James K. Polk Dbq Essay

James K. Polk, along with his Democrat counterparts, initiated an expansionist campaign that promised he would acquire Texas, Oregon, California, and New Mexico if he won the presidential Election of 1844. Similar to other Americans, Polk had been inspired and influenced by the Manifest Destiny of 1839 that described the United States to have a divine fate in westward expansion in order to spread ideas of democracy. Following the conclusion of the election and Polk’s inauguration, Texas entered the Union and the Oregon territory was claimed. However, Polk’s rapacity continued and led him to fight for every parallel of territory in order to continue the practice of ‘manifest destiny.’ The annexation of Texas and its unofficially declared boundaries

Therefore, the consequence of the war for Mexico was the cession of territories like California, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in February of 1848. Additionally, the United States acquired the Texan border at Rio Grande and paid Mexico fifteen million dollars for all of the newly acquired land. However, a negative repercussion for the United States was the new congressional debate over which territories would be slave states and which would be ‘free’ states. The Wilmot Proviso severed as a direction for some politicians to oppose slavery but for others to contest its publicized beliefs. New political factions like the Free Soil Party, the Liberty Party and the Conscience Whigs were formed to promote their beliefs that slavery needed to cease for the benefit of the country. In contrast, other politicians were trying to create temporary solutions to the slavery issue. One of these provisional plans was the Compromise of 1850 which was a series of bills planned by Henry Clay and later overseen by Stephen Douglas that would try to resolve the concerns of slavery in new territories. Therefore, California was admitted to the Union as a free state and the territories in the west determined the issue of slavery based on popular sovereignty. Following this, slave trade was abolished in Washington, D.C. and the new Fugitive Slave Act was passed. The Fugitive Slave Act was a portion of the Compromise of 1850 and it gave a new protection to slavery. Since the Constitution provided for the return of fugitive slaves in Article IV but did not specify how that would be accomplished, the Fugitive Slave Act was the solution to this political and social concern. The Act gave the authority to judges to issue warrants that