National Expansion and Reform

1815-1880

See the Louisiana Purchase, from Wikipedia:

The Louisiana Purchase (1803) extended United States sovereignty across the Mississippi River, nearly doubling the nominal size of the country. The purchase included land from fifteen present U.S. states and two Canadian provinces, including the entirety of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; large portions of North Dakota and South Dakota; the area of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide; the portion of Minnesota west of the Mississippi River; the northeastern section of New Mexico; northern portions of

KINGS ARE BORN; presidents are elected. But how? In Philadelphia in 1787, James Wilson explained, the delegates had been “perplexed with no part of this plan so much as with the mode of choosing the President.” At the convention, Wilson had proposed that the people elect the president directly. But James Madison had pointed out that since “the right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States . . . the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes.” That is, in a direct election, the North, which had more voters, would have more