Tuesday, December 1, 2009
April 29: "Manifest Destiny, Slavery, and the Politics of Expansion"
How did the politics of slavery complicate the "rightful" expansion of the American nation state as promoted by the notion of manifest destiny? What did this mean for America's war with Mexico and the emergence of a Free Soil movement?
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The politics of expansionism were intimately intertwined with the debate on slavery that had plagued the nation from its creation, as chapter fifteen bears witness. John L. O’Sullivan felt the need to tackle head on the issues raised by the possible acceptance of Texas, New Mexico, and California upon a successful conclusion to a war with Mexico, in as effort to bolster his newly created principle of manifest destiny. The issue O’Sullivan needed to dispense with was of course the possible inclusion of many new slave states. Sources two and three stand in sharp contrast to each other in that they present two very different pictures of the root causes of the Mexican-American War. Source two, an address from James K. Polk, places the blame squarely on instability in the Mexican state which in his mind ultimately resulted in the attack on American soil. The Mexican writer in source three points out that the United States had furnished troops to Texas during the latter’s revolution, and that the “attack on U.S. soil” had in fact taken place in Mexico. Sources four and nine are also inexorably linked. The famous “Wilmot Proviso” would have successfully cut off the South’s main motivation for waging the war with Mexico by denying more slave states into the territory. James C. Calhoun, in response, trots out the old state’s rights argument and claims that the federal government has no right to dictate slavery to states. It is clear from sources five, six, seven, and eight that much of the anti-war sentiment at the time revolved around the realization that the greatest cause of the conflict was slaveholders’ shared desire to initiate more slave states into the Union by opening up the territory necessary to facilitate this. Finally, source ten presents the political party platforms at the time. Clearly the Democratic Party had maneuvered itself into a distinctly pro-southern, pro-slavery constituency. What stands out the most from the document is the Whig platform which seems completely watered down and impotent to the Democratic position on this issue. The Free Soil Party was certainly capable of articulating a challenge; however, it does seem that even the Free Soilers’ anti-slavery stance contains an absence African-American perspective.
ReplyDeleteThomas Hietala’s essay pin-points the incorrect principles behind the Jacksonian Democrat’s foreign policies; even though their rhetoric worked to win elections and connect any opposition they might encounter to corrupting European prerogatives. They were quick to point out that Europeans opposed U.S. expansion, and any attempt to curtail this effort at home was not a legitimate attack on slavery, but an attack on United States’ interest. Robert W. Johannsen’s essay depicts the rise in media coverage during the Mexican-American War. The Mexican-American War brought Americans into a world where journalists could more freely connect events from around the world with events happening at home. Also, many famous (and many more would be) historians and literary giants began to publish accounts of the conflict almost immediately, giving rise to a form of American Romanism. Lastly, Jonathan Earle traces the evolution of the coming together of the northern Democrats who put for the “Wilmot Proviso.” Earle attempts to answer how some northern Democrats began to defect and bolster the Free Soilers’ opposition to slavery as the cause of so many of the nation’s problems. For Earle, the defecting northern Democrats felt their party had been “hijacked” by southern members in an attempt to expand slavery.
Slavery essentially took the outward-reaching doctrine of Manifest Destiny and turned its focus from territorial expansion to internal power struggles. Put simply, Northern Democrats, anti-abolitionists, Free soilers, and evangelicals had deep worries over the future composition of territories to be acquired from Mexico. The spread of slavery would only strengthen the already dominant slave-holding South. These anxieties clearly manifested themselves in the Wilmot Proviso, which blatantly stated that the newly acquired territories would be free of slavery. Contrast that with Polk’s appeal for war and Calhoun’s thinly veiled attack against the Proviso and it is easy to see the fractious nature of Manifest Destiny, with the internal struggle for power clearly dictating the drive or resistance to expansion.
ReplyDeleteThis meant that the Mexican-American War broke down quite neatly with support for slavery. Polk, who won the support of Southern slave holders, posed the issue in terms of an attack against American territory in Texas. This assertion was rather deftly disputed by a Mexican observer, who viewed a lust for unneeded land as the cause rather than any aggression on Mexico’s part. The Free Soilers also fell into this camp. While they did support the War and the extra land it could bring, they vehemently opposed the extension of slavery into the territories on the basis that it degrades and brings down free workers. They argue that Washington and Jefferson both envisaged an end to slavery, and that Southern recalcitrance could lead to their ultimate demise. The satirical poem captures the concerns of Free Soilers by suggesting that Southern Aristocrats, in control of the country, would gradually spread slavery and reduce the working white man to a condition worse than slavery.
These contrasting views didn’t seem to bleed through in the Whig party platform. By this time the Democratic Party was essentially the party of Southern slavery, yet their primary opposition Whigs laid out principles which are rather sterile especially when viewed next to the strongly worded platform of the Democrats. Were an impartial and uninformed reader to look at the platforms they would not even suspect the two parties were in conflict with one another, so generic are the prescriptions for the country. The Free Soil movement, born of the discontented Northern Democrats, espoused a much more elucidated platform, and stood in contrast to the principles espoused by the Democrats. It takes direct aim at the spread of slavery, proscribing the powers it deems states to possess while imagining the government’s role as one meant to enhance American’s ability to succeed, not to protect states from doing as they please. So impotent is the Whig platform that it celebrated their candidate, Gen. Taylor, leader of the American military in Mexico for his martial success in a war they fiercely opposed! Obviously the Democrats set the agenda for the nation in light of this fact, as the Whigs had to set their boundaries based off of the valued Democrats laid out.
