Disagreement of the Expansion of Slavery in 1840’s and 1860’s

The disagreement of the expansion of slavery in the 1840’s and 1860’s filled the country with turmoil and unrest contributing to the cause of the Civil War. Major events such as the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Mexican American War, and the Dred Scott Case all triggered many different responses and feelings towards the debate of slavery leading to the secession of the South and the resulting the Civil War.

The American victory of the Mexican American War gave America new land in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The new land in America was New Mexico and California and the states were now under the debate of slavery. This brought out an amendment created by David Wilmot known as the Wilmot Proviso which prohibited slavery in all acquired states from Mexico territory. The Wilmot Proviso never left senate to become a federal law, but was eventually endorsed by the legislatures of all but one of the free states. Later a Whig leader by the name of Henry Clay sought to help the agreement of slavery by the North and South by developing a compromise for the issue of slavery expansion in the new states. It was not until Stephen Douglas finally passed a series of bills known as the Compromise of 1850, due to this compromise California became a slave state and a new fugitive slave law was created. The North and South had many different thoughts on this law and voted accordingly to these thoughts. These things made the country fall under greater unrest and neither the North nor South were fully in agreement and were not fully happy with the Compromise of 1850.