the USA).

Finally a new Constitution was completed, establishing a federal state (1787).

It was sent to the states for ratification (1787 - 1790).

1788 Ratification of the Constitution

1789 the Supreme Court is established.

1791 the Bill of Rights or  first ten Amendments to the Constitution.

1793 Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin.

1794 Whiskey Rebellion: Federal government asserts its authority over local protest.

1794  In August 1794 , Anthony Wayne , a commander who had made his name in the American Revolution, led United States forces to victory over Indians in the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

1795 Jay Treaty

1795-1835 Second Great Awakening (Charles Grandison Finney)

1801-1809 THOMAS JEFFERSON

1803 Jefferson buys Louisiana from France, which opens the way for westward expansion and doubles the size of the nation. It is called the Louisiana Purchase.

1803-1806 Lewis and Clark commissioned by Jefferson to explore the territories of the Louisiana purchase and the west of the continent. Read their journal : http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JOURNALS/journals.html

1808 Senate prohibits further importation of slaves.

1809-1817 JAMES MADISON
 

1812-14 War with Britain - “Second War of Independence”.

1817-1825 JAMES MONROE

1818 - Convention of 1818 - (about Oregon)

1819 - The Adams-Onis Treaty Also called the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819: Spain cedes Florida to the USA.

http://www.pbs.org/kpbs/theborder/history/timeline/2.html
Accessed 2 Nov. 2002
The Adams-Onis Treaty was one of the critical events that defined the U.S.-Mexico border. The border between the then-Spanish lands and American territory was a source of heated international debate. In Europe, Spain was in the midst of serious internal problems and its colonies out west were on the brink of revolution. Facing the grim fact that he must negotiate with the United States or possibly lose Florida without any compensation, Spanish foreign minister Onis signed a treaty with Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Similar to the Louisiana Purchase statutes, the United States agreed to pay its citizens’ claims against Spain up to $5 Million. The treaty drew a definite border between Spanish land and the Louisiana Territory. In the provisions, the United States ceded to Spain its claims to Texas west of the Sabine River. Spain retained possession not only of Texas, but also California and the vast region of New Mexico. At the time, these two territories included all of present-day California and New Mexico along with modern Nevada, Utah, Arizona and sections of Wyoming and Colorado. The treaty -- which was not ratified by the United States and the new republic of Mexico until 1831 -- also mandated that Spain relinquish its claims to the country of Oregon north of the 42 degrees parallel (the northern border of California). Later, in 1824, Russia would also abandon its claim to Oregon south of 54’40,’ (the southern border of Alaska.)

1820 The Missouri Compromise:

Missouri was to enter the Union (= the United States) as a full state but the question was to know whether it would enter the Union as a free state or as a slave state: no political solution could be found until Henry Clay arranged a compromise: Missouri would be admitted as a slave state; Maine would be cut loose from Massachusetts as a free state, and Congress decreed that slavery would be excluded north of the parallel 36° 30'. The Missouri Compromise excluded slavery from Louisiana Purchase lands north of 36° 31'.

1823 The Monroe Doctrine demands noncolonization of the Western Hemisphere by European nations, nonintervention by Europe in the affairs of independent New World nations, noninterference by the U.S in European affairs.

1828

    The Tariff of 1828 (also known as the Tariff of Abominations) aggravated the rift between Calhoun and the Jacksonians. Calhoun had been assured that Jacksonians would reject the bill, but Northern Jacksonians were primarily responsible for its passage. Frustrated, Calhoun returned to his South Carolina plantation to write South Carolina Exposition and Protest, an essay rejecting the nationalist philosophy he once advocated. Wikipedia John C. Calhoun.


1828 Nullification theory

When Congress raised the duties even higher in 1828 with the so-called "Tariff of Abominations," South Carolina's Legislature published the "South Carolina Exposition and Protest," or South Carolina Doctrine, protesting the tariff as unconstitutional and advancing the theory of nullification. The Exposition declared that a sovereign State had the right to determine through a convention whether an act of Congress was unconstitutional and whether it constituted such a dangerous violation "as to justify the interposition of the State to protect its rights." If so, the convention would then decide in what manner the act ought to be declared null and void within the limits of the State, and the declaration would be obligatory on her own citizens, as well as the national government. U.S. Vice President John C. Calhoun was the (secret) author of the nullification theory. The Union, he argued, was a compact or league between sovereign States. ...
Source: http://www.snowcrest.net/siskfarm/nullif.html

    President Andrew Jackson had little sympathy for the Indians and ignored the Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Indians.

In 1832, the states' rights theory was put to the test in the Nullification Crisis after South Carolina passed an ordinance that nullified federal tariffs. The tariffs favored Northern manufacturing interests over Southern agricultural concerns, and the South Carolina legislature declared them to be unconstitutional. Wikipedia John C. Calhoun.

