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Surveyor’s vernier compass
1846–54 made by Levi Colton, New York City As Americans moved westward they claimed large tracts of land for settlement, agriculture, and the raw materials needed to supply the Industrial Revolution....
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Plate with views of the Erie Canal
1819–46 made by Enoch Wood and Sons, Staffordshire, England The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 revolutionized transportation in America, and helped pave the way for economic and westward expansion....
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Fiji Islands tobacco
1838–42 collected by the United States South Seas Exploring Expedition Although much of the United States remained uncharted, the young republic sought to expand its economic and intellectual horizons...
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Gold rush assayers’ ingots
1850 issued by State Assay Office of California The 1848 discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill drew hundreds of thousands of hopeful miners from around the world to California and helped shape the...
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Silver peace medal
1801 issued under President Thomas Jefferson and given to an Osage chieftain The 1803 Louisiana Purchase opened the area west of the Mississippi to U.S. settlement, causing conflict with many of the...
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Anti-slavery pot holder
mid-1800s made by hand in the United States The American abolitionist movement grew out of the 1830s wave of religious revivalism. Women played a prominent role, giving lectures, distributing...
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Slave ship manifest from the schooner Lafayette
1833 listing a group of eighty-three enslaved people shipped from Alexandria, Virginia The United States ended the legal importation of slaves in 1808, but enslaved blacks continued to be bought and...
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Stoneware jar
1862 made by David Drake, Edgefield, South Carolina Over three million enslaved blacks labored in the South by the 1800s. The majority were agricultural laborers, but a substantial number worked in...
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Plate commemorating the Latter-day Saints temple in Nauvoo, Illinois
1844–46 made by Joseph Twigg’s Newhill Pottery, England Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints founded the town of Nauvoo in 1839 and finished construction of their elaborate temple...
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Sunstone capital
about 1846 from the temple of the Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois Joseph Smith published the Book of Mormon in 1830, during a great Christian revivalist movement. Persecuted from the beginning,...
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