The spread of slavery

Evaluate the ethical arguments and political actions of those opposed to the spread of slavery in the context of two of the following:

The Missouri Compromise

The Mexican War

Compromise Of 1850

Kansas-Nebraska Act

The ethical and political actions of those opposed to the spread of slavery in the context of The Mexican War and The Kansas-Nebraska Act are really conflicting. With the upset in balance of the Mexican War, antislavery activists were disturbed about any prospective compromise while with the Kansas Nebraska act, they settled with the idea of them being in a state of popular sovereignty.

The acquisitions of the Mexican War activated an upset in the balance of free and servant states. The service of extending the Missouri Compromise line of 3630′ angered both proslavery and antislavery activists. It distressed the proslavery activists due to the fact that it yielded that Congress might bar slavery in some areas. It angered the antislavery activists due to the fact that it would permit slavery in New Mexico and southern California.

Unless concessions were made, southerners would have little incentive to vote for this bill. The organization of Nebraska would simultaneously create a potential free state and further upset southerners due to the increase in chances for a northern rather than a southern railroad to the Pacific.

The ideal concession to appease the south was to point out that the Compromise of 1850 had applied the principals of popular sovereignty to the New Mexico and Utah, territories outside the Louisiana Purchase and hence unaffected by the Missouri Compromise thus proposing that the Compromise of 1850 had taken the place of the Missouri Compromise everywhere. The concession was widely attacked by southern congressmen and the bill was viewed as a plot to turn the territory into a “dreary region of the despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves.” These attacks by antislavery northerners united the south by turning the bill into an issue of sectional pride as well as slavery expansion.