This quieted things down for a while, but over the next 28 years the United States continued to grow, and as the North and South developed in distinct, different ways, the issue of slavery loomed ominously in the background, waiting for the right moment to jump in and split the nation down the middle so deeply that only war could bring the two sides back together.
The context that forced the slavery question back into the fray of American politics formed in , when the United States was at war with Mexico over a border dispute with Texas but everyone knows it was actually just a chance to beat up on the newly-independent and weak Mexico, and also take its territory — an opinion held by the Whig party at the time, including a young representative from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln.
Shortly after the breakout of fighting, the U. S quickly captured the territories of New Mexico and California, which Mexico had failed to settle with citizens and secure with soldiers.
The US acquired from Mexico a significant amount of territory throughout the Mexican war, preventing Mexico from ever taking it back.
Yet fighting continued for another two years, ending with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in And as a Manifest Destiny-obsessed American population watched this, the country began to lick its chops. California, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado — the frontier. New lives. New prosperity. New America. Unsettled land, where Americans could find a fresh start and the type of freedom only owning your own land can provide. It was the fertile soil the new nation needed to plant its seeds and grow into the prosperous land it would become.
But, perhaps more importantly, it was the chance for the nation to collectively dream of a bright future, one that it could work towards and realize with its own hands, backs, and minds. Because all this new land was, well, new , there were no laws written to govern it. Specifically, no one knew if slavery was to be allowed. The two sides took their usual positions — the North was anti-slavery in the new territories and the South all for it — but they only had to do so because of the Wilmot Proviso.
Eventually, the Compromise of brought the debate to an end, but neither side was satisfied with the result, and both were becoming increasingly cynical about resolving this issue diplomatically.
The Wilmot Proviso drove a wedge directly through the heart of American politics. Those who had previously spoken out about limiting the institution of slavery had to prove they were for real, and those who had not spoken up, but who had large contingents of voters who opposed the extension of slavery , needed to choose a side.
Once this happened, the line between the North and the South became more pronounced than ever before. Northern Democrats overwhelmingly supported the Wilmot Proviso, so much so that it passed in the House which, in , was controlled by a Democratic majority, but that was influenced more heavily by the more populous North , but Southern Democrats obviously did not, which is why it failed in the Senate which provided each state with an equal number of votes, a condition that made the differences in population between the two less important, giving the Southern slaveholders more influence.
This meant there were members of the same party voting differently on an issue almost exclusively because of where they were from. For Northern Democrats, this meant betraying their Southern party brethren. But at the same time, in this moment of history, few Senators chose to do this as they felt passing the funding bill was more important than solving the slavery question — an issue that had always ground American lawmaking to a halt. The dramatic differences between Northern and Southern society were making it increasingly difficult for Northern politicians to side with their fellow Southerners on almost any issue.
As a result of the process that the Wilmot Proviso only accelerated, factions from the North slowly started to break away from the two main parties at the time — the Whigs and the Democrats — to form their own parties.
The stubborn revivals of the Wilmot Proviso served a purpose as it kept the issue of enslavement alive in Congress and thus before the American people.
The issue, however, did not die completely. Yahoo Web Search Yahoo Settings. Sign In. Search query. All Images Videos News.
Local Shopping. Anytime Past day Past week Past month. About 33, search results. National Park Service www. Abolitionists were few and far between in the s as many Americans considered them too radical. Free-soilers fell somewhere in the middle of the anti-slavery spectrum, which included Wilmot and a variety of northern politicians. At the heart of the free-soil movement was the commitment to keep slavery out of newly gained territories.
Unlike abolitionists, free-soilers did not want to touch slavery in places it currently existed but rather wanted to stop its spread. Free-soilers objected to slavery not because they viewed it as an abominable institution, but because it hurt northern whites. Some politicians felt that the slave power disproportionally dominated national politics thereby limiting northern political influence.
Additionally, slavery created an aristocratic planter class that northerners viewed as incompatible with American democracy. Finally, slavery restricted white economic mobility by eliminating competition for labor in the areas it existed. Restricting slavery in the territories opened those lands to free white laborers and promoted labor competition, which benefitted the North.
Wilmot and other free-soilers made it clear that the free-soil movement was entirely for the benefit of white northerners with little concern for those held in bondage. Free-soilers made up an overwhelming majority of those in the anti-slavery movement which illustrates that the movement was born out of hostility to perceived southern political domination and the desire to promote northern white interests rather than an actual humanitarian concern for slaves.
While the Wilmot Proviso occurred so suddenly and swiftly it had a lasting impact on American politics. The proviso provides insight into the anti-slavery movement in antebellum America.
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