Mexican War and Expansion

Wilmot Proviso

• Democrat from Pennsylvania

• Southern values

• Kinda weird

• Proposed in Congress that slavery be prohibited in Mexican Session

• North didn’t want slavery because they didn’t want black settlers only white

  • Also political power

• South Carolina doesn’t just want nullification - SECESSION

• North is coming for slavery

• Passes in house, but not Senate - southerners

Calhoun Doctrine

• Vice President under Jackson

• Any US citizen has the right to take their property (slaves) into any US territory

  • Including Mexican Session

  • Legality of outlawing slavery

Popular Sovereignty

The idea that voters in a territory should decide if they are free and slave states

• 10 amendment

Election of 1848

• Polke doesn’t run again

• Expansion is #1 issue

• Taylor runs - general

  • Member of the Whig party

  • Slave owner

• Free Soil Party formed

Free Soil Party

• Don’t want slavery in the territory - or African heritage

• Anti-southerner 

  • White supremacist and political ideas

• Support Wilmot Proviso

Address to the People of the Southern States

• Calhoun again

• Slavery is under attack

• Unite Southerners around the idea that the North is trying to get rid of slavery

• The institution of slavery is about to be destroyed

• Southern Whigs split from southern democrats

California and New Mexico

• Petition for statehood

• California - gold rush

  • People found gold in San Francisco

• Swells population

• Wanted to be states - problem - free or slave state?

• Taylor tries to admit California and New Mexico while Congress is not in session.

New Mexico vs. Texas

Share a border

Can’t decide on border

War almost happens again

Texas raises a militia

Compromise of 1850

• Created by Henry Clay

  • Nullification crisis

• Stephen Douglas

  • California becomes a free state

  • Popular sovereignty is New Mexico and Utah

    • People decide slavery

  • Slave trade NOT SLAVERY would be ended in DC 

    • Could still have slaves

    • Could not buy and sell them

  • A stronger fugitive slave act - 

    • Slave catchers would recapture runaway slaves

    • Wanted the government to assist runaway slaves

  • Settled border dispute between Texas and New Mexico

Calhoun’s speech

Keep the Union if the North stops trying to take slavery, stops abolitionism, and stops trying to take land

Nashville Convention

• June 1850

• 9 out of 15 southern states meet to discuss seceding

• Not super popular

• About money and power

Taylor’s death

Fillmore takes office and sympathizes with the south

Stephen Douglas and the Compromise of 1850

• Takes Henry Clay’s one bill and splits it into 5 different laws to be voted on separately

  • 1. California comes in as a free state

  • 2. Popular sovereignty in New Mexico and Utah

  • 3. The slave trade has ended, but not slavery in DC

  • 4. ***Fugitive Slave Act*** - strengthened

    • Allowed Southerners to go into Northern territory to “capture runaway slaves” (they weren’t always runaway slaves)

    • Pissed off North - rando Georgia person coming to grab someone - but Northerners are criminals if they tell them to stop

    • Pushes abolitionism

    • Southerners now willing to give up California

  • 5. Settles border dispute between New Mexico and Texas

Change in Leadership

• Webster, Clay, and Calhoun are all out

• 1852 Election

• Stephen Douglas is now a new player

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

• Fictional story about slavery

• Uncle Tom is a slave 

• About their life in slavery

• Portrays slavery in a negative light

• Harriet Beecher Stowe is the daughter of an abolitionist.

• Eyes were awakened

• Banned in South

1852 Election

• Pierce vs. Scott

• Pierce - Democrat

• Scott - Whig

• Republican Party

• Pierce wins

• Wants to expand US

• Caribbean - Cuba

• Thinks abolitionists are the problem

Gadsden Purchase

• Opened up western land to more people

• Transcontinental railroad

Cuba

• Ideal environment to grow cash crops

• Looked upon by Southern slave owners as the next logical place to expand slavery

• Expand US power

• Northerners don’t want this

Ostend Manifesto

• Secret meeting

• Diplomats from US speaking to European diplomats

• Cuba would look nice as part of US

• Spain could sell Cuba

• Pierce on board

• One guy rats them out - House of Representatives

• Force Spain to sell Cuba to US

• Pierce is done - the deal is killed