In identical many years, the us try involved with absorbing the huge tracts regarding home they got has just obtained out-of Mexico, having people which would have to be provided in a number of fashion for the Western citizenship. Inside 1840, this new twenty-half a dozen states as well as Area from Columbia occupied on 910,000 square kilometers; by 1850, four the latest claims added 580,000 more square miles. Along side 2nd half dozen ages, seventeen a great deal more says were admitted towards connection, transforming the brand new governance framework and you may representational solutions of the nation and more than doubling the new Western property mass by the addition of 1.8 million rectangular miles. Census maps turned into increasingly outlined, sophisticated, and alert to this new geography out-of group density during the last pair ages of your nineteenth century, due to the fact shape dos demonstrates:
Figure dos here
Whenever you are huge swaths regarding land were are obtained and you can organized on the territories immediately after which states, People in america was indeed getting into them during the an abrupt speed. Ranging from 1870 and you can 1930, from the a-quarter away from Americans gone on the state in which these were born. Individuals were in addition to moving off rural section into the places within a very fast rate; intercounty migration pricing might have been more 25 % large about 1850s than just these were from the 1950s forth. And so the Census Bureau needed seriously to manage very high pricing out of physical flexibility at the same time that the people in itself are increasing, altering within unprecedented rates, and you can moving into vast new region. Because Figure step 3 shows, this new Census Work environment carefully monitored and you will graphically presented westward migration: