will 1 point Part A What are two central ideas of the passage? Merchants took advantage of the miners who had traveled so far from their homes. Because of their economic influences on our country, mines have been preserved as landmarks for today's citizens to visit and explore. The Indian population in California increased dramatically during the three- year period of the gold rush. Mining was an important opportunity for many Americans that unfortunately resulted in neglected crops and businesses in the cities they had vacated There were very few gold mines that resulted in successful expeditions for the miners​

Merchants took advantage of the miners who had traveled so far from their homes. Because of their economic influences on our country, mines have been preserved as landmarks for today's citizens to visit and explore. The Indian population in California increased dramatically during the three- year period of the gold rush. Mining was an important opportunity for many Americans that unfortunately resulted in neglected crops and businesses in the cities they had vacated There were very few gold mines that resulted in successful expeditions for the miners​

The Homestead Act of 1862 was not the first land-grant legislation in US history. In fact, the practice of governments awarding free land to settlers dates back to early colonial period, when the British encouraged settlement of the “New World” by granting settlers the claims to vast swathes of land. And ever since the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which established the Northwest Territory (modern-day Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin) and prohibited the extension of slavery into that territory, land-grant legislation has been inextricably tied to the issue of slavery. A competition ensued over the admission of free states and slave states into the Union

Homesteading was contentious because northerners and Republicans wanted to free up large plots of land to settlement by individual farmers, while Southern Democrats sought to make the lands of the west available only to slave-owners. Congress had passed a homestead act in 1860, but President James Buchanan, a Democrat, vetoed it. Only after the Southern states had seceded from the union in 1861 could the Homestead Act be passed. After Congress was emptied of Southern slaveholding legislators, President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, signed the Homestead Act of 1862.

Explanation:

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