quence of its dramatic growth. Indeed, at the beginning of the 19th century, the American population reached no more than 5.3 million people, among which approximately 7.3 % only, lived in the west. But throughout the East, the growing conviction that it was a land of potential riches and of opportunities start to emerge. Then, every following decade, and this for a period of 60 years or so, the population of the USA has increased by roughly 35 %. Consequently, by the 1860’s, there were about 31.5 million inhabitants in the country, 49.2 % of which had settled in the American West. This population growth was of course the result of natural growth, but also of the dramatic European migration, immigrants fleeing from their country to seek new lands to own. Most of the times, these migrations were fostered by a desire for adventure, the image a New World and by the prospect of becoming rich (or at least richer than they were before). In 1830, immigration to the United States had reached more than 23,000 people per year. By 1840, it had raised to 84,000 people, more than a thousand per cent of the rate only twenty years before. Evidently, this increasing population gradually needed a place to live and the people began to settle far away from the Atlantic coast. First, the limits of this inland colonisation were the Appalachians. But as soon as the Royal Act lost its validity, settlers moved further west. However the lands of the North West Territories were very quickly unsatisfactory and gradually, farmers merchants and the settlers in general were beginning to demand that the United States government find means - peaceful or not- of annexing this rich land to the country. But, unfortunately, they already had owners and the American government started to press Spain and France in search of the surrender of property. Moreover, tales of fertile lands in Oregon country and in California, far beyond the mountains and the deserts, began to...
