While I don't have a picture for you this update, I do have...a new update.
Part Seven: A Growing Nation
Iowa Purchase:
Up until 1841, the border of the state of Missouri had been a straight north-south line. The area between that border and the Missouri River in the west had been granted to the Iowa tribe. After encroachments by white settlers, the Bureau of Indian Affairs began negotiations with the Iowa and other tribes who lived on the land. The government eventually bought the land for eight thousand dollars and the natives agreed to move to lands west of the Missouri River. The purchased land, known as the Ioaw Purchase, became part of the state of Missouri, finalizing the state's current borders.
Admission of new States:
In March of 1842, the census from Marquette Territory had reached 75,000 people, and a bill was passed to have it admitted as a new state. Green Bay became the state's capital because of its central location within the state and its having been the territorial capital.
After the admission of Marquette, some Southern states began to complain about the large numebr of northern states that were being admitted to the Union. They lobbied in Congress for the admission of Florida as a state, despite the continued presence of Seminoles in the rural swamp areas of the territory. In May, 1843, a bill was finally passed to admit the state after a number of settlers, encouraged by their state governments, move down into Florida and settled either on the coasts or in the northern reaches of the territory. The city of Jacksonville was declared the capital until the problem of the Seminoles was dealt with, then a new state Congressional meeting would decide whether to stay in Jacksonville or move to a different city further south.
A few months later in August, the settlers in the southern area of Pembina Territory applied for statehood. Congress passed the bill, and the new state of Demoine was established with the city of Waterloo as its capital due to its cental location, rather than the larger but far more northern city of Minneapolis. Later in the year, two forts would be established in the state; Fort Raccoon near the confluence of the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers, and Fort Decatur, near where the two forks of the Des Moines River join together.
Oregon Trail:
After the original explorations by Lewis and Clark, and the later expeditions by explorers and military men such as John Jacob Astor, Zebulon Pike, and Benjamin Bonneville, many settlers traversed the American West toward the Oregon Territory. Many of these first wave of settlers were descendants of Frenchmen in Upper Louisiana who desired better fur trapping grounds further west. However, this wave was not very large and many of the settlers were subject to attacks by the native tribes. In the 1840s, a second wave of settlers began coming west, following the paths set before them. While only a few made it all the way to the Pacific and the Columbia River, many others settled towns along the trail, along the Platte River as well as along the Snake River.
A Multicultural Nation:
Since 1820, when immigration records began being kept in the United States, there had been a wide influx of immigrants from many places in northern Europe. During the 1830s, that number only increased with over six hundred thousand coming to the United States in that decade. The 1840s only brought more people as Europe went through hardships. Irishmen came after crops started failing and settled mostly in New England. Englishmen and Scotsmen, many among them refugees fleeing the British Isles after the Chartist Uprisings, either went to Canada or settled all among the eastern and southern states. German immigrants in the 1840s, fleeing general hardship, settled in independent Tejas, as well as along the upper Mississippi, the Great Lakes, and along the Missouri as it approached the Mississippi. Dutchmen, upset by the strife cause by the Belgian Revolution and a heavy storm that battered the Low Countries in January of 1843, came and settled not only in the Hudson Valley, where the remnants of New Netherland still remained, but also in New Orleans and the lowlands along the lower Mississippi and Arkansaw rivers. Many of these immigration patterns would leave their mark in the town names that are in those regions today.