HIST 339 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Preston Brooks, Black Church, Free Soil Party
Document Summary
Let"s talk a bit about the events that led up to the civil war. Usually people don"t think of the mexican-american war as being related to the civil war. People traditionally think of: lincoln"s election, states" rights, bleeding kansas, uncle tom"s. Controversy over the slave-status of the territory gained during the mex-am war. From that point forward, we don"t think of whigs and democrats, but rather northerners and southerners. The events of the 1850s were attempts to deal with controversies that came out of the mex-am. War broke out in 1846; wilmot proviso stated that neither slavery nor indentured servitude should ever exist in any territories acquired from mexico. Wilmot didn"t make this amendment out of abolitionist sentiment, but because he wanted the territory to be preserved for free white (male) workers. Many northern white farmers thought this was a great idea in light of the fact that available land plots on the east coast were decreasing.