In response to the South Carolina move, Congress passed the Force Bill [1833] , which empowered the President to use military power to force states to obey all federal laws, and Jackson sent US Navy warships to Charleston harbor. South Carolina then nullified the Force Bill. Tensions cooled after both sides agreed to the Compromise Tariff of 1833, a proposal by Senator Henry Clay to change the tariff law in a manner which satisfied Calhoun, who by then was in the Senate.  Wikipedia

1837-1841 VAN BUREN

1837 financial panic - “the crash of 1837”

1838 The Army Corps of Topograhical Engineers created

1838 Trail of Tears ("The Trail On Which We Cried")

The Cherokee [in Georgia] having fought through the courts to stay, found themselves divided. Some recognized the hopelessness of further resistance and accepted removal as the only chance to preserve their civilization. The leaders of this minority signed a treaty in 1835 in which they agreed to exchange their southern home for western land. But when the time for evacuation came in 1838, most Cherokee refused to move. President Martin Van Buren then sent federal troops to round up the Indians. About twenty thousand Cherokee were evicted, held in detention camps, and marched to Oklahoma under military escort. Nearly one-quarter died of disease and exhaustion on the infamous Trail of Tears. When it was all over the Indians had traded about 100 million acres of land east of the Mississippi for 32 million acres west of the river plus $68 million. (A People and a Nation: A brief History of the United States, Brief Edition, Second Edition, (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company1988), p. 185. )

U.S. policy that allowed the first settlers, or squatters, on public land to buy the land they had improved. Since improved land, coveted by speculators, was often priced too high for squatters to buy at auction, temporary preemptive laws allowed them to acquire it without bidding. The Pre-Emption Act (1841) gave squatters the right to buy 160 acres at $1.25 per acre before the land was auctioned. The Homestead Act (1862) made preemption an accepted part of U.S. land policy. See also Homestead Movement.

1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty defines the border between Canada and the US.

1842-1860s - Oregon Trail

1844-1851 The Mormon Settlement

1845-1849 POLK

1845 Manifest Destiny

1845 Texas joins the Union.

 In John Gast's "American Progress," (1872) a diaphanously and precarious clad America floats westward thru the air with the "star of empire" on her forehead. She has left the cities of the East behind, and the wide Mississippi, and still her course is westward. In her right hand she carries a school book—testimonial of the national enlightenment—, while with her left she trails the slender wires of the telegraph that will bind the nation. Fleeing her approach are Indians, buffalo, wild horses, bears, and other game, disappearing into the storm and waves of the Pacific coast. They flee the wonderous vision—the star "is too much for them."—precis of a contemporary description of this painting by George Crofutt who distributed his engraving of it widely.

The United States and Great Britain had joint occupation of Oregon country, which at the time included today’s states of Oregon and Washington. When expansionist James K. Polk had become President, he defiantly asserted the American title to the whole of Oregon territory. Polk however was not likely to risk a war with Great Britain. His ambition was to annex California which could lead to a war with Mexico. The British government had their own domestic worries and proposed to extend the international boundary along latitude 49°N to Puget Sound, and Polk accepted. On June 15, 1846 the Oregon treaty was ratified.

1846 - In California, American settlers set up the “Bear Flag” Republic, but soon lose power.

1846-1848 - The Mexican War (1846-1848) and the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty (1848 ) - The war forces Mexico to recognize the incorporation of Texas into the U.S.A. The United States gains California and New Mexico.

Henry Clay

Also called the Omnibus bill, the compromise of 1850, pushed by Kentucky's Henry Clay and Illinois's Stephen A. Douglas, provided for the admission of California as a free state, the establishment of territorial governments in New Mexico and Utah which was  free to choose slavery or not, reduction of Texas to its present state boundaries, slave trade banned in DC. Free states were obliged to arrest runaway slaves and return them to their home states, as stated in the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Many Northerners opposed it and organized "the underground railroad" to help fugitive slaves to reach Canada and freedom.

 
 
 

Henry Clay addresses the Senate in the debate on the Compromise of 1850. As 'the Great Pacificator' speaks, Calhoun (standing third from the right, steel-gray hair falling loosely) stares at him intently. Seated two rows behind Clay (front left), Webster, head on his left hand, looks away. The man with the bulbous nose seated second from right is Thomas Hart Benton. (Library of Congress)

1854 October: "Ostend Manifesto"

In a secret meeting the US ministers to Spain, France, and England (Pierre Soulé, John Y. Mason, James Buchanan) draft a plan recommending the purchase of Cuba at any price, given its security potential for the USA, and its annexation by force should Spain refuse to give in. When it was leaked the Manifesto stirred up a major public controversy which put an end to the administration's Cuban annexation plan, largely because of its close ties with the slavery issue.

1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act

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"Kansas-Nebraska Act" (Kansas and Nebraska are established as territories with the right to self-determination in regard to slavery in an otherwise free-soil area according to the 1820 Missouri Compromise), a clumsy political maneuver of Illinois Democrat Stephen A. Douglas to secure Southern support for a northern transcontinental railroad deal.

