Settlement continued in the antebellum period. “Between 1845 and 1853, the nation expanded its boundaries to include Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming” (Overview of the Pre-Civil War Era, n.d., par. 7).
After the Civil War, the pace of westward expansion accelerated. “Between 1865 and the 1890s, however, Americans settled 430 million acres in the Far West—more land than during the preceding 250 years of American history. By 1893, the Census Bureau was able to claim that the entire western frontier was now occupied” (Overview of the Gilded Age, n.d., par. 6). Discovery of minerals and ores drove settlers and prospectors in search of opportunity in California (gold), Colorado (gold, silver, and zinc), Nevada (silver, gold, and copper), Idaho (silver, lead, and zinc), and Montana (iron, silver, and copper). Railroads expanded and barbed wire was invented, which allowed vast acreages to be fenced in. This period also saw increasing urbanization and an increased pace of overseas immigration.
The end of the Civil War brought Reconstruction and then the Jim Crow era below the Mason-Dixon Line. The Jim Crow era brought enforced segregation and loss of voting rights to black citizens. It was also an era in which lynchings and race riots took place. By 1916, a steady stream of emigrants began to move in search of a better life. This mass movement of rural black citizens to the urban North and Midwest became known as the Great Migration.
After World War I and during the 1920s, anti-immigrant sentiment strengthened and President Warren G. Harding signed a Quota Act ending the United States’ Open Door Policy. The year 1924 saw the passage of the National Origins Act, which limited “immigration from any nation to two percent of its representation in the 1890 census….” In 1932, “for the first time ever, more aliens left the country than arrived” (“Closing,” 2002, par. 1). In 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act abolished the system of national origin quotas, resulting in new immigration from non-European nations. Immigration continues to be a highly contentious issue today.
