A growing country

In 1803 the United States bought a huge piece of land from France. The land is called the Louisiana Territory, and the deal is known as the Louisiana Purchase. The price was about 15 million dollars. If a question asks what territory the United States bought from France in 1803, the answer is the Louisiana Territory, or simply Louisiana.

The territory ran from the Mississippi River west to the Rocky Mountains, and from the Gulf of Mexico north to the border with Canada. It roughly doubled the size of the country. All or part of fifteen of today's states were later formed from this land. The port of New Orleans came with it. That port mattered a great deal. Farmers in the west sent their crops by boat down the Mississippi River to reach the sea.

France sold the land because its leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, needed money for his wars in Europe. He had also given up on holding an empire in North America. President Thomas Jefferson had only sent men to Paris to try to buy New Orleans, and France offered the whole territory instead. Jefferson agreed, and the Senate approved the treaty later that year.

Almost no one in the government knew what was in the new land. Jefferson sent an expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to find out. From 1804 to 1806 they traveled up the Missouri River, crossed the mountains and reached the Pacific Ocean. A Shoshone woman named Sacagawea traveled with them and helped them speak with the nations they met.

The purchase began a century of growth. Spain gave up Florida in a treaty signed in 1819. Texas joined the United States in 1845, and a treaty with Britain in 1846 settled the northern border of the Oregon country. War with Mexico ended in 1848 with Mexico giving up the land that became California and much of the Southwest. In 1867 the United States bought Alaska from Russia.

None of this land was empty. American Indian nations had lived on it for thousands of years. The growth of the United States hurt them. Under a law passed in 1830 the federal government forced many nations in the Southeast to leave their homelands. They had to move west, to land in what is now Oklahoma. Thousands of Cherokee and other people died on that journey, which is remembered as the Trail of Tears.

The 1800s are the years from 1800 to 1899. Both tests ask you to name a war fought by the United States in that century. Four answers are accepted: the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War. You only have to give one, so learn the one you remember most easily.

The War of 1812 was fought against Great Britain and lasted from 1812 to 1815. British ships were stopping American ships and forcing American sailors to serve in the British navy. There was fighting on the western frontier as well. In 1814 British troops reached Washington, D.C., and burned the Capitol and the President's house, now called the White House. In that same year Francis Scott Key watched a British attack on Fort McHenry, in Baltimore harbor. He wrote the poem that later became the words of the national anthem.

The Mexican-American War lasted from 1846 to 1848. It began after the United States made Texas a state, and the two countries disagreed about where the border lay. The peace treaty gave the United States a large area in the west, including California. The United States paid Mexico 15 million dollars for it.

The Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, was fought inside the country. It was fought between the Northern states and the Southern states that had left the Union. More Americans died in it than in any other war the United States has ever fought. It ended slavery and it kept the country together.

The Spanish-American War was fought against Spain in 1898 and lasted only a few months. It began during a revolt in Cuba, which was then a Spanish colony. An American warship called the Maine blew up and sank in Havana harbor, and the United States went to war. In the peace treaty Spain gave up Puerto Rico and Guam. It also sold the Philippines to the United States for 20 million dollars. Cuba became an independent country in 1902.

A simple way to remember all four: 1812 against Britain, the 1840s against Mexico, the 1860s against each other, and 1898 against Spain. Wars of the 1900s, such as the two World Wars, belong to a separate question and are not accepted as answers here.