19c USA Westward expansion and Civil War 1803-1890

For all it was called the ‘United States of America’, the USA in the Nineteenth Century was in fact a country divided. The ‘perfect union’ announced in the preamble to the constitution was anything but. There were huge debates about what that union should look like and who even constituted the ‘people’ whom the constitution was there to serve. Although ‘liberty’ was apparently valued above all else, it seemed that the liberty of some could only be achieved by enslaving and excluding others. This series, which covers the years from 1803 to about 1890, will explore the growth and expansion of the United States and some of the tensions and contradictions it created. This series is designed to support students studying OCR History A, and it covers the four main key topics contained in the AS and A-Level specifications: Westward Expansion, its causes and impacts; Native Americans; The Growth of Sectional Tension in the years 1850 to 1861; and the Civil War of 1861 to 1865. It is written by Siobhan Dickens, an experienced History teacher and A-Level examiner, and renowned historian Professor Richard Carwadine of the University of Oxford, whose research centres on the United States between 1776 and the Civil War, with a particular focus on the life, presidency and legacy of Abraham Lincoln.