Primary Source Spotlight: Western Expansion & Manifest Destiny
This set of primary sources and teaching resources focuses, primarily, on the time period 1800-1860.
Western expansion stories from America’s Library
Western expansion timeline (includes primary source activities)
Primary source sets
- Western expansion (includes teacher guide)
- Primary Source Learning: Expansion & Reform (includes learning activity)
- Donner party primary sources
Primary source collections
- Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, 1820-1910 (collection connections: teaching resources)
- California As I Saw It: First Person Narratives, 1849-1900 (collection connections: teaching resources)
American migration timeline and maps (in English and Russian)
The right of Nebraska, 1854 (sheet music)
Key government documents related to territorial expansion & reform
Newspaper articles mentioning “manifest destiny” (1836-1860)
Texts
- Letters from the West : containing sketches of scenery, manners, and customs, and anecdotes connected with the first settlements of the western sections of the United States (1828)
- An act to provide for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the States or Territories, and for their removal West of the river Mississippi, May 28, 1830
- Notes on the early settlement of the North-western Territory (1847)
- Personal memoirs of a residence of thirty years with the Indian tribes on the American frontiers: with brief notices of passing events, facts, and opinions, A.D. 1812 to A.D. 1842 (1851)
- History of western Iowa, its settlement and growth (1882)
- The great plains; the romance of western American exploration, warfare, and settlement, 1527-1870 (1907)
Indian Yell: The Heart of an American Insurgency (streaming webcast)
Lesson plans
- Westward Expansion: Links to the Past
- Journeys West
- Primary Source Trail of Western Migration
- Trails to Utah and the Pacific: Diaries and Letters, 1846-1869 primary source activity ideas (find items using the Brigham Young University collection)
- Westward by Sea: A Maritime Perspective on American Expansion, 1820-1890 primary source activity ideas (find items using search box at Mystic Seaport Collections)
- Indian Territory Resettlement