So I just did this essay and I thought I'd post my outline for it b/c I tend to make petty nice ones before I do essays.
To what extent did the debates about the Mexican War and its aftermath reflect the sectional interests of New Englanders, westerners, and southerners in the period from 1845 to 1865?
MANIFEST DESTINY- term coined by John L O’Sullivan
Supported by:
Southernors i.e. democrats b/c they wanted to spread slavery
Warhawks
Southern westerners wanted slavery
Opposed by:
Henry Clay (Whig)
Thoroeau
New Englanders b/c workers leave and slavery spreads w/ expansion
Free Soilers- anti-slavery b/c it caused southern stagnation and prevented progress,
Disliked aristocratic system
OREGON- 54, 40 or fight-refers to northern boundary of Oregon that America claimed
COMPROMISE OF 1850 proposed by Henry Clay b/c radical southern leaders (fire eaters) were talking about succession.
California admitted as a free state
Formation of territorial governments in new territories from Mexico w/ limits on slavery
Abolition of slave trade, but not slavery in Washington D.C.
A new more effective fugitive slave law ~ North makes new personal liberty laws to combat this
SUPPORTED BY DANIEL WEBSTER
It had to be passed in pieces to get it through congress
Uncle Tom’s cabin was written in reaction to fugitive slave laws by Harriet Beecher Stowe
NORTH DIDN’T LIKE – fugitive slave law, possible slavery in New Mexico and Utah
SOUTH DIDN’T LIKE - it was a defeat for the south, so they had no choice but to succeed
RAILROADS – GADSDEN OURCHASE
Purchase of land through Arizona and New Mexico orchestrated by James Gadsden, a southern railroad builder, to create a southern railroad route.
RAILROADS – KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT OF 1854 made by Stephen Douglas
Problems: slavery and a transcontinental railroad running through land with a substantial Indian population.
~Created Nebraska as a new territory to decide by popular sovereignty the slavery issue
~Split into two territories Nebraska (non-slave) and Kansas (slave)
Divided and destroyed the Whig party by 1856
Divided the Northern democrats with the repeal of the Missouri compromise
New parties of Anti-Nebraska Democrats and Anti-Nebraska whigs (whigs created the republican party which opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act)
POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY –Stephen Douglas
Southernors supported slavery b/c it was the basis for the southern way of life, was better for slaves than factory work, the only way the two races could live together, and the key to southern economy.
