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Hello in 1845 the editor of the New York Morning News wrote that it was the quote

Manifest destiny of the United States to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which

Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us

With such phrases ringing in areas the pioneering wagon trains trail trains rolled west into the unchartered wilderness of the American continent

Thus began the wagon trails that cut a path beyond the frontier to California and Oregon a path soon to be followed by gold prospectors

Entrepreneurs cowboys the US Army and Hollywood

But what propelled those early pioneers to go?

What's it an experiment of liberty or the promise of a better life?

Does the story of a frontier help us to understand the American psyche and do our ideas about the American West?

Oh more to the mythology of John Wayne movies than to the history of the real trailblazers

We'd meet to discuss the American West a Frank McClinn visiting professor in the Department of Literature at the University of Strathe Clyde and

author of a new book Wagon's West the epic story of America's overland trails

Jenny called a writer and author of there must be a lone ranger the myth and reality of the American Wild West and

Christopher Freyling, Rector of the Royal College of Art in London and author of Spaghetti Weston's cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone

Christopher Freyling, can you tell us how the North American continent was divided up at the beginning of the 19th century who owned

Whatland who controlled what bits?

Well the first big thing had happened was in 1803 when Napoleon sold all the French holdings in America to President Jefferson

and actually sold him 800,000 square miles of territory

It's television it is actually double the size of the United States the buying of America. Yeah, that was the first stage

But when when the Wagon train to set up you mentioned in the introduction in the 18 the early 1840s

...