Slavery remained at the epicenter when dealing with the “rightful” expansion of the American Nation state as promoted by the notion of manifest destiny. The newly acquired land from the Mexican War had reopened the question of slavery in the territories of Utah, Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Nevada. The question as to what states would be free and what would be slave centered on political stands by different parties. Henry Clay proposed his Compromise of 1850 which stated that California would be free, slave trade would be abolished in DC, new law to claim run away slaves, and the status of slavery in the remaining territories would be an issue of popular sovereignty. It was obvious to all that the issue of slavery was becoming more and more difficult to keep on the national stage, foreshadowing the Civil War. There is no way popular sovereignty would work in determining whether a state should be free or slave, the masses were too corrupt and the balance of slave and free states would tilt one way or the other causing an impact in Congressional legislation. The war with Mexico was a sticky one in the sense that although it alleviated the problem of one aspect, at the same time it brought upon many more problems to the victors. Although the US claimed a vast tract of land they had no idea how to organize or run it. It was as if the 13 colonies had emerged all over again, what the hell are we going to do concerning slavery, citizenship, states rights, ect…?! Besides the issue of slavery were the natives who previously and “rightfully” occupied the acquired lands. By 1860 what had been a population of 150,000 Natives in California was reduced to 30,000, harking back on the mindset of “get out or we’ll get you out.” The problem being however that there was nowhere for these natives to go, i.e. the Pacific was breathing down their necks and all knew they weren’t amphibious, well maybe the whites thought so.
ReplyDeleteThe free soil movement and free soil party emerged from former anti-slavery members of the Whig and Democratic parties. They obviously opposed the expansion of slavery in the new territories. These members ran under the platform “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men.” They nominated the Democratic castaway, Martin Van Buren to run for presidency under the new party label. This spoiler effect probably propelled Zachary Taylor to office over Lewis Cass in the election of 1848 (damn you third parties!). This third party would never have existed had the issue of slavery not been so prominent during expansion and Manifest Destiny. So what did the issue of slavery’s complication of the rightful expansion “mean” to the Free Soil Movement? EVERYTHING. They didn’t have a platform to run on without the issue of slavery.
Metaphorically, slavery was the can of an issue that kept being kicked down the road by politician after politician, both of the north and south. Thomas Jefferson’s remark that slavery was like holding a wolf by the ears is eerily prophetic given the nature of the politics of the 1840s-1850s leading to Lincoln’s election in 1860. With the land gained through the Mexican cession after the Mexican-American War, slavery became an issue too big and bothersome to ignore. What would happen to the land newly acquired from Mexico, all one million acres of it? The decades before survived the slavery issue with a delicate balance between slave state and free state. This balance materialized in the senate were equal representation of the states meant an equal divide between slave and free. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 dictated that all land brought into the union beneath the latitude of Missouri’s southern border would enter the union as slave state and all the land entering the union above Missouri’s southern border would become free states. Most of the land gained in the Mexican cession was below that border, therefore according to the Missouri compromise, most of that territory should be slave. But this, quite frankly, was unacceptable to people and politicians of the north who drastically opposed an expansion of slavery, especially when it meant jeopardizing balances in congress. The slavery issue was unavoidable at this point. In 1850, the great compromiser Henry Clay fashioned one last band-aid to somehow prevent the tear of slavery from bursting wide open. The compromise allowed California to enter the Union as a free state, abolished the slave trade in DC, strengthened the federal fugitive slave law, and allowed all other territory gained through the Mexican cession to be determined by the white eligible inhabitants in order to determine slave or free.
ReplyDeleteThis compromise was the beginning of the end for the Second Party system fashioned by Martin van Buren between Jacksonian Democrats and Whigs. Sectionalism within both parties transcended party lines, and politicians became more loyal to their region than party. With the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, erasing the line of the Missouri Compromise and allowing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to use popular sovereignty to determine their status in regards to slavery, the Whig party died, and the Democratic party was fracture. This allowed for the emergence of the Republican party soon afterwards. All of the Whigs in the north, along with other northerners who were opposed to the expansion of slavery, became Republicans. James Buchannan, a Democrat, won the election of 1856, but his disaster of a presidency, along with the growing emergence of the Republican party, allowed for Republican Abraham Lincoln to win the election of 1860. But his election was pure sectionalism. The Democratic party had two nominees for president, a northern-Democrat and a southern Democrat. This split votes between regions, and Lincoln won. Since Lincoln ran on a platform that opposed the expansion of slavery, pro slavery Democrats and southerners convinced themselves that this would lead to the eradication of slavery in general, and therefore secession would have to be considered. Some states tried to leave the union earlier and with more earnest than others, but by late Spring of 1861, Fort Sumter was fired upon and the Confederacy was at war with the United States of America, over, yes, SLAVERY.
