Jack of Harts

The United States had a saying in the 1800s. Go West Young Man. Many historians consider it part of the movement that said the United States had a Manifest Destiny to spread the ideas of Republicanism and Christianity across the continent. It started with the Louisiana Purchase from France that doubled the size of the country all the way to the Mississippi River and opened up new opportunities of cheap land for brave young men trapped in the crowded, expensive, and already built-up Colonies on the Eastern Seaboard.

The Great American Migration built St. Louis into a prosperous center of the immigration pipeline, and hundreds of thousands of strong young men and women moved west to get their piece of the American Dream. Some land, a cow, and a home of their own, be it ever so humble. Tens of thousands died of disease or fighting Indians in Oklahoma, Minnesota, Texas and many other lands, but when only one in ten of a mass migration die, that leaves the other nine to settle the land. They built America into a continental powerhouse with a steadily expanding industrial base that formed the core of the America we know today. We built this land through the simple expedient of organized mass migration.