Question

Consider the arguments over the expansion of slavery made by both northerners and southerners in the aftermath of the U.S. victory over Mexico. Who had the more compelling case? Or did each side make equally significant arguments?

Answer 1

The election of 1848 did nothing to quell the controversy over whether slavery would advance into the Mexican Cession. Some slaveholders, like President Taylor, considered the question a moot point because the lands acquired from Mexico were far too dry for growing cotton and therefore, they thought, no slaveholder would want to move there. Other southerners, however, argued that the question was not whether slaveholders would want to move to the lands of the Mexican Cession, but whether they could and still retain control of their slave property. Denying them the right to freely relocate with their lawful property was, they maintained, unfair and unconstitutional. Northerners argued, just as fervidly, that because Mexico had abolished slavery, no slaves currently lived in the Mexican Cession, and to introduce slavery there would extend it to a new territory, thus furthering the institution and giving the Slave Power more control over the United States. The strong current of antislavery sentiment—that is, the desire to protect white labor—only increased the opposition to the expansion of slavery into the West.

Step-by-step explanation:

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Answer 2

The correct answer to this open question is the following.

In those years, the struggle of Northerns and Southerns relied on the control of Congress. Neither side wanted to give up positions and that is why the decision of admitting Texas to the Union was so important. It would be redundant to say that Southern states wanted Texas to enter as a slave state and Northerners wanted it to enter as a nonslave state. For instance, the Wilmot Proviso by David Wilmot (Congressmen from Pennsylvania) prohibited slavery in the new region. Then it came the Compromise of 1850 that admitted California as a free state. And problems, differences and argues increased.

Texas would finally be admitted as a slave state. The Republic of Texas existed from 1836 to 1845 before Texas joined the United States. Besides the likelihood of war with México, annexation took so long because Texas would be admitted as a slave state and all the debated that it generated between the North and the South. Texas was admitted to the Union as a slave state on December 29, 1845.