The notion of manifest destiny claimed that Americans had the God-given right to conquer any lands in the North American continent as long as they saw it fit. At the same time, many pro-slavery supporters claimed they had a God-given right to own slaves. On one hand, the Whigs wanted to expand the size of the United States across to the Pacific Ocean. On the other hand, the Democrats wanted to spread slavery into the newly settled lands, but did not generally want ultimate expansion. This created an interesting relationship between the two parties. For every state the Democrats tried to block its admission into the United States, they would also advocate slavery in the new state. Due to the aggressive expansion of the western borders of the United States, eventual war occurred, and even more lands were ceded to the Union as well. These, of course, fell south of the Mason Dixon, and Democrats advocated a slave presence. This eventually altered the opinions of Democrats, and eventually they were on board for expansion as well. At the same time, slavery was becoming more and more prevalent in the young nation which had ignored the white elephant in the room for almost an entire century. The Freesoilers were fighting for their stake in Free Speech, Land, and Labor, and this also complicated the political system in general, in that it had a practically single-issue party grabbing a significant portion of the electorate. All the while, the abolitionists were making their stake on the issues. So were the anti-abolitionists. And so were the colonialists. The political environment at this time was blurred without many boundaries due to constant changes in the culture and government.
ReplyDeleteSince so many conflicting groups and parties eventually joined forces in settling the West--their manifest destiny, war with Mexico was inevitable. Looking Westward, many saw it America's duty to bring an end to the 'evils' of undemocratic rule throughout the continent. Pairing that with the nationalist passion that came with the war with Mexico and the emergence of the Free Soil movement, almost everyone agreed the West 'rightfully' belonged to the United States. The Free Soil movement was the fall out after the dissatisfaction with the available political parties at the time. The Whigs seemed to not care very much about slavery, and the Democrats were running rampant with it. As a result, the Free Soil Movement was born and eventually was absorbed back into the political economy of the mid nineteenth century.
The politics of slavery complicated the “rightful’ expansion of the American nation state as promoted by the notion of manifest destiny through many issues. The main issue being state representation in the senate. The slave states did not want to lose the equal representation between free states and slave states in the senate. At the time it was balanced. They were afraid of what would happen if it were to tip in the way of the free states. They did not want to let all the new territory into the union if all of it was to be considered “free soil”. If they managed to be free territories the southerners thought that they were losing grip on their influence in the country and everything was going to turn against them and slavery. With the new additions of territory decisions had to be made to try and appease everyone in some way. At that time that was near impossible because of slavery. With slavery there were extra steps and lines for the new territories that had to be figured out without beginning the civil war, which at that time was already beginning to look inevitable. With the Wilmot proviso it was one of first steps taken to figuring this dilemma out. However, the Wilmot proviso did not appease southerners. And if it did not appease the south it would not be able to live very long in the government. This meant inevitable hell with the acquisition of the territory after the war with Mexico. “Manifest destiny” was being filled through people moving west and making new lives in the new territory. The only thing that was preventing their new territories from entering into the union was figuring out how to appease both the north and the south. The fugitive slave law was passed and this helped to keep things calm for a little while. But the war to decide who was going to get their way in this nation began becoming more and more a part of everyday thinking. With small wars taking place in the west fighting over the decree of popular sovernginity and hardly anyone being able to come up with an agreeable compromise on this issue was giving way to a bigger war. The war with Mexico was the final pushing point, with its consequences, that pushed the country into a party division that tore up the democratic and whig parties. This began the spiral of events leading tot the civil war. The emergence of a Free soil movement just mean that the southerners were losing their grip and balance in the senate even faster. It was not even about abolitionism as much as it was just simply about freedom and what they thought America stood for. This whole time period leading to the Civil War was just crazy and packed full of events that could be dissected and put in the time-line of pushing the country closer to full division.
ReplyDeleteThe “rightful” expansion of America into the former territories of Mexico ignited fierce debate due to the question of whether slavery should be allow to expand or not. The northern states did not want to allow slavery to expand because they feared losing a majority of representation within the federal government. The south wanted expand slavery so that they would regain equal representation and surpass the north in representation. Each side had its reasons for not extending slavery based on ideals. The north said that slavery was wrong and that is why it should not be allowed to expand. Some people in the south thought that the north really did not care about the equality of blacks and only cared about controlling the federal government; “It is a scheme, Mr. President, which aims to monopolize the powers of this Government and to obtain sole possession of its territories (p.471).” The south wanted to expand slavery because with the expansion of slavery came the expansion of conservative ideals; “They are the conservative portion- always have been the conservative portion- always will be the conservative portion (p.471).” Both sides had their reasons for either allowing slavery to expand or not expand. And what a person believes about the question of expanding slavery depends on where and how that person was raised and where that person was educated. There is no one side to any story and to degrade the slavery expansion debate into blanket statements like the north thought slavery was wrong and the south were a bunch of white supremacists that love slavery is to deny history. Northerners will always exclaim that they cared about the equality of blacks while southerners will say they north just wanted to take control of the government. Southerners will say that slavery needed to expand to ensure that the conservative voice of America retained representation and that slavery was better than the capitalistic wage labor, while northerners say southerners are a bunch of hateful people that would rather sit around while slaves work the fields for them. Even in public schools today the north is made out to be the benevolent part of the country that freed the slaves and the south was full of black hating white supremacists that enslaved men, women, and children. And it is very interesting to realize that all of the fierce sectionalism that exists today can be traced back through the annexation of Texas and the question of whether slavery should be allowed to expand or not. The Free Soil party had the best outlook on the entire slavery expansion debate; “[we] do now plant ourselves upon the NATIOAL PLATFORM OF FREEDOM, in opposition to the Sectional Platform of Slavery (p.474).”
