lecture 4a manifest destiny and the slave power conspiracy so the major questions we will discuss uh in this lecture and we're going to talk about what was manifest destiny we're going to talk about how the u.s expanded its territorial holdings in the 1840s we're going to answer the question what was the slave power conspiracy and then finally we're going to talk about why the war against mexico was so controversial so before we do that let's talk about manifest destiny right the culture of manifest destiny so this term was coined uh during this time by a new york city journalist a guy named john o'sullivan and it was this based on this idea that it was america's god-given duty to expand westward to populate with the american population uh all areas um you know stretching from the atlantic ocean to the pacific ocean in order to create a coast to coast empire one that touched both the atlantic ocean as well as the pacific ocean and this image that you see on the screen here was a cartoon by thomas nast kind of depicting uh the way that americans uh looked at or portrayed manifest destiny uh you'll see down here in the foreground right there's our old friend the yeoman farmer those hardy uh frontier farmers who are self-sustaining you kind of see the progress behind them big industrial cities railroads of course the coaches that are carrying travelers over land miners but then look once you see you know kind of there's a dividing line between light and dark and what do you see to the left side of that darkening line right you see uh the buffalo you see foreboding mountains and you also see native peoples right bears so this image this painting uh not only depicts uh a lot of what was going on at the time in terms of you know kind of a snippet of american history but it's also showing you um the way people were kind of foreseeing this uh you know what it would take to achieve this manifest destiny um for the united states and there were some people who were big advocates of this idea of american progress through manifest destiny northern merchants and industrialists were really behind it because they saw that expanding the american population westward would be good for commerce open up the possibility of exploiting new natural resources and they want to gain a foothold on the pacific coast in order to open up the possibility of conducting trade with east asia and a lot of the way that manifest destiny was justified was around the idea of race this belief that the people who lived in these areas in other words indians as well as mexicans were inferior racially and the they kind of framed westward expansion as something that would benefit them because you would be bringing civilization to them right and this is this idea of paternalism right that um by civilizing them we're helping them to improve their lives by giving them things like democracy uh teaching them how capitalism works teaching them the english language etc there's also uh this fear that mexicans who were living in the west were under the influence of catholicism and the pope and we've already talked about the readings talk extensively about this strain of anti-catholicism that was so prevalent in american society at this time a fear that people who were catholic would be more obedient to the pope than american you know than the american government right and this applied to german catholic immigrants irish catholic immigrants as well as uh these the mexican citizens who lived in this in these territories so let's move on to some of the territorial acquisitions that defined this period of the 1840s starting with texas the book does a pretty good job of explaining the causes of the texas war for independence you know it was a state formerly a state of mexico a northern border state and of course over time due to indian raids mexico starts trying to bring in white settlers from the united states right and things kind of go downhill from there but what i want to do is mainly focus in this section on the aftermath since we only have a limited amount of time for this lecture so after the texas war for independence after texas won its independence and broke free from mexico u.s president james k polk begins the annexation process trying to bring texas in as a state of the union a lot of the things that motivated him there were several one of which was his fear that great britain would try to annex texas first and could abolish slavery in that area and as you know a lot of those white settlers who came in uh had brought their slaves with them right and that eventually turned to be a big point of contention uh with the mexican government as well so he was worried that great britain would move first there was also a lot of support for annexation among people who were against slavery they thought that if texas was admitted as a state they could push for uh admittance of the uh oregon territory and to have that admitted as a free state which would of course be that balance that we've been talking about um you know up to and through and after the missouri compromise but the main reason that polk wanted to annex texas was because of slaveholder interests right texas especially the eastern part of texas the agricultural conditions there were very conducive to grow cotton to expand the cotton economy of the south through the use of enslaved labor right so that is texas another uh example of territorial expansion during this time was the acquisition of oregon in 1846 now uh president james k polk's presidential campaign uh leading up to the 1844 election uh relied on this slogan or you know frequently employed this slogan of 5440 or fight um this was a reference to this growing desire among people in the whig party among others who wanted to annex the oregon territory all the way up to what