Mexican American War Dbq Essay

With a desire to achieve the ideology of manifest destiny, the United States called war on Mexico to acquire their land. However, with the United States’ victory came the inevitable debate about slavery in not only the newly acquired territories, but also in the nation as a whole. The nation began to divide on the issue of slavery due to the Missouri Compromise which legalized slavery below the 36°30’ parallel and the Kansas-Nebraska Act which decided that the issue of slavery should be solved by popular sovereignty. Controversy sparked by political decisions like those aforementioned and events about slavery, disputes over slavery status in the territories, and extremist outlooks on the solution to these issues increased sectionalism and

The Mexican-American War separated the Union due to the amount of gained land that could potentially shift the balance of slave and free states. An opinion was shared concerning this when Lewis Cass argued in a speech delivered in the United States Senate that “sovereignty is [...] applicable to the territories of the United States” because the rights of American citizens are “independent of Congress, and neither derived from nor granted by that body” (Document 2). The South agreed with Cass’s words, but the North was against popular sovereignty initially. The country became increasingly divided on whether or not popular sovereignty should be utilized to decide the status of states and territories. Republicans did not want the shift to be in favor of their counterparts, so they had to decrease the popularity of slavery. To do this, they propagated the Democrats to be participants of immoral acts such as squatter sovereignty while treating Africans as inferior (Document 4). The North portrayed the Democratic platform in a negative light to elucidate their unethical attitude towards humanity. Public word and illustration of southern ways increased abhorrence from the North to the South. Two years before his election, Abraham Lincoln clarified his political stance on slavery in a letter to John L. Scripps, saying that “neither the General Government, nor any other power outside of the slave states, can constitutionally or rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it already exists” (Document 6). He points out the constitutionality of the government interfering with slavery, remaining rather neutral. His neutral perspective toward the situation was so he could gain more votes in the election so he can preserve the Union. This is proven later on, when the Civil War had just begun. He pushed that his reason for war was not to end slavery--it was