ReplyDeleteThe war with Mexico is another debacle that further divided the north and the south. The north opposed a war with Mexico because they feared slavery would expand and the slave states would surpass the free states in representation. The south favored war with Mexico because slavery could expand… well the plantation owners in the south favored war because slavery could expand and open up vast amounts of wealth, the southern politicians favored war because slavery would most likely expand which meant more representation, and the common people in the south favored war because they were told that Mexico was killing Americans on “their own land” and they felt like they deserved retribution. I found the article titled “A Mexican Assesses the War” interesting because he or she talks about how America is imperialistic and wiped out the Indians. That person should have taken a few more history lessons and learned that Mexico was once inhabited by Indians and the Spanish, whom they acquired Mexico from, had annihilated almost all of the Indians that lived in Mexico. That is the interesting thing about history and territorial expansion, depending on where you go the story changes about who has the right to what land. Mexicans felt they had a right to Mexico but at the same time they felt that Indians had the right to the land in America. Both countries acquired their respective pieces of land through the annihilation of the indigenous people. Mexico thought Texas was theirs, America thought Texas was theirs, but the only people that Texas rightfully belonged to were the Indians.
ReplyDeleteHistorian Thomas Hietala writes that, “When John O’Sullivan coined the felicitous phrase ‘manifest destiny’ in mid-1845, he provided Americans then and since with an invaluable legitimizing myth of empire,” (Wilentz 476). Indeed, the belief that God wanted Americans to develop “their” territory from east coast to west coast had propelled Americans westward in large droves for decades. With territorial expansion, however, new questions regarding the institution of slavery soon arose. For instance, as territories like Texas applied for statehood, would they enter the Union as freed states or as slave states, and, consequently, how would this affect the South’s pro-slavery representation in the House of Representatives? Additional territories which had been acquired from the Mexican-American War, such as California, Kansas, and Nebraska, only intensified the issue of slavery in the United States and quickly began to align the nation’s two political parties—Republicans and Democrats—quickly became synonymous with North and South and anti-slavery and slavery, respectively. The Mexican-American War, as primary sources from the period attest, was viewed as a conflict that would either expand or halt American slavery; for politicians and citizens on both sides of the conflict, everything was at stake.
ReplyDeleteOne Mexican, who was not blind to the United States’ interest in slavery or its racial and sexual discriminations, wrote in 1848 that, “As a strange anomaly in the freest country in the world, slaves are sold, and the most beautiful women in the world, some of them well educated and amiable, are looked down upon because they are quadroons and therefore irremediably condemned to dishonor and prostitution,” (Wilentz 463). As one might expect, Mexican resentment for Americans’ self-proclaimed manifest destiny was rightly justified, as well as shared by American abolitionists, like Frederick Douglas. Douglas condemned the Mexican-American conflict in an 1846 address in London in which he said, “The spirit of slavery reigns triumphant throughout all the land. Every step in the onward march of political events is marked with blood—innocent blood; shed, too, in the cause of slavery. The war with Mexico rages,” (Wilentz 466). As predicted, the American war with Mexico only added salt to the wounds of the North and South, and intensified the political and geographic sectionalism in the United States.
In reaction to the nation’s renewed tension regarding the expansion of slavery, the Free Soil Party developed and in 1848 explained their platform: “as a union of Freemen, for the sake of Freedom, forgetting all past political differences in a common resolve to maintain the rights of Free Labor against the aggressions of Slave Power, and to secure Free Soil for a Free People,” (Wilentz 474). Historian Jonathan Earle argues that this type of ideology and the Free Soilers developed out of a Democratic philosophy: “Blending hostility to slavery with traditional democratic ideas like land reform and hard money, free-soil Jacksonians brought hundreds of thousands of new voters to the antislavery political coalition,” (Wilentz 488). Thus, the Free Soil Party offered a middle ground for those torn between the rivalry Republican and Democratic Parties. The Free Soilers, however, would soon be overlooked in light of the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the onset of civil war.
Not only did slavery complicate the “rightful” expansion of the American nation, it divided it. Slavery tour apart this counry. At one point America was united with the idea of manifest destiny this was our land it was our destiny to conquer it and to expand America. Slavery made it almost a tactical decision. The north wanted theses expanded states to be free while the south wanted them to allow slavery. The north began to become fearly of the growing power the south was gaining with its foot in the door of politics as well as from the experiences in the war with Mexico. As manifest destiny started and continued America begin walking a thinner and thinner line of perfect balance, that everyone began to fear would change everything. It brought up many question who was right who was wrong could free blacks even successfully live among the whites and succeed or would they face a life just as brutal and hard as slavery itself. Then we must raise the question of why a war with Mexico was so important to the American way was it in fact as Polk stated that talks with Mexico were going south and that they didn’t have trust in the Mexican government which made the borders of America dangerous for our countrymen. Or was the truth in the fact that attacks were never made on the United States and soldiers from the United States crossed the Sabine this was strongly protested against in Washington by Mexican officials. The Mexican journalist brought up many good points was the North truly for the annexation of Texas if Clay had become president what would of happened with Texas? Would the annexation have been initiated? In my mind I believe that if Clay had become president the annexation would never have happened atleast not for a long time if at all. The sad part was Mexico never stood a chance whats this war broke out there was no question on their weakness. Was this just the strong taking from the weak I think so and I look to a specific quote in the book that really brought it to my attention “ Mexico finds itself in this contest absolutely alone. Spain was helped by England.” The United States was helped by France in their time of need. So not only was Mexico going up against a much stronger nation but they had to do it alone as well. One of my favorite quotes in this reading was also found in section three it really makes you think about this free nation of ours “As a strange anomaly in the freest country in the world, slaves are sold, and the most beautiful women in the world some of them well educated and amiable, are looked down upon because they are quadroons and are therefore irremediably condemned to dishonor and prostitution.” It really showed America was free only to those it saw fit, if you didn’t make the cut to bad. This idea is one that really made the Free soil movement stand out. These new lands should be free to everyone not just a select few or even the majority. It should be free for everyone and these ideas are what would lead to eventual war between one nation and two sections of it.
