in this video I'd like to look at how the USA expanded from 1840 to 1860 and the second unit of these history videos is going to look at this period of time this period of USA expansion in these 20 year period before the Civil War so let's look at two maps to show how the USA expanded first off this is the map where we really left it the story of where we left it at the end or sorry at the start really of 1840 and in 1840 those places in pink that you can see on this map here were official states and they'd become those states in that period if its first period of expansion that we looked at in the first unit and you can see here Missouri and really importantly being the Missouri Compromise line they're above it now north of Missouri you can see there are territories settlers have began moving into these regions but hadn't really got very far let's fast forward this picture to 1860 and see what the difference is now this is the map from 1860 and you can see some really quite noticeable differences let's talk through those differences first of all you see new states in the North here secondly you'll see much more territories where settlers have been moving across the West settling building farms and then finally you can see new states in the right in the West here in California in Oregon and even in the south in Texas so if we're going to summarize this let's look at those two maps side-by-side and if we're looking at them side-by-side really this story and the videos of this story are going to tell you this it's about the USA expanding West the USA expanding West in this period and that western expansion is really really what gonna lick over the next probably four or five videos now what we mean by the West is important that we define this so the West as far as these videos are going to be concerned it's the area west of the Mississippi River here and you can see the Mississippi River here running from st. Paul all the way down to New Orleans so we're talking about the west bank of the Mississippi all the way over to the Atlantic and this area is vast you can see this is an area thousands of miles wide and an area with vastly different geographies and it's this region that we're going to look at in this twenty year period now this is a region of very high mountains and this is a region the Rocky Mountains this is a region of vast cross plains where the Buffalo this is a region of deserts and this is Monument Valley on the Utah Arizona border and this is a region of beautiful coastlines and it was this region that really people in America became obsessed by and you can see why in these images there is something mythically amazing about these places and Americans have always been obsessed by the West and you can see it in their paintings and you can see what happened in these places from those painting and the paintings in particular the paintings of the 19th century show these hugely romantic pictures of white Americans moving into the West and you can see in this painting here some Native Americans looking on and the scene looks idyllic with the mountains behind and the wagon trails moving over the plains and you can see in other paintings where people are stood on tops of those mountains on the edges of the desert looking West thinking West expanding west and again that idea quite romantic quite a Dilek scenes and it's often portrayed with Native Americans and you can see Native Americans in many of these paintings sometimes they're quite harsh scenes like this with the Native American hunting the Buffalo but again those scenes really looking quite a Dilek beautiful scenes you can imagine people wanting to move into these regions wagon trails again moving across the plains heading towards the Rocky Mountains where they would cross over the Rocky Mountains and in siddhis regions like California and Oregon and I wanted to end with this image here because this image here really is the classic image of the American expansion West and this lady here is really you can see what she's doing she's taking the electricity lines and the trains and they're heading west and where she's been where she's been in the East is a land of enlightenment and sunshine and where she's heading is into that dark region of the unknown now this lady here and this picture here is allegorical it's not real it's telling you the story of what happens and this pictures really quite fascinating because it tells you a lot about Americans at this time and the idea of conquering the Wild West shown here by that dark image on the left it's really part of the American identity and you will have seen films about the Wild West of cowboys fighting Native Americans and the idea of conquering the Wild West is genuinely part of that myth about America you see in paintings you see in books you see it in films and the white Americans the white settlers thought it was their right to expand at a country from the Atlantic we're the 13 colonies were over to the Pacific it was their right to do so and those white settlers began using a term in this period called manifest destiny now manifest destiny in this context the word manifest means god-given and the white settlers believed it was their god-given right to expand their country west and take this land but it's really important that we don't forget that actually that is a racist idea it was not their land to be taken it was not their right to take this land this is a case of white settler colonialism this is a case of white settlers trying to form colonies in areas that weren't theirs the indigenous tribes which we've seen in some of those paintings in the last couple of minutes had been in that region of the West for centuries if that land was anyone's it was theirs and it's the Plains Native Americans that I want to come back to you in the next video