Chapter 2: Mexico Will Poison Us
The Mexican War signaled the end of the quest for Manifest Destiny. It also reminded many of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "prophecy" that "Mexico will poison us" after the U.S. conquered them. This was startlingly accurate, since the poison was slavery and the new land would only add more slave states and thus, more slave power.
Many Northerners believed this addition of slave states would increase with the acquisition of Mexican territory and claimed the war was part of a "slave power conspiracy". The free soil movement also aided in Northern claims. They believed wage labor was better than slave labor because the promise of money made people want to work, whereas slavery only degraded people and made work look like a negative aspect of life. This was in part why slavery stopped growth in the areas where it was present; rich white slaveowners wanted to keep everyone else in poverty so that they would be in power. If slavery wasn't allowed then, free labor would prosper there and the white slaveowning gentry would lose power.
The Compromise of 1850, due to Daniel Webster's speech, helped delay the problems accompanying the issue of slavery, but the bubble it'd created would still burst soon.
Key Terms:
The Mexican War signaled the end of the quest for Manifest Destiny. It also reminded many of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "prophecy" that "Mexico will poison us" after the U.S. conquered them. This was startlingly accurate, since the poison was slavery and the new land would only add more slave states and thus, more slave power.
Many Northerners believed this addition of slave states would increase with the acquisition of Mexican territory and claimed the war was part of a "slave power conspiracy". The free soil movement also aided in Northern claims. They believed wage labor was better than slave labor because the promise of money made people want to work, whereas slavery only degraded people and made work look like a negative aspect of life. This was in part why slavery stopped growth in the areas where it was present; rich white slaveowners wanted to keep everyone else in poverty so that they would be in power. If slavery wasn't allowed then, free labor would prosper there and the white slaveowning gentry would lose power.The Compromise of 1850, due to Daniel Webster's speech, helped delay the problems accompanying the issue of slavery, but the bubble it'd created would still burst soon.
Key Terms:
- slave power conspiracy: Northerners thought the Mexican War was orchestrated by Southern Democrats to gain more slave land and increase their power
- Compromise of 1850: North: California admitted as a free state, Texas gave up its claims to lands disputed with New Mexico, Slave trade in D.C. was banned, but slavery was legal; South: Popular sovereignty in Mexican Cession lands, Texas was paid $10 million for land lost, a new, tougher Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
- "Mexico will poison us": statement by Ralph Waldo Emerson about how gaining Mexican territory would tear apart the U.S. with the addition of more slave states
Questions:
- In what ways (if any) did the Compromise of 1850 worsen the tensions between the North and the South?
- Would the Compromise of 1850 be considered a turning point or not? Why was it so significant if it "only delayed the war"?
Citations:
- McPherson, James M. "2: Mexico Will Poison Us." In Battle Cry of Freedom, 47-77. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
- Accessed March 11, 2015. http://www.ushistory.org/us/images/00080486.gif.
No comments:
Post a Comment