ReplyDeleteThe issue of slavery was constant in determining the western expansion. Western expansion was no doubt inevitable but the issue of slavery would soon be fought in more than legislature. Through the 1840s and 1850s numerous events would happen to create political and most importantly sectional differences in America. Southerners wanted to see the expansion of slavery through the newly acquired land from Mexico. The territories of New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California and Utah were the center of discussion at the national level as to whether be slave or Free states. Differences would follow the thought of Manifest Destiny. The Mexican American War is frequently forgotten but it proves how important the notion of Manifest Destiny was to America. John L. O’ Sullivan in document one explains his excitement in Texas being part of the Union but wonders what will come out of the state whether it become slave free or not. The Mexican American War can also be called, “Mr. Polk’s War” and by reading document 2 he claims he had tried to reason with Mexico but they would not even look at his bill. Polk was extremely offended by this and thought war was inevitable. In document 3, a Mexican expresses how the war was to him and how he felt Americans will stop at nothing to complete the westward expansion. He also notes that the land that had been fought on had no way been fought on in Texas. “The Territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers neither by fact nor by law could have belonged to Texas.” He also goes on by saying that Mexico is truly a lone place, not Texas. The south had all to gain with Mexico being defeated in the war because that meant the spread of the slavery further westward, and southern politics would have more representation since slaves counted 3/5 of a human being. The Wilmot Proviso, written by David Wilmot, was formed to prevent any kind of involuntary servitude or slavery in the land gained from Mexico. Free Soil party members wanted to see America acquire well over 1 million square miles to extend its size but not at he cost of slavery being expanded westward. These American working men were sick and tired of aristocratic, slave owning farmers gain so much at the expense of owning a human being and the workingmen not able to gain a lot from it. These men knew they could never improve with the newly acquired land being slave states. They had been looked down in society all because they worked for themselves. Extreme fugitive slave laws were placed after the compromise of 1850 and escaped slaves would be dealt with by the federal government. Free blacks were also taken in this act because of whites claiming them. Southern Democrats began to look even weaker when the Free Soil party brought out their platform. The Mexican American War is overshadowed by the civil war but the repercussions of the war with Mexico are rooted to the ever going conflict against the north and the south. These differences now introduced a new 3rd party system with the Free Soil Party and the start of sectional politics was forming.
ReplyDeleteSlavery and Manifest Destiny were tied together by the heated debate that raged in the United States over slavery’s expansion. The impulse to expand helped promote sectional differences, and beginning in 1848 this divide began to be noticeable. The drive for more land and the Jacksonian notion that American’s were exceptional individuals gave rise to deep sectional divisions between North and South. This debate was sure to be an issue with every piece of land that the United States took possession of after 1848. The victory over Mexico in the Mexican war reignited the sectional debate over slavery. The lands that were confiscated from the Mexican government brought the issue of the expansion of slavery to the forefront in Congress. The Democrats championed the notion of popular sovereignty, in other words, let the people decide, while others lead by Wilmont sought to prohibit the spread of slavery into these new territories. As one historian writes these concerns helped to kill one party the Whigs and form a new one the Republicans that had its roots in a Free soil movement.
ReplyDeleteThis renewed division between the North and the South helped give rise to a new party in 1848, the Free Soil Party. They believed that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party shall be duly convicted.” With this free soil movement gaining ground in the North, Southern Democrats devised a new approach to the “peculiar institution.” The got behind what Stephen Douglas called popular sovereignty and thought that the people in the territories should have the choice on whether or not to allow slavery. By “the people” they meant people that they sent to the territory to stuff the ballot box in favor of slavery. Henry Clay with the creatively named Compromise of 1850 once again diffused these sectional tensions in 1850, and both north and south were content for the time being. The Compromise of 1850 settled almost nothing and it made sure that slavery would be the dominant issue in politics up until the Civil War. Historian John Earle, convincing argument over the formation of the Free soil party helps to display how deep the sectional divide was. The second party system was dead on the floor and a new third party system had emerged, with sectional concerns outweighing party concerns.
Slavery and its expansion had been a divisive issue since the founding of the United States. With the Jacksonian idea of expansion and American exceptionalism the debate over slavery was thrust into the national spotlight. The two party system of Van Buren had outlived its usefulness and where you were from mattered more than which party you belonged to. The vast amount of land won in the Mexican War ensured that the issue of the expansion of slavery would be the dominant issue in American politics up until the South decided that the United States would not protect their “peculiar institution.”
