Question

What did 'the West' symbolize to different groups of people in the early 1800s

Answer 1

Answer:

To people from New England, the west represented a new territory where to spread the Puritan word and way of life, and where to found new religious communities like those they founded earlier in New England.

For People of the Mid Atlantic and the Appalachias, the west represented a new territory where to settle and live a life as independent as possible from government interference, at the time that tolerance to divergent modes of lives was applied.

Finally, to wealthy plantation owners of the Deep South, the west was simply another territory where to expand the plantation economy that was based on enslaved labor.