Chapter 18
Kelly Garcia
1. California grew quickly enough to apply for statehood before it became a territory. It applied as a free state, and with no slave territory ready for state, so the Missouri Compromise wouldn't work. This angered southern politicians, who were looking to add new slave territories to the U.S.
2. The politicians tended to support the Compromise, and younger hotheads tended to oppose it. It brought California in as a free state; gave New Mexico the land it disputed with Texas; it abolished the slave trade in Washington D.C.and, it split the remaining Mexican Cession into New Mexico and Utah, with slavery to be determined by popular sovereignty; it gave Texas $10 million in compensation; and it included a much more strict fugitive slave law. It passed following many speeches by Clay, Webster, and Calhoun.
3. The North benefited the most from the compromise. They got an advantage in the Senate that they would never lose because of California, and the territories of New Mexico and Utah would not be practical for slavery. The fugitive slave law was widely disregarded by Northerners. Even the $10 million that Texas got was a moderate sum compared to what they lost.
4. Many treaties were formed and signed for various reasons and compromises between Latin America and the United States and Asia and the United States.
5. It sliced Nebraska into Kansas and Nebraska and allowed slavery to be decided by popular sovereignty. It required the Missouri Compromise to be repealed. It was assumed that Nebraska would become free and Kansas slave. It let to extensive violence in Kansas and led to the inflammation of the slavery issue and political balance.
6. The Mexican cession I think best supports the view that a belief in manifest destiny played a deceive role because it showed a big part of thinking of coming together and actually taking land to complete their belief. B. I don’t think “fifty-four forty or fight” was a grand example because to me it was just simply a slogan. It didn’t have an action really to the words. C. A criticism could be the fact that they said that their belief was incredibly strong yet Politians failed to help not all of then cooperated where as they should have been together to show strength.
7. Population growth demonstrates this statement. It’s the fact that the west territory needed to be found, because of all the people there and how fast it was growing especially due to the gold rush, basically why it was driven out. B. I felt that nationalism wasn’t as big because people mostly went to the west because of the gold rush and population not because they had extreme pride in their nation in my opinion.
C. James Polk had 4 goals in mind that he aimed to accomplish. Half of them involved westward expansion. That is why I think he as a big deal in that instead of the others.