Westward movement, the populating by Europeans of the land within the continental boundaries of the mainland United States, a process that began shortly after the first colonial settlements were established along the Atlantic coast.

This expansion led to debates about the fate of slavery in the West, increasing tensions between the North and South that ultimately led to the collapse of American democracy and a brutal civil war.

Hover for more information. As whites settled the American West, Native Americans were pushed off of their ancestral lands and confined to reservations. It typically put the Native Americans on marginal lands that could not support them, particularly after the buffalo herds had been devastated by white hunters.

9 Slaves were prohibited from marrying because, as long as they were in a state of bondage, they lacked the capacity to enter into any legally enforceable civil contracts. Once emancipated and granted the capacity to contract, the right of freed slaves to marry was undisputed.

Within this system, white slaveholders made all the decisions: They determined whether and when enslaved people could wed. They split them apart when finances dictated. They sometimes chose who would marry who. Or brazenly violated enslaved couples’ marriages by forcing the women to serve as their own concubines.

During slavery in the United States, brooms were readily available to the enslaved and could be used in wedding ceremonies. Enslaved people would jump over the broom to marry since they could not legally wed. Other people argue that slave owners would force them to get married in that manner.

Slavery was so profitable, it sprouted more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi River valley than anywhere in the nation. With cash crops of tobacco, cotton and sugar cane, America’s southern states became the economic engine of the burgeoning nation. The slave economy had been very good to American prosperity.

The rebels killed between 55 and 65 people, at least 51 of whom were white. The rebellion was put down within a few days, but Turner survived in hiding for more than two months afterwards….Nat Turner’s slave rebellion.

Nat Turner destroyed the white Southern myth that slaves were actually happy with their lives or too docile to undertake a violent rebellion. His revolt hardened proslavery attitudes among Southern whites and led to new oppressive legislation prohibiting the education, movement, and assembly of slaves.

While the oppressive system of slavery provides the essential backdrop for the revolt, Nat Turner described his motivation for the Southampton slave revolt in religious terms.

The mills’ insatiable hunger for cotton kept prices high, so that white southern farmers demanded ever more land, and ever more enslaved people, to grow it.