Although the Mexican-American was considered an extreme success due to the large amount of lands acquired from Mexico in the form of AZ, CA, NV, and UT, this quest of American expansion and “manifest destiny” opened up extreme sectional and political divides between the north and the south over the institution of slavery and opened the floodgates for the coming of the Civil War. By acquiring so much new land, how would the nation enter these states into America free or slave? This was the main political element of politics in the 1850s and ultimately led to the onslaught of the Civil War. As John O’Sullivan believed that the “manifest destiny” allowed America to expand and rightfully take Mexico’s land because as seen in TX because it was the dream of Jefferson to expand all the way to the pacific and expand the ideals, liberties, and justice of American republicanism. And while President Polk urged to continue war with Mexico after TX had been ceded, he cited that Mexico had not respectfully honored the wishes of the American government. So, war went on, America claimed millions of acres and thus was stuck in the political debate of how do we decide how to let these new states in as free states or slave states?
ReplyDeleteDocument 4, The Wilmont Proviso, offered an interesting way to solve this political divide between the old party of southern Democrats and new party of northern republicans. Congressmen Concot proposed that slavery should not be permitted in any of the territories claimed by Americans in the Mexican War. Although this legislation passed in the House, in the Senate it did not and so the legislation was dead. This only started the heated debate between the south and the north. While the Whig party had been destroyed by the 1850s, the south became a one party system, the democrats, and in the north, northern Whigs and the Free Soil party joined the new Republican party and one of there main platforms was the abolition of slavery. This formation of the third political party system was the basis of the parties during the Civil War.
Historian Thomas Hietla in his essay “The Anxieties of Manifest Destiny” argues that the deeply rooted traditionalism of Jefferson republicanism and expansionism was the main cause of the anxieties casued by the manifest destiny and the acquisition of land in the Mexican War. Also he comments on the strange nature of expansionism and the inhumane treatment Mexicans and other countries would experience at the hands of so-called American imperialism. “Generous and humane toward impoverished Americans and poor immigrants from Europe, the Democrats showed far less concern for nonwhites whom they dispossessed or exploited in the process of westward expansion and national development.” Historian Earle argues that the Mexican War brought the issue of slavery to the national mindset of Congress and made the issue of slavery the decisive political debate in the 1850s.
The notion of manifest destiny was an outgrowth of generations of beliefs in American exceptionalism. Americans pointed to the problems of war ravaged and debt-ridden Europe, the deplorable conditions of the non-white populations of the New World, and the rapid improvement and industrialization of the country as symbols of American greatness and purpose. John O’Sullivan expressed the feelings of the time correctly when he stated “the sweep of our eagle’s wing already includes within its circuit the wide extent of her fair and fertile land.” Proponents of manifest destiny used allusions to American pride and included subtle distinctions from the old European monarchies to differentiate themselves and their “mission”. At a time not far removed from French, Spanish, and English colonization, the American nation used manifest destiny to place a moral, ethical, and rational imperative on its people to spread out and populate the world. Men like John O’Sullivan described the expanding American frontier and population by the American people as th inevitable course of human expansion and pointed to the weakness of Mexico and other events as signals and affirmations of American ambitions.
ReplyDeleteSlavery complicated manifest destiny because it divided a nation already strained by sectional divisions on issues of politics, economics, and policy. However, it must be noted that many of these issues can be said to have originated at least in part from the expansion of slavery. As it has been shown, the institutions of slavery’s tendrils have reached into all aspects of American society within the South, and this complicated the relationship between manifest destiny and slavery’s future greatly. While proponents of manifest destiny saw the outgrowth of American patriotism and expansion as natural evolutions of the human condition, champions of proslavery not only believed their way of life was destined to continue into the ages, they needed it to continue. It is undoubtedly very hard to turn back the clock on an issue like slavery, with the South totally invested and subject to the pressures demanded by the system, Southern politicians thinking was aimed single mindedly towards the promotion of the slave system. Also, the perceptions of the South’s industrial inferiority assisted in feelings of distrust between the two halves of the nation. At a time when the nation had a golden opportunity to exploit the weakness of a neighbor, the nation was helplessly divided over the issue of slavery that could only be resolved, by the prophetic words of John C. Calhoun, by “political revolution, civil war, or widespread disaster.” The political implications of an expanding American nation and a maturing moral ethic led Americans to be divided over the war with Mexico and the future of slavery in the not yet acquired territories of Mexico.
The War with Mexico was a double edged sword for American politics, it offered an easy outlet for the American pioneering spirit while also presenting Southern elites enticing prospects for the diffusion of slavery into the newly opened up territories. Once American enthusiasm for war started to wear, many came to decry the war with Mexico as unjust and unfitting for a nation of such high morals. The Free-Soil movement created a political middle ground between the Northern Whigs and the Southern Democrats, creating an alternative that, as its party platform, opposed the continued existence of slavery in the republic, advocated “free-soil for free-men”, and denied Southerners the right of popular sovereignty. So while the Mexican-American war was intended to show the righteousness of the American cause, serving as a shining example of Americans on the march to the Pacific, the real affects of the war divided the nation into two distinct parts opposed fervently to the position of either.
