Topic summary
North American
Extracted from the Wikipedia article North America.
Westward expansion
In 1803, during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president, Napoleon Bonaparte sold France's remaining North American territorial claims, which included regions west of the Mississippi River, to the U.S., in the Louisiana Purchase. Spain and the U.S. settled their western boundary dispute in 1819 in the Adams–Onís Treaty. Mexico fought a lengthy war for independence from Spain, winning it for Mexico (which included Central America at the time) in 1821. The U.S. sought further westward expansion and fought the Mexican–American War, gaining a vast territory that first Spain and then Mexico claimed but which they did not effectively control. Much of the area was in fact dominated by indigenous peoples, which did not recognize the claims of Spain, France, or the U.S. Russia sold its North American claims, which included the present-day U.S. state of Alaska, to the U.S. in 1867.