In 1789, the United States was a thin strip of land clinging to the Atlantic coast — thirteen former colonies with a combined population of around 4 million people. To the west lay an immense unknown: millions of square miles of plains, mountains, rivers, and desert, home to hundreds of Native American nations who had lived there for thousands of years.
By 1890, just one hundred years later, the United States stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It had absorbed Louisiana, Texas, California, and everything in between. It had fought a catastrophic civil war to decide whether human slavery would survive. It had built a transcontinental railroad that cut the journey from New York to California from six months to six days. It had driven millions of Native Americans off their ancestral lands, killed the vast buffalo herds they depended on, and confined the survivors to reservations.
How did a young republic transform itself into a continental giant in just one century? And who paid the price?
This introduction covers Setting the Scene: A Nation That Swallowed a Continent within The Making of America, 1789-1900 for GCSE History. Revise The Making of America, 1789-1900 in Component Group 4 — Period Studies for GCSE History with 14 exam-style questions and 18 flashcards. This is a high-frequency topic, so it is worth revising until the explanation feels precise and repeatable. It is section 1 of 16 in this topic. Use this introduction to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.
Practice questions for The Making of America, 1789-1900
Describe two features of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
Describe two features of the Indian Removal Act of 1830.