Nation-state Building in the United States

Nation-state Building in the United States from the American Revolution to the Civil War Era

A major component of Nation-state building in the U.S included and started with westward expansion. There was a collective belief that God had foreordained the United States to cover the entire continent, thus began the territorial expansion of the U.S.; which was pursued under the doctrine of manifest destiny. The initial westward expansion conquest, beyond the original thirteen colonies, was the Ohio River Valley, but instead the expansion started with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

The Louisiana Territory was originally Spanish territory that was handed over to the French. When Napoleon needed funds, the territory was sold to the United States, whose western territory was immediately doubled in size. U.S western territory grew again with the incorporation of Texas in 1845. Mexico had had trouble in its northern regions, Texas, and invited people to move and populate the territory. When the people who moved to the region did not get representation from Mexico City, they separated from Mexico and later were incorporated into the United States when Mexico ceded the land in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The U.S western territory continued to grow with the inclusions of California and the Southwest.
Alaska, 1867

Once the United States completed its manifest destiny, encompassing all the territory spanning from its original Atlantic states to the Pacific Ocean, it began it era of economic growth in the north and south. The north thrived on transportation, industrialization, farms, free labor and commerce. Transportation became the foundation of American industry. The United States was a vast nation that needed railroads to economically transport goods and services. Later, the automobile became an important asset to the American public
while the south thrived on exportation of cotton, tobacco and slavery.

the settlement of Africans as slaves was the most intense in areas that relied on plantation agriculture. Plantations were an unusual kind of farming: they were typically enormous tracts of land dedicated to cultivating a single crop especially tobacco and cotton on a scale so great that plantation regions usually supplied distant global markets.

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