at that time was the border of alaska right and you kind of see here what we're talking about right you have um this is the 42 degrees south or 42 degrees north i guess um was the ex farthest southern extent of the british claim um so this territory is disputed right you see the u.s over here mexico down here and then there was also this area really going all the way up to 5440 and you kind of see alaska which at this time belonged to russia up there in the top left corner so um and this is the idea that if britain doesn't give us what we want we're going to take that land by force right 5440 or fight um and this idea of manifest destiny was very popular among the american people so when polk you know kind of adopted this slogan a 54 40 year fight he's trying to tap into that popular sentiment to build support for his candidacy because before this he was a relatively unknown uh politician from the state of tennessee so uh that brings us to how this uh conflict was resolved eventually through negotiation the united states during polk's administration signs a deal with great britain um the united states was uh worried at this time about fighting a two-front war because at this time as we'll get into here in a moment uh tensions were escalating between the united states and mexico and basically it was a one-for-one trade right the united states gave up all of its claims in british columbia while great britain ceded its claims to what eventually became oregon territory right so uh the topmost border now of the united states uh is established at 48 degrees north right 48 degrees north so that is oregon all right a second um conflict which i mentioned before in a previous lecture was the second seminole war which lasted from 1835 through 1842 i'm not going to belabor a lot of these points just remember that a lot of the desire to remove the seminoles to indian territory with the other uh five major tribes of the southeast was basically because the presence of seminole indians in these large maroon communities on the florida peninsula threatened southern plantation owners right because it was a destination for runaway slaves um and so the seminole as a result of this were included in the indian removal act of 1830 but this war as i mentioned before is a complete disaster the u.s spends about one billion dollars in today's money uh fifteen hundred u s troops were killed during this conflict all to wind up removing three 000 indians from the swamps of central florida right land which as i explained before at that time really isn't valuable for agriculture and basically the part that was acquired by the united states through this second seminal war um ran from present day ocala all the way down to lake okeechobee lake okeechobee uh right there so the point of this war is that again it's a disaster the u.s didn't even achieve all of its goals of removing the seminoles from florida because several hundred seminoles were able to evade capture um and avoid it being removed by hurrying or hiding deeper down in the everglades south of lake okeechobee and in fact the united states was never really able to remove all of the seminoles from florida so the seminal second seminal war was a big disaster for the united states so that brings us to another point we'll talk about the war with mexico from 1846 through 1848 so just as a little bit of a prelude to this conflict um polk once he became president tried to buy new mexico from the mexican government but mexico refused right so basically at that point polk has to either decide to give up his desire for you know to acquire all this land or he's got to find a new way to do it and that brings us to uh the border dispute that uh eventually caused this war so um the state of texas when it became uh annexed to the united states right and when uh the peace treaty uh that was signed between the texas rebels and the the texas rebels and the mexican government this treaty that was signed um there was a dispute in the southern border of texas now mexico for their part claimed the new that the border was the nueces river right the nueces river right here you can kind of see uh the extent of what mexico thought would be the state of texas based on that the united states on the other hand claimed that the actual border was the rio grande river which you see here now the reason why looking at this picture the reason why polk would claim the rio grande river border is because look at how much extra territory that would allow the united states to claim instead of just getting this part of eastern texas here you're now grabbing all of western texas what is now the texas panhandle uh parts of the oklahoma panhandle new mexico all the way up into colorado and even utah right so by adjusting that border or claiming the rio grande border allowed the united states to claim much more territory and so polk occupied that disputed territory by sending u.s troops into it mexico of course saw this in an as an invasion of their sovereign territory and attacked that u.s force and this led to uh the mexican-american war and this war was very unpopular in the u.s and it sold a lot of political division right one reason for this was this idea of a slave power conspiracy right and this is something that's going to become a recurring theme that we're going to talk about uh this over this lecture and the next one so basically this slave power conspiracy was this fear on the part of northerners that southerners were trying to take over the country um and undermine republicanism by legalizing slavery in every section of the country right and there were several elements to the way the national government worked that they used as or they cited as proof of the existence of this slave power conspiracy the first uh was the three-fifths