rking. The Western mining industries - which included copper, gold, silver, and lead - developed in large measure because of new technologies which made extraction of raw materials cost-effective. Seldom has a single generation experienced such rapid change as was taking place in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Technology dramatically transformed the lives of ordinary people, as is evident with the completion of the first transcontinental railway. All of these forces raised economic tensions throughout the century, as resources and economies of different types began to emerge in U.S. society.
"Manifest Destiny" was the ideological watchword of the first half of the nineteenth century, as America expanded its control of the continent to include the Louisiana Purchase (acquired in 1803), the annexation of Texas (via war in 1846), and the control of the Oregon and California territories (in 1846 and 1848 respectively), although the actual concept was not articulated until 1845. For the most part, the initial settlements in these territories were focused on trapping, farming and ranching, with the Gold Rush of 1849 a deviation from this pattern of economic growth. As new territory was acquired and then settled, political agitation over whether or not slavery was to be permitted inevitably followed.
ReynoldsÆ exploration of John Brown does demonstrate that slavery and racial tensions exacerbated tensions toward war, but the violent tactics of Brown and his followers were the exception not the rule. In contrast to Nat Turner who fought for Blacks, BrownÆs fight was to help make Kansas a free state which merits him less sympathetic in the eyes of historians according to Reynolds . As the railroads were constructed and the factories of the North established, however, mining came into its own in these regions. More and more settlers, seeking land and wealth in the mining industries, moved West during this...