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1854 The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise and put forward the idea that the settlers of each territory, not the Missouri Compromise nor the Congress should determine the future status of slavery in each new state to be created out of each territory. This was the famous principle now called popular sovereignty which had been enunciated four years earlier in the Compromise of 1850. From the beginning of the republic the law had operated on the assumption that the federal government controlled the territories, that it would dictate the organization of government, and that self-rule would come gradually.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act became law on May 30, 1854, by which the U.S. Congress established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. By 1854 the organization of the vast Platte and Kansas river countries west of Iowa and Missouri was overdue. As an isolated issue, territorial organization of this area was no problem. It was, however, irrevocably bound to the bitter sectional controversy over the extension of slavery into the territories and was further complicated by conflict over the location of the projected transcontinental railroad. Under no circumstances did proslavery Congressmen want a free territory (Kansas) west of Missouri. Because the West was expanding rapidly, territorial organization, despite these difficulties, could no longer be postponed. Four attempts to organize a single territory for this area had already been defeated in Congress, largely because of Southern opposition to the Missouri Compromise. Although the last of these attempts to organize the area had nearly been successful, Stephen A. Douglas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, decided to offer territorial legislation making concessions to the South. Douglas's motives have remained largely a matter of speculation. Various historians have emphasized Douglas's desire for the Presidency, his wish to cement the bonds of the Democratic party, his interest in expansion and railroad building, or his desire to activate the unimpressive Pierce administration. The bill he reported in Jan., 1854, contained the provision that the question of slavery should be left to the decision of the territorial settlers themselves. This was the famous principle that Douglas now called popular sovereignty, though actually it had been enunciated four years earlier in the Compromise of 1850. In its final form Douglas's bill provided for the creation of two new territories—Kansas and Nebraska—instead of one. The obvious inference—at least to Missourians—was that the first would be slave, the second free. The Kansas-Nebraska Act flatly contradicted the provisions of the Missouri Compromise (under which slavery would have been barred from both territories); indeed, an amendment was added specifically repealing that compromise. This aspect of the bill in particular enraged the antislavery forces, but after three months of bitter debate in Congress, Douglas, backed by President Pierce and the Southerners, saw it adopted. Its effects were anything but reassuring to those who had hoped for a peaceful solution. The popular sovereignty provision caused both proslavery and antislavery forces to marshal strength and exert full pressure to determine the “popular” decision in Kansas in their own favor, using groups such as the Emigrant Aid Company. The result was the tragedy of “bleeding” Kansas. Northerners and Southerners were aroused to such passions that sectional division reached a point that precluded reconciliation. A new political organization, the Republican party, was founded by opponents of the bill, and the United States was propelled toward the Civil War. (P. O. Ray, The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise (1909, repr. 1965).

1857 Dred Scott Decision

Chief Justice Taney and a majority of the Supreme Court declared that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the territories. The Supreme Court denied citizenship to U.S. Blacks and Congress’s right to exclude slavery from the territories. The ruling made slavery legal in all the territories, thereby adding fuel to the sectional controversy and pushing the nation along the road to civil war. The decision was a clear victory for the slaveholding South.

1859 Raid on Harper's Ferry by John Brown

 
           On October 16, 1859, Brown led 21 men in an attack on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. The arsenal was a large complex of buildings that contained 100,000 muskets and rifles. He planned to seize the weapons and arm local slaves. They would then head south, and a general revolution would result. The 21 raiders included a fugitive slave, a college student, and several free blacks. Three of the men were Brown's sons.

The raid and John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859. After the Civil War, Frederick Douglass wrote: "Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic. His zeal in the cause of my race was far greater than mine. I could live for the slave, but he could die for him." John Brown was buried on the John Brown Farm in North Elba, New York (south of Lake Placid).

1860 Pony Express created.

It was the first coat to coast mail service by young riders.

1860 The first state to secede was South Carolina on Dec. 20, 1860

1861 In October 1861 the telegraph links East and West across the continent.

1861 Lincoln is inaugurated (March 4, 1861)

1861 Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861) (Beginning of the Civil War)

1862 The Homestead Actmakes it possible for isolated pioneers to settle a plot of land on the frontier.

1862 Morrill Act - The Morill Act granted lands from the public domain to states in the West in order for them to build colleges to develop the knowledge of agriculture and technology. 

1862 Pacific Railway Act - The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 gave land grants in the Western United States to the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad (later the Southern Pacific Railroad) to construct a transcontinental railroad. The act granted 10 square miles (26 km²) of public land on each side of the tracks for every mile laid.
1862 Confederate armies under General Lee and Jackson threaten Washington. (Wikipedia)

1863 Emancipation Proclamation makes all slaves free.

1863 Unionists are victorious at Gettysburg. Gettysburg Address by A. Lincoln.

1864 Union General Sherman takes Atlanta and Savannah. Lincoln is re-elected.

1865 Lee surrenders at Appomattox on April 9th. Lincoln is assassinated in Washington on April 14.