When dealing with American expansion one must also deal with the debate on slavery that arose at every new state’s admittance. The land acquired from the Mexican War re-ignited the debate on slavery and which new states would be free and which would be slave. It was during these debates that Henry Clay proposed a Compromise of 1850 in which California would become a free state, DC would abolish the slave trade, a new law to claim runaway slaves and all the other recently acquired territories would settle the slavery issue through popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty would not work. The debate over free and slave states was to great to leave in the hands of the people of those territories because there would most likely be an imbalance in free and slave states in congress which would create a whole new issue of inequality. These new tracts of land that America had just won from Mexico created a litany of issues concerning how to run these new lands including debates on slavery, state’s rights, etc. They also had to deal with the Native Americans whom they kicked out of the east a few decades earlier. They took a very violent approach to removing the Natives and their population in California alone dwindled from 150,000 to 30,000 by 1860, and unfortunately for the Natives, there was no more west for them to move to like they had years earlier. During this expansion westward the Free Soil Party emerged consisting of former anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats. They opposed any expansion of slavery into the new territories. They chose Martin Van Buren to run for President under the name of their party. It was this third party that stole votes from Democratic nominee Lewis Cass and helped propel Zachary Taylor to presidency in the election of 1848. The politics of slavery complicated debates over what to do with the new territories and how they would be set up, in particular would they be slave or free states. For America’s war with Mexico this meant an incredible headache waiting for the political leaders in having to deal with the aftermath of the war and the newly acquired lands. The Free Soil movement and their corresponding party based their entire political goals and agenda behind the notion of not spreading slavery any further than it already is and without such a great interest in the debate over slavery, the Free Soil movement may have never gotten started.
ReplyDeleteMost Americans throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries believed that the expansion of America’s borders was key to the success of Jeffersonian principles of free market, small government yeomanry. This included Northern Democrats and Whigs and Southern Democrats and Whigs in the early 1840s. The old generations of war-hawks (examples: Clay and Calhoun) were slowly being replaced by a new generation of Congressional leaders, the majority of which favored imperialism (even though I don’t believe they used that term). The only way for America to become more powerful while still not being too industrialist (for that may make the United States too much like Europe) was expansion. Furthermore, only the white race could accomplish this. Mixed-blooded Mexicans, blacks, and Indians had to be swept out of the way. And expand America would. On the checklist were Texas, California, that vast mass of emptiness in between, and possibly Cuba and parts of Central America. Texas and California would be the easiest since they were already inhabited by a sizable population of whites. However, the Mexican War that would ensue was unlike any war the United States had fought. It was purely a war of aggression even though, in my opinion, it was somewhat justifiable. American imperialism then hit a roadblock with a sizable number of political leaders. They asked the question, will all of this new territory (that will of course be added with an assured American victory) be slave or free? At least half of it would lie in the slave region designated by the parallel line drawn in the Missouri Compromise in 1820. Slavery would surely spread. This was an un-American ideal for those in the North, a step in the wrong direction for the gradual decline in slavery they had hoped. Instead of being contained in the Southeastern states, it would spread west. More pro-slavery Senators would surely be added to Congress; maybe as many as eight just from Texas if it was split into four states (which it was believed that it would). To Southerners at the time, this was great. The new territory that was expected was mostly empty except for Texas which would add demand for slaves and thereby increasing the rate of return on their human investments. Unfortunately for Southerners, their long time allies in the North, the Democrats, were not fond of the thought of advancing slavery. The new territory would make this the major national issue. Northern Democrats could not bring themselves to support slave state expansion and began to align themselves with Whigs on the slave issue. The Mexican War was a victory for the Union, but a major defeat for the South, politically at least. Instead of a nation being divided politically, it was being divided regionally. No longer would it be Democrats versus Whigs, but Northerners versus Southerners. The war with Mexico (morally wrong or not) was an earthquake that ultimately triggered a tsunami of sectional violence that would strike the country beginning less than a decade later. The essay I enjoyed reading the most was Hietala’s and was full of quotes that sum up the period well and how the war related to American’s beliefs on expansion. For example: “without territorial expansion the novel experiment in free government and free enterprise might collapse.” Great quote, and sums of manifest destiny well. The only problem was the difference in interpretation of that philosophy between Northerners and Southerners.
ReplyDeleteThe popular image of Manifest Destiny as a movement of brave American settlers moving west into a deserted but promising new land and reviving the spirit of the frontier, the spirit of independence, individuality, and rebirth, was shattered by the question of slavery. America could ignore the Native Americans who already occupied the West because we could pass them off as savages, but we could not ignore the very real dissent over whether Texas would come into the Union as a free or slave state. The Mexican War is a another great example of how slavery turned what would have been a unifying war of expansion and imperialism into a sectional feud. Nationalism and patriotism were high during the Mexican War, despite the realization among men like Abraham Lincoln and U.S. Grant that the war was an illegal and immoral land grab, and after the final American victory at the "halls of Montezuma", the nation should have been ready to celebrate. However, the tenuous balance of power between North, West, and South was threatened by the addition of a new state. The Wilmot Proviso, the doctrine of popular sovereignty, and even the Compromise of 1850 were all attempts to resolve the issue of slavery. Anyone who believes that the Civil War was not about slavery has only to look at the history of the 1840s and 1850s to see how all-consuming slavery was in the politics of that time period. Slavery created the Free Soil movement, and from that movement sprang the Republican Party, which would ultimately destroy the Whig Party (split between North and South over the issue of, you guessed it, slavery) and build an alliance of Know-Nothings, ex-Northern Whigs, some disaffected Northern Democrats, and Free Soilers in the West. The single issue that held all of these disparate groups together was, once again, opposition to the spread of slavery. In this turmoil, Manifest Destiny could not survive. Everyone still desired western expansion and believed that it was America's God-given destiny, but the conflict over slavery removed all further points of agreement between the South and the rest of the country. The Mexican War accelerated a clash that had been inevitably building since the Founders chose to ignore slavery in the Constitution (or tacitly endorse it, depending on your reading of that document). Bleeding Kansas, the raid on Harper's Ferry, and the Civil War were all direct results of Manifest Destiny and the politics of slavery's expansion.
