This Land is My Land

That Land is My Land

I Want All of the Land

Come my tan-faced children,

Follow well in order, get your weapons ready, Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers!

For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths, So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers!

Do the feasters gluttonous feast? Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors? Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground, Pioneers! O pioneers!

Has the night descended? Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding on our way? Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious, Pioneers! O pioneers!

Till with sound of trumpet, Far, far off the daybreak call—hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind, Swift! to the head of the army!--swift! spring to your places, Pioneers! O pioneers!

• The US Constitution was signed and we were officially a

country with 13 states

• By 1800, we had already expanded considerably and

were growing rapidly

• A sentiment began to develop about the expansion of US

territory

• Was the belief that American settlers were destined to

expand our nation all the way to the Pacific (from sea to

shining sea)

• Expanding the US all the way to the Pacific was a difficult

task because:

• We didn’t own any of the land

• There weren’t any Americans in these areas

• We had no idea how to develop an economy in these areas

• So, in order to accomplish Manifest Destiny, the US

needed to establish the ___________ of ___________ in

the West.

• Let’s play a game. I’ll describe a milestone in our path to

Manifest Destiny, and you tell me which factor of

production was being established.

• In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson worked out a deal

in which we bought about a third of the continent from

France for 11 million dollars.

• Jefferson then sent two explorers to map the new land

and take note of its resources. A guide named Sacajawea

made this considerably more possible.

• The first people to try and settle the new territory were

known as the Mountain Men. They made a living trapping

rare animals and selling their pelts for fur.

• An altercation (over a cannon) at a Mexican fort called

the Alamo led to American troops taking the Texas

territory. Texan settlers wanted it to be a state, but the US

government waited 10 years to grant statehood.

• In the 1850s, President James Polk provoked a war with

Mexico when they were unwilling to sell us land in the

west. We won, and took the land (yay).

• After the discovery of gold in the California River in 1848

(at Sutter’s Sawmill), many settlers moved west to

acquire it.

• The next year was a mad rush for many Americans to

make their fortunes on the acquisition of precious metals.

• What is Walt Whitman trying to say in Pioneers, Oh

Pioneers?