Essay On The Mexican American War

Although the issue of slavery in America would not be resolved until after the Civil War, the Mexican-American War marked a major turning point in the debate over slavery because it introduced the idea of popular sovereignty which resulted in Bleeding Kansas, and because the terms of the results of the war led to the Compromise of 1850, which was very controversial in the North. Prior to the Mexican-American War, slavery was an intensely debated subject in America. The Northern states were opposed to the practice of slavery, or at least the expansion of it, while the Southern states’ economy relied on slavery, and were supportive of it. The relationship between the North and the South was stable at the start of the 1800’s, but rapidly deteriorated over their conflicting views on slavery. In order to keep a balance of power, the Union consisted of an equal number of free and slave states. Adding

After the Mexican-American War, the US received a large amount of land as part of the Mexican Cession. The federal government was unsure how to divide the land because the Southern Democrats wanted to create more slave states, while the Northern Whigs wanted to prohibit the expansion of slavery into the Western frontier. This debate introduced the idea of popular sovereignty, which allowed for the people already living in the territory to vote amongst themselves on whether or not they wanted to allow slavery in their state. This perspective led to Bleeding Kansas in 1855, where both pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocates flocked to Kansas to be part of the vote on slavery. This caused political tension between the two groups, leading to violent attacks between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers. This event was one of the first examples of violence in the debate over slavery, and was a prelude to the Civil