ReplyDeleteExpansionism was hurt by slavery due to the possibly implications it would bring. With expansion, it opened up the door for slavery to be accepted or denied in more states. The balance of power would shift from north to south depending on the location. Before the expansion there were an equal number of states with and without slavery. Now dealing with the expansion in the Texas to California territories, there is a great chance for the southern institution of slavery to take hold and shift the balance of power in favor of the south. According to the Missouri compromise, all that land would be open for slave owners. John L. O’Sullivan tries to dismiss the argument of slavery within the territory expansion in document one. He says that the expansion was due to the belief in Manifest Destiny and not slavery. I don’t believe that the two can be separated by that. The south surely wanted more land for the development of cotton. Also by acquiring lands south of the 49th parallel, they would achieve more representation within congress. The desire for expansion in the south would not have been as great if not for the institution of slavery. While the south is doing this, the north seems to be opposed to the expansion into the far west at the time. This is seen in document three where a Mexican writer tells of the annexation of Texas. The northern people he claims were vehemently opposed to the annexation calling the idea that of thieves or usurpers. He doesn’t explain the idea that this was due to the possibility of a shift in power. They believed if Texas was to come into the Union then the south would gain more than just one state under its banner of slavery. If there was a chance to expand towards the north then the feeling would be reversed. The war was fought due to southern desires and Polk own desire to acquire California.
ReplyDeleteThe desire for land was the primary reason for the war with Mexico. The argument can again be seen in document three. The United States were present on contested borders while protecting an independent nation. Document three produces that the U.S should have remain neutral in the conflict between Texas and Mexico, which is true. We protected them due to the fact that we wanted the land specifically southerners wanted the land. Polk was known for wanting to acquire California in the fold of the U.S. As stated in Johannsen’s essay, the land acquired in the deal was vast. Some people in the U.S thought that having to pay the amount of 15 million to Mexico for the land was ludicrous. In response to the land grab, a new party emerged. The free soil party was created due to the acquisition of new lands. The party wanted to keep the newly entered states free. They wished to limit the westward expansion. Earle in his essay also supplies that the formation was due to the disgruntled northern democrats who saw the southern democrats as gaining too much power. They wanted to check the power of the south.
America’s sudden thrust into the Mexican American War brought up all kinds of doubts and fears into Americans lives, especially about the validity of why we fought it, but more importantly, about the expansion of slavery. Northerners from both major parties opposed its expansion while Southerns saw these claims as an attack on their way of life. O’Sullivan in document one clearly states the utter need for expanding American territories, but claims that the new land neither needs to promote nor deter slavery. It was just Manifest Destiny that they accomplish it. Many did not believe this, as they only wanted to claim the land as slave or free to suite their own political goals. Documents two and three neatly match up, showing the opposing sides’ views on the war fought for land. Polk does his best to justify American attack, repeating the phrase “of the most friendly nature” several times, trying to indicate American innocence in starting the conflict. Document three’s author writes a more convincing argument, from at least modern day stand point, about American aggression into Mexican territory, calling the United States “the villain”. After the territory’s eventual assumption, a number of northerners and abolitionists denounce the war as the south trying to expand their greed into the new land. Charles Sumner in document eight seems to only cast his hatred for the war because how severely outmatched Mexico was and the falsehoods of America defending itself from the weaker country. On the other hand, Fredrick Douglass and James Russell Lowell in documents six and seven respectively, both express their grief about the war being fought because of “the overreachin’ o’ them nigger-driving States.” With these people, the new territories seemed only to benefit the slave states. Document nine actually shows Calhoun’s counter argument in defending the slave states, claiming the erroneousness of the accusations being thrown out there and the fact that the sanctity private property known as slaves should be respected by the Federal government.
ReplyDeleteJonathan Earle’s essay is the only one that wholly takes about the annexation’s relations to slavery, as the prompt seeks. He describes how the Free-Soil Democrats form out of sectional differences, and the only real tenant that differs them from their southern democrat counterparts is the refusal to expand slavery. Barnburners and their ilk were under the impression that the Mexican American War was just “the latest in a series of moves intended to increase slave territory”. As document ten shows, the Free-soilers’ tenants seem like the precursor of the Republican, with some Whig ideology added though. The Whig platform seems less complete than the Free-Soilers, though they have existed for a longer time. Free soilers like Walt Whitman in document five claims that the real reason to fight slavery’s expansion is to protect the rights of the white laborer, because they cannot get a job if a slave can work it for relatively free price. And it places white workers on the same level as slaves! How dare they! (all in sarcasm of course). These disputes, in the end, led up to the worse possible sectionalist reaction: secession and eventually the Civil War.