The Problem of the Empire

American forces showed their military superior by taking over multiple Mexican cities, such as Monterrey, Tampico, and controlled most of northeastern Mexico. President Polk ordered army units to capture Santa Fe in New Mexico, then ordered them to march to southern California, where they would force control of the land in 1847. The Mexican land gained from the American-Mexican War eventually led to the debate over slavery, one of the essential causes of the Civil War.

Thousands of ordinary northerners joined the free-soil movement, and quickly organized the Free-Soil Party in 1848. The party saw slavery as a threat to republicanism. Frederick Douglas, the foremost black abolitionist joined the party and endorsed its strategy. This furthered the debate over slavery, one of the main factors for the Civil War.

In January 1848, workers building a mill-dam for John A. Sutter in the Sierra Nevada foothills came across flakes of gold. Sutter tried to hide the discovery, but by mid-1848 Americans from Monterey and San Francisco were pouring into the foothills, along with hundreds of Indians and Californios and scores of Australians, Mexicans, and Chileans. By the end of 1849 more than 80,000 people had arrived in California in hopes of striking fortune. The Gold Rush contributed to the starting of the Civil War because it caused a bigger influx of people within the territory of California. It provoked the issue of slavery and statehood even more, causing deeper problems within Congress.

The Fugitive Slave Act was proved to be the most controversial within the government and throughout the northerners and southerners. The act required federal magistrates to determine the status of alleged runaways and denied them a jury trial or even the right to testify. Ignoring the threat of substantial fines and prison sentences, free blacks and white abolitionists protected fugitives. Riots soon broke out in states such as Georgia and New York, producing a more determined crowd to end slavery.

Uncle Tom's Cabin did increase the differences between the North and the South. Many Northerners realized how unjust slavery was for the first time. With increasing opposition to slavery, Southern slave owners worked even harder to defend the institution. The novel quickly sold 310,000 copies in the United States

This act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´.

Also known as the Border War, was a series of violent civil confrontations in the United States between 1854 and 1861 which emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas.

Dred Scott, an enslaved African American, had lived with his owner in the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase where slavery was prohibited. Scott claimed that residence in a free state made him free, but Buchanan opposed Scott's appeal. When taken to the authorities, seven of the nine justices declared that Scott was still a slave, but they disagreed on the legal rationale. Dred Scott v. Sandford raised the controversial issue of Congress's constitutional authority over slavery even more.

In October 1859, John Brown led eighteen heavily armed black and white men in a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown hoped to arm slaves with the arsenal's weapons and mount a major rebellion to end slavery, however, Republican leaders declared Brown's raid unsuccessful, while Democrats called his plot "a natural, logical, inevitable result of the doctrines and teachings of the Republican party." This event caused the slave holding states to rise in fear of the future. This caused the Republican and Democrat parties to go after one another in any way to make the other's view on slavery unsuitable.

With Lincoln now elected president, the people of America were in massive fear of what was to become of the nation. Lincoln states, "The Union must become all one thing, or all the other." Meaning all state was to become a slave holding state, or all of the states were to be free, which left both northerners and southerners in crippling fear. Lincoln agreed that slavery was morally wrong. The election of Abraham Lincoln contributed to the Civil War by being the breaking point of what was to become of slavery, as Lincoln and all of America's citizens knew something had to be done.