Identify and assess the significance of three factors that contributed to American westward movement Essay Example for Free

Identify and assess the significance of three factors that contributed to American westward apparent movement EssayThis could be dismissed as the grass is always greener. There were however a hail of factors involved. These included the search for precious metal, the possibility of obtaining land and the expansion of the railways. Although usually described as a move west, it was to some extent also a move south as in the berth of those seeking gold and silver in Californian mines as a result of the accidental decision of gold by James Marshall in 1848 as described by Steve Weigand on the tissue page The California Gold Rush, an era remembered. Land was seen as a form of wealth and the volume of those who migrated to America did so in the commit of obtaining land to farm.Under British rule Europeans had been restricted in their settlement to the area east of the Appalachians, but after the Revolutionary War this inhibition was removed and so people streamed south and west. Later, with the coming of the railways, markets in the north could be served from further west. This allowed the great expansion of cities much(prenominal) as New York and Chicago.see morewhich was a factor that led to the scientific revolutionIn the years immediately before the American Civil War in the 1860s the railways had built up into quite a network serving the eastern states, but afterwards they gradually spread everywhere the rest of the country. This meant that people no longer had to spend many weeks of hardship in order to blow over their destination and so the tiny townships already established by earlier settlers were quickly expanded impertinent comers seeking for themselves and their families a better life.The Irish potato famine of the 1840s as described on the History Place web page, The Blight Begins led to many immigrants from that country, the majority would not have been city folk, so it is perhaps natural that some migrated to the western states where th ey saw at least some hope for their future, just like all the other migrants.