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Political, Social And Economic Effects Of The Mexican-American War

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Long Essay Question

Primarily speaking, the Mexican-American war marked the first U.S. fortified conflict that was predominantly fought on foreign soil. In reality, this war is one of the exemplifying moments in the history of the American west. It contrived a political divide between the militarily unskilled Mexico and the expansionist-minded supervision of U.S. President James K. Polk, who asserted that the United States had ‘a right to expand its territory over the whole of North America and to extend and enhance its political, social, and economic influences,” to spread across the continent to the Pacific Ocean, otherwise known as manifest destiny. A border combat along the Rio Grande began the fighting and was tailed by a series of U.S. …show more content…

He maintained these benefits to be the paramount goal of westward expansion, and affirmed they would be acquired regardless of the state’s political stance. So, it can be discernibly surmised that the Mexican-American war expedited the American’s notion of conquering Texas and growing as a nation; that the bulk of this geographical growth was attained from the South; in which they hoped to earn a large sum of lands in order to utilize as farms that would be soon packed with slave labor. Most notably, the war indeed fabricated a social and geographical divide between the North and South because there was a raging debate over the land’s political status, and whether new lands are to be admitted as free or slave states. The Missouri Compromise originally settled this dispute by having all land from the Louisiana Purchase above Missouri free states and everything below it to be slave states. But new land from the Mexican-American war compelled the question again, free or slave? The Wilmot Proviso was an attempt to mold the land all free; but in the end, the Compromise of 1850 made California a free state, Texas slave, and the rest popular sovereignty. Thus, the war marked a significant turning point in the raging debate over slavery in that it not only fabricated a large divide of America, but also that it allowed people to create opinions of their own regarding this hot mess that would later demonstrate a struggle between two parts of the

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