James K. Polk During The Mexican-American War

In 1844 James K. Polk was elected president. As an avid expansionist and believer in manifest destiny, there was no one more driven to push America’s border further west and no one more prepared to defend these new acquisitions. This is exactly what Polk did during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), caused by a dispute over the border of the newly acquired state of Texas. Mexico believed the border to be marked by the Nueces River, the United States believed it to be further southwest along the Rio Grande. This dispute was settled in 1848 by the Treaty of Guadalupe which allowed the annexation of Texas to be recognized by Mexico and gave the Mexican Cession to the United States in exchange for 15 million dollars paid to Mexico. With the

addition of a new state to the Union, the debate over slavery resurfaced. The end of the Mexican-American War marked a turning point for slavery because it brought about a new way of determining which side a state would enter the Union on and the United States discovered the dangers and necessities of allowing the people to have a say.
Prior to the Mexican Cession and the annexation of Texas, the last large addition to the United States came from the Louisiana Purchase.

When that land was purchased from the French several problems arose; the most important of those problems was how to handle slavery. However the problem then lie mostly in the off-balanced position that would leave Congress in, there would be more antislavery representation in Congress than there would be proslavery. Henry Clay settled this conflict by drawing a line on the map, all land south would allow slavery and all land north would prohibit it. This was known as the Missouri Compromise and, in the short-term, it worked. Unfortunately, after the addition of the Mexican Cession the arguing began again because the Missouri Compromise didn’t apply to the newly acquired land. First the Wilmot Proviso was proposed which would outlaw slavery in all land gained from Mexico, it was rejected by Congress. Then the Compromise of 1850 worked temporarily but it collapsed two years later. Eventually the Missouri Compromise was replaced by the Kansas-Nebraska Act which allowed the inhabitants of the land to vote on what they wanted in regards to slavery. This was entirely different from pre-war United States where the government told each state what to do by assigning which side of the argument they were on based off of geography. After the war, popular sovereignty, the people’s choice, became more important than keeping Congress

equal.
With the implementation of popular sovereignty in the new states also came a rise in physical violence among opposing citizens.

The Kansas Nebraska Act meant that the citizens had to vote on which side they desired to be on. The clash of anti-slavery and pro-slavery groups in Kansas led to mass fighting and the death. This is known as Bleeding Kansas. The bloodshed and brutality between citizens would been much less likely to occur under the pre-war Missouri Compromise because even if the citizens in a particular state disagreed with the side the state was on, the discontentment would be directed at the government instead of at fellow Americans. Due to popular sovereignty, it was the responsibility of the Americans to decide therefore discontentment at the result would be directed at other citizens. While the Kansas Nebraska Act did present the danger of in-state fighting, it was a necessary step in the slavery conflict. Allowing voting in the states would give a clearer picture of where Americans stood on the issue as a whole; was the majority of the population for or against slavery? The pursuing of this question alone was a major juncture for post-war America that never came close to being prompted prior to the

war.
After the Mexican-American War much changed in regards to the inner workings of slavery, but the stereotypical views of southerners and northerners stayed much the same. The industrial north saw no need for slaves and supported abolition as a means to appeal to the foreign market and countries that outlawed slavery long before the United States. The economy of the agricultural south heavily depended on slaves as a labor force. Although the majority of the population didn’t own slaves, the rich owners of large plantations often owned around one hundred slaves and those people usually carried a lot of political weight. Those patterns stayed true even after the slavery crossroads presented to the country after the war.
*Not only did the country change in the realm of slavery, but Mexican-American War also marked a turning point for the United States politically. After the introduction of popular sovereignty as a citizen’s right in more than just elections, it became a political tool. For example, in the 1858 campaign for senator in Illinois, Stephen Douglas took a strong position in favor of popular sovereignty and ended up winning the election against Abraham Lincoln. During this time period slavery was a central conflict that needed to be addressed or it would continue to hold the U.S. back. The Mexican-American War is considered a turning point in history because it presented the perfect opportunity to open the discussion on slavery and fix it in a way that would work in the long-term.