Chief Leschi was betrayed to authorities and arrested in November 1856, effectively ending the Puget Sound War. He was tried for the murder of a militia officer in battle (Lt. Moses), convicted in a second trial (first jury hung), and hanged in February 1858. His execution was condemned by many settlers and military officers. Washington State officially exonerated him in 2004.
The early republic period saw the United States move from the weak Articles of Confederation to the federal Constitution ratified in 1788, with the Bill of Rights added in 1791. George Washington served two terms as president (1789–1797), establishing precedents for executive authority, and the federal capital moved permanently to Washington D.C. in 1800. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) doubled the nation's territory for roughly $15 million, opening vast trans-Mississippi lands to American expansion. The War of 1812 against Britain ended inconclusively but produced a surge of American national identity and eliminated most British support for Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi. The Northwest Indian Wars (1785–1795) and the Creek War (1813–1814) broke Indigenous confederacies that had resisted US expansion. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 temporarily balanced slave and free states as the nation expanded westward, but embedded the contradiction of slavery in every subsequent territorial debate.
Leschi hanged (exonerated 2004); end of organized Nisqually resistance
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