The geographical and economic expansion that marked the period from 1790 to 1820 inspired scientific and technological advances as well as literary and artistic paeans to a distinctly American identity. For young, ambitious men like Parker Cleaveland, Eli Whitney, Washington Irving, and Meriwether Lewis, the frontiers that opened in education, science, literature, and exploration offered opportunities for fame and financial success. Though his name is unfamiliar today, Cleaveland was offered prestigious professorships as well as the presidency of Bowdoin College during the early decades of the nineteenth century. He chose, however, to live out his life as a professor of mathematics, chemistry, and mineralogy in Brunswick, Maine, where he died in 1858.
Of course, not all white men had the luxury of a college education or the resources to invest in commercial enterprises or technological improvements. Many sought opportunities on the frontier, hoping to find fertile land, abundant wildlife, or opportunities for trade. In some cases, they and their families faced Indians angered by the constant encroachment of white Americans on their lands. In other cases, land speculators and planters bought up western lands, raising prices and pushing the frontier farther west.
The same developments that provided opportunities for enterprising white men also transformed the lives of white women. Those of elite or middling status benefited from improved educational opportunities and new ideals that highlighted mothers’ role in raising children and marriage based on companionship and mutual responsibilities. Yet these changes occurred gradually and unevenly, and many men expected their wives to fulfill all their traditional household obligations while also providing their husband with greater affection and attention. At the same time, domesticity itself changed as the market economy allowed some women to purchase goods they had once produced at home. Such changes increased expectations regarding the quality of domestic life, even though many women still had to supply most of their needs through intensive household labor.
Transformations in white society introduced even more difficult challenges for African Americans. While blacks in the North had greater hopes of gaining their freedom, most remained enslaved until the 1820s or later. Southern slaves faced far worse prospects. As cotton cultivation expanded into new territories, many slaves were forced to move west and to labor on bigger farms and plantations. There they honed means of survival and resistance that became even more crucial in the decades ahead.
At the same time, all along the expanding U.S. frontier, American Indians faced continued pressure to embrace white culture, leave their lands, or both. In 1810 Sacagawea, Charbonneau, and their son Baptiste apparently traveled to St. Louis at the invitation of William Clark, who offered to pay for Baptiste’s education. The next spring, Charbonneau and his wife returned to their village, leaving Baptiste in Clark’s care. It is not clear whether Sacagawea ever saw her son again, but William Clark penned the phrase “Se car ja we au Dead” on the cover of his cash book for 1825–1828, suggesting that she died during those years. By then, the Shoshone and Hidatsa nations where she was raised had begun to face the onslaught of white settlement. They, along with Indians living in older areas like Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee, resisted the claims of the United States on their ancestral lands and struggled to control the embattled frontier.
Thus even as the young nation conquered new frontiers in education, technology, and the arts, it was forced to defend itself against attacks both internal and external. In the 1810s and 1820s, new conflicts erupted over slavery and against Indians. But the United States also faced its first major economic crisis, while Great Britain and France challenged American sovereignty. New frontiers created new opportunities but also intensified older challenges and conflicts.