Many Americans had to rebuild their lives after the Civil War. They responded to the incentive of free public land and moved west to take advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave free public land in the western territories to settlers who would live on and farm the land.
The student will apply social science skills to understand how the nation grew and changed from the end of Reconstruction through the early twentieth century by a) explaining the westward movement of the population in the United States, with emphasis on the role of the railroads, communication systems, admission of new states to the Union, and the impact on American Indians;
Westward movement