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The Mexican War, which President Polk started out of the main desire to acquire California from Mexico, ended in America gaining a vast expanse of land larger than the Louisiana Purchase had been. With all this land available and politicians in charge of deciding what to do with it, conflicts were unavoidable. The main problem which the political parties and geographic areas of America were torn about was slavery. Should it be allowed in new states? Should it be prohibited? Should the regulation of slavery be left up to state legislature? These were the questions that Congress faced in the years following the Mexican War. The debates about the Mexican War and its aftermath thusly reflected the sectional interests of New Englanders, westerners, and southerners in the period from 1845-1855 to a great extent because the arguments and disagreements were split sharply down geographical lines; northerners wanted new states to be free states, southerners wanted new states to be slave states, and westerners generally also desired to establish free states—if you look at the constitution of California, the people there wished for their own state to be slave-free. Even before and during the Mexican War the parties were arguing with each other over whether or not America should even be involved in it. Prior to the Mexican War, the two parties, the Whigs and the Democrats, had decided to stop arguing about slavery in order to get other work done, but now legislature regarding slavery was necessary for the new states joining America, specifically California.

At first, it seemed like everyone wanted to start the Mexican War—even the antislavery Whigs encouraged Congress to declare war on Mexico, although they later denounced it. However, future President Abraham Lincoln and extreme slavery condemners from the north called President Polk, who pushed Congress to declare the war on Mexico, a liar. By the time Nicholas Trist had succeeded in procuring a favorable treaty with Mexico, more and more antislavery Whigs in Congress were starting to disagree with this war. When the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo passed, the people who didn’t vote for it were the people who either wanted all of Mexico, expansionists, or none of it. These two groups were the extreme antislavery supporters and the extreme expansionists. The westerners got what they wanted here, which was simply the area that Mexico previously owned so they could settle it. The Mexican War also had the effect of drawing out the conflict of slavery between to two political parties, the antislavery Whigs and the expansionist Democrats. Antislavery Whigs tried to ensure that all new Mexican lands would be slave free, but expansionist Democrats wanted the new territories to allow slavery so that they could expand their slavery-based economy. The antislavery Whigs, on the other hand, did not use slave labor as liberally as the expansionist Democrats, so they were against slavery in any new states or territories. In fact, the dissention was even more along geographical lines than party lines; the debate about slavery threatened to separate the Whigs and Democrats, who were not exclusive to one geographic region or the other, along geographic lines, in theory creating four parties. While Whigs were generally based in New England and Democrats in the south, both parties had large numbers of supporters across the entire settled country.

When California asked to be admitted as a state, southerners in Congress were enraged because California’s state constitution stated that California would be a free state—slavery would not be allowed there. The southerners would be unable to block California’s proposal because California was looking to skip the process for becoming a territory and directly become a state, and they feared that a free California would prompt a precedent for a free west. In 1850, southerners became so angered with the prospect of a free California, and thus, a free west, that some of them were beginning to suggest succession. In response to these serious feelings, southerners Henry Clay, John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster each gave—or, in Calhoun’s case, wrote— speeches for Congress proposing solutions to the problem of how to deal with slavery in newly founded states. Of the trio, Webster’s speech was the most effective; he compounded off the compromises Clay suggested and further advocated that through compromises and concessions were the only way an acceptable measure could be passed. The north then had their say when William Seward, who was against slavery, presented his opinion, which was that no compromise should be reached, and all antislavery measures should be passed (Kennedy, Cohen, and Bailey).

One of the main culprits in creating the absolutist nature of the Congress during that time was President Zachary Taylor, who was against any type of compromise that Congress might come up with. His timely death in 1850 gave Millard Fillmore the title of President, and he was more than happy to sign the variety of compromises that came out of Congress and which were collaboratively dubbed the Compromise of 1850. In the Compromise of 1850, the north was heavily favored. They ensured California’s status as a free state and slavery in New Mexico and Utah was left up to the discretion of the states’ governments. The south thought that New Mexico and Utah would decide to prohibit slavery, which left them with practically no gained land for slavery in all of the great expanses of the newly acquired purchase. There were even more concessions to the antislavery agenda as well.

Although the north generally got the better of the compromise, the people of the north still managed to take issue with something that the north conceded to the south: the new Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, something which the south had been wanting for years. Slave owners had been frustrated and angered because northerners were helping slaves run away and escape to the north, where slavery wasn’t allowed. This law set brutal judicial practices for the persecuting of runaway slaves and more or less offered a monetary incentive to judges if they did not free the slave on trial. Northerners who tried to help slaves escape would also be subject to expensive fines and even jail time. The people this offended most were the middle-ground northerners. Many of them jumped in with the ranks of the antislavery supporters after the passing of this law.

When the election of 1852 came around, the Whigs put General Scott up for election, mainly because he had been a war hero and they had won elections with war heroes in the past. However, Scott’s policies caused uneasiness within his own party, mainly because he supported the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law, but he was a Whig and from the north. The extreme antislavery supporters thought that he wasn’t truly against slavery because he supported the Fugitive Slave Law and the Compromise of 1850. However, the southern Whigs thought that he only supported the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law halfheartedly, so they did not particularly like him either. Also remember that although the generalization is that the Whigs were based in the north and the Democrats were based in the south, both parties had supporters all across the nation, which created differing opinions on slavery //within the same party.// This election was won by the Democrats on their candidate Franklin Piece; this election effectively ended the existence of the Whig party as well.

Throughout this entire series of events, one theme stays constant: the south, whether they were Democrats or Whigs, wanted all new states to be slave states and the north, whether Democrats or Whigs, wanted new states to be free. This basic difference in political opinion was the cause of all of the strife from the end of the Mexican War into the Pierce administration. The worst part of it was that neither side was willing to concede or compromise with the other until Congress and President Fillmore passed the Compromise of 1850. Even then the legislature favored the north, but the north took issue with the one thing the south got in return, which was the Fugitive Slave Law. There was significant anger towards this law in the north because it was unfair for slaves who were tried and it also fined northerners who tried to help slaves escape the south. They felt that freeing slaves was morally just and that this law was restricting the freedom they should have to liberate slaves from southern owners. Opinions on these laws carried the whole way into the election of 1852, where General Scott’s middle-ground stance on the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law allowed Franklin Pierce to win the presidency. If the Mexican War had not happened, and America had not acquired a huge amount of land, the slavery debate would have been postponed indefinitely until the proposition of other new states joining America came up. The Mexican War really flushed out the sectional interest of New Englanders, westerners, and southerners in the period from 1845 – 1855 and the opinions those demographics reflected in that time period was a direct result of each of them protecting their own ways of life. Consequently, the Mexican War reflected the sectional interests of Americans to a great extent.

Works Cited

"California Statehood & Establishment of Tuolumne County." //Tuolumne County Historical Society//. Web. 15 Feb. 2012.

"Compromise of 1850." //PBS: Public Broadcasting Service//. Web. 15 Feb. 2012.

Kennedy, David M., Lizabeth Cohen, and Thomas Andrew Bailey. The American Pageant: A History of the Republic. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. 30. Print.