Why did the acquisition of land from Mexico contribute to sectional tensions?

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Figure false: Oak Home Farm, San Joaquin County, California
Figure false: The discovery of gold in California initiated a stampede west, but not everyone wanted to be a prospector. In 1860, an unknown artist painted this idyllic view of the farm of W. I. Overhiser in California’s fertile San Joaquin Valley. Thousands of miles away, farmers compared farmsteads like Overhiser’s with their own. Many judged life more bountiful in the West and trekked across the country to try to strike it rich in western agriculture. University of California at Berkeley, Bancroft Library.

CHRONOLOGY

1846

  • – Wilmot Proviso is introduced.

1847

  • – Wilmot Proviso is defeated in Senate.
  • – “Popular sovereignty” compromise is offered.

1848

  • – Free-Soil Party is founded.
  • – Zachary Taylor is elected president.

1849

  • – California gold rush.

1850

  • – Taylor dies; Vice President Millard Fillmore becomes president.
  • – Compromise of 1850 becomes law.

VICTORY IN THE MEXICAN-AMERICAN WAR brought vast new territories in the West into the United States. The gold rush of 1849 transformed the sleepy frontier of California into a booming economy (see chapter 12). The 1850s witnessed new “rushes,” for gold in Colorado and silver in Nevada’s Comstock Lode. The phenomenal economic growth of the West demanded the attention of the federal government, but it quickly became clear that Northerners and Southerners had very different visions of the West, particularly the place of slavery in its future. From 1846, when it first appeared that the war with Mexico might mean new territory for the United States, politicians battled over whether to ban slavery from former Mexican land or permit it to expand to the Pacific. In 1850, Congress patched together a plan that Americans hoped would last.