A rich and powerful businessman of the 1800s, pejoratively named a Robber Baron, would not have supported the workers' right to unionize as this would have worked against his business interests.

The Whiskey Rebellion was an oftenviolent protest by grain and corn farmers against Federal taxes levied on whiskey intended, primarily, to help pay for the nation's assumed war debt.

The Homestead Acts, first passed during the Civil War, offered free land grants to anyone who had not previously “taken up arms against the Union.” The land offered generally, although not always, amounted to roughly one-hundred and sixty acres. Between the period of 1862 and 1934, the Federal government granted 1.6 million homesteads to American families (roughly ten-percent of United States land was appropriated) and it was a big motivational factor behind the consistent westward expansion of the American people in that time period. The Homestead Acts were officially repealed in the 1970s. 

The success of Bacon's Rebellion, in 1676, allowed for the change from indentured servants to slaves as the first major migration of indentured servants became free. The rebellion looted plantations and took over the government for a short period of time, but later led to the increase of African slaves.

Named for their bags made from old carpets, these Northerners who moved South during the Reconstruction Era for generally financial purposes were derisively known as carpetbaggers.

Finished in 1825, the Erie Canal runs across New York State, connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes.

Samuel Slater was a British-born industrialist who came to America towards the end of the eighteenth century. He is generally credited with having brought the Industrial Revolution to the United States, in the form of textile factories. 

The steel plow was invented by John Deere in 1837. Deere moved to Illinois and worked as a blacksmith for many years; as the story goes, he was attempting to use a cast-iron plow and found that it was unsuited to the rough soil of Illinois, so he fashioned a steel plow. The importance of the steel plow to the growth of American agriculture, industry, and society would be difficult to overstate. It is generally referred to as the invention that opened up the West. It allowed farmers to work land previously thought untenable and greatly increased individual profits.

The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 chartered the Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Central Pacific Railroad Company to construct a railroad linking the west with the established eastern railroads.

Shortly after the creation of the new country, New York was expanding but faced a geographical problem. Although blessed with a safe, natural harbor, getting supplies to ships at that harbor was difficult, as the Hudson River connected to no other major watersheds. New York Governor DeWitt Clinton helped remedy this by building a canal from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes, cutting across the length of the state. The canal allowed crops and resources from the Midwest to reach the Eastern seaboard through New York Harbor, and New York City quickly became the nation's largest metropolis.