Despite its failure, the Wilmot Proviso, like the Compromise of 1820, revealed the discontinuity between the Whig and Democratic Parties in the North and South and opened the way for the sectional realignment of the nation’s party system. Although the Wilmot Proviso passed in the House of Representatives, where the Free States had a clear majority, the Senate rejected the legislation. ![]() Instead, both parties tried to capitalize on the issue by denouncing their opponents and ‘Wilmot Provisoists.’” (Jeffrey 1989, 287) In North Carolina, the Wilmot Proviso highlighted the competition between the Whig and Democratic Parties regarding which party most ardently supported and protected the right to own slave property. Of course no influential politician in the state chose to endorse the restrictions of slavery in the territories. In North Carolina, a slaveholding state with a relatively small slave population, “it was unclear whether ordinary North Carolinians ever accepted the notion that the issue of slavery in the territories was a matter of vital concern to them. Wilmot’s proposal proved highly unpopular throughout the southern states whose white residents believed that the bill would infringe on the rights of their state and the rights provided them as American citizens by the Constitution. (Niven 1990, 53) The Wilmot Proviso stated that slavery would not be allowed to spread into any territory obtained from Mexico. His fears would be realized in 1846 when Democratic Pennsylvania congressman David Wilmot proposed the Wilmot Proviso in Congess. Calhoun, had opposed the war with Mexico, fearing that any territory acquired as a result would imperil the Union. Some politicians, like ardent pro-slavery advocate John C. (Niven 1990, 53) The treaty may have ended the hostilities between Mexico and the United States however it revived the contentious arguments concerning slavery between the North and the South. This territory included all of present day California, Utah, Nevada, and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona. Through this treaty the United States acquired over a half million square acres. Events following the annexation of Texas would lead to war with Mexico and eventually to the American Civil War.Īfter two years of fighting, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican American War. This balance would teeter in the mid-1840s when, amid extreme controversy, Texas was annexed as a slave state by a majority vote in 1845. This compromise artificially quelled the storm brewing between the two regions and for over thirty years the nation maintained this delicate balance with regards to slavery. Ultimately, the parties compromised and prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36☃0′ except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri. The Democrats, on the other hand, emphasized the right of individual states to create and enforce laws. Whigs, while not an abolitionist party, believed a strong government served as the protector of Republican principles. ![]() The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was the first serious argument over the expansion of slavery into newly acquired western territory and also revealed fissures between the Second Party System of Whigs and Democrats in the North and the South. Until the 1850s the nation precariously balanced the slavery issue. The South held a pro-slavery identity that supported the expansion of slavery into western territories, while the North largely held abolitionist sentiments and opposed the institution’s westward expansion. ![]() By the 1850s the United States had become a nation polarized by specific regional identities.
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