This Land is Your Land. This Land is My Land. "It Really Doesn't Matter, We're Gonna Take it Anyway!"

An Integrated, Interdisciplinary, Thematic, Standards-based Unit on Manifest Destiny. Motives for expanding the nation from "sea to sea" ranged from the conviction that the continent needed to become an area of freedom and democracy separate from the the dangers of monarchies to support for extending slavery. Still others looked to the lands of the West and the Pacific Coast as areas ready to be developed for agriculture and trade. This belief was known as "Manifest Destiny". This unit will explain how thousands of Americans moved west to new territories, why they moved, and how they became part of the United States.