What was mexican american war

The separate campaign materials in this election reveal the growing sectional divide in antebellum America. Despite the growing sectionalism, Zachary Taylor, a hero of the Mexican-American War and a slaveholding Whig was elected president in and served for two years before dying in office of natural causes.

The Mexican-American War projected Taylor into a position of celebrity and enabled his election in Many southerners felt betrayed by Taylor, a slaveowner from Louisiana, as they equated his position with those of a free-soiler. In this time of heightened sectional tensions, southerners believed that if one did not actively protect slavery and its expansion, one supported abolition. As a direct result of the Mexican Cession, the California Gold Rush began in which caused a massive frenzy to organize and admit California into the Union.

California was never a US territory and approved a free constitution, elected a Governor and legislature and applied for statehood by November Since California did not wish to be divided into two separate states, a new compromise was formed, aptly named the Compromise of Under the Compromise of , California was admitted as a free state without deciding the fate of the remainder of the Mexican Cession.

Additionally, under this compromise, there was the federal assumption of Texas debt, the abolishment of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and a stronger fugitive slave law.

While controversial, the Compromise of alleviated the growing tensions over slavery and delayed a full-blown crisis over the issue. However, in tensions over slavery once again skyrocketed over the organization of Kansas and Nebraska.

While Kansas and Nebraska were not part of the Mexican Cession, their debates over their organization are linked to the Mexican-American War. As stated above, the Mexican-American War re-opened the discussions over how to organize territory, and one of the proposed solutions was popular sovereignty. While the Compromise of elected not to include popular sovereignty, it reemerged in with the Kansas-Nebraska Act , where Kansas and Nebraska would be organized using popular sovereignty.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act caused Bleeding Kansas , where pro-slavery and anti-slavery Americans flocked to Kansas in an attempt to establish either a slave or free government in that state, which eventually erupted into violence where neighbor killed a neighbor in the name of slavery and abolition.

While Lincoln lost the senatorial election in to Douglas, he became well known because of the debates, which positioned himself to be the Republican candidate for the Presidential Election of Polk started out by trying to buy the land. But the Mexican government refused to even meet with Slidell.

Polk grew frustrated. Determined to acquire the land, he sent American troops to Texas in January of to provoke the Mexicans into war. When the Mexicans fired on American troops in April 25, , Polk had the excuse he needed. He declared, "[Mexico] has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil," and sent the order for war to Congress on May The act was a questionable one.

Many Northerners believed that Polk, a Southerner, was trying to gain land for the slaveholding South. Other Americans simply thought it was wrong to use war to take land from Mexico. Among those was Second Lieutenant Ulysses S. Although during the war he expressed no reservations about it, he would later call the war "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory.

Despite arguments over whether the war was right, Americans had tremendous success on the battlefield. Young officers like Grant and Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and Stonewall Jackson were among those who served in the war against Mexico who would later gain prominence in the American Civil War. Toggle navigation. It was the first large-scale success of a United States military force on foreign soil.

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