compromise the three-fifths compromise remember which part of the constitution that gave the south disproportionate representation in the house of representatives as well as more electoral college votes by artificially inflating the population of the south because slaves in the south enslaved african americans were not considered uh really even to be human right it would have been tantamount at least in the eyes of southerners to counting uh you know since they were considered chattel they were considered property much like you know a draft animal or something of that nature so when they were talking about uh counting uh enslaved african-americans toward the population right that was part of what made it so ridiculous to northerners because the southerners at this time didn't even recognize the humanity of slaves much less uh find a way to justify including them in the population so the three-fist compromise kind of rigged the national system in the house of representatives and the electoral college in favor of the south another issue and we talked about this before was balance in the senate maintaining this balance between free states and slave states ensured that any legislation that would put restrictions on slavery or stop its expansion into the western territories was bound to fail due to the filibuster unless one side or the other can get two-thirds of the members to agree to vote on something bills in the senate as we know from our current political uh situation are doomed to fail and then the third and final element of the slave power conspiracy were the existence of doe faces the doe faces were northern democrats who sided with the south when it came to political issues regarding slavery right so in other words these doe faces who were northerners um they actually voted like southerners when it came to slavery right and some of the most famous um though faces are seen here uh in this picture you have uh former president franklin pierce uh to the left uh stephen douglas of illinois there in the middle and then uh the president james buchanan there on the right so when you look at the slave power conspiracy northerners saw the second seminole war as well as the mexican war as proof that southerners had gained control over the federal government and were trying to rig the system in favor of uh slavery right so they see this gross waste of money in the second seminole war and then this massive territorial acquisition from the mexican war it's proof of the southern control over the federal government um another reason so that's a slave power conspiracy another reason that this conflict was so unpopular was uh the idea that if you take over this territory you're going to have to assimilate people who you consider to be inferior um there is a belief that people like mexicans native americans couldn't or wouldn't assimilate right and that by trying to do so um over time would lead to things like miscegenation uh interracial relationships that would ultimately degrade america and the white race right and as you'll see from this picture there were other groups like chinese immigrants who would come as a result of westward expansion when these areas started being developed and this was again this fear of immigration kind of played into public opposition to the war um and so there were a number of prominent opponents against the war uh one of them on the on the left there is abraham lincoln who at the time was a whig congressman in the house of representatives from the state of illinois who gained national prominence by delivering a rousing anti-war speech on the uh floor of the house of representatives and then on the right you have the writer henry david thoreau who actually stopped paying taxes uh during the war as a protest that uh his tax money was being used to wage war against mexico to acquire all this territory the outcome of the war swings in favor of the united states and all that of course is explained in the book so we're going to move on to the spoils of war right so the controversy is how much land to take one option was taking over all of mexico and annexing all the territory down to the southern border of mexico right the problem with that the reason that a lot of people dismiss that option out of hand was that it meant taking on and then assimilating 20 million mexican citizens into the american population right and we've already talked about before how that was very unpopular among the uh american people so that was one controversy how much land to take another controversy and this is really what made the war so controversial overall was would the land taken wind up allowing slavery or would it be free and this led to the wilmot proviso so the wilmot proviso um stated that neither slavery nor indentured servitude would be allowed in the land acquired from mexico through this war right wilmot david wilmott put forward this uh proposal as a compromise between people who didn't want to go to war and the people who supported it right so to kind of assuage the fears of the anti-war faction he said well we'll take this land we just won't allow slavery there right um and the part of his reasoning behind it was to quote preserve for free white labor a rich country in other words um it wasn't necessarily that wilmot was any big opponent of slavery because of what it did to african americans right the exploitation uh and all of the abuse that that entailed his problem was that the belief that expanding slavery into the territories uh would lead to fewer opportunities for white men right for white wage laborers and white farmers so eventually the wilmot proposal uh doesn't pass but this debate that happens is going to further sow the seeds of this sectional crisis that we've been talking about really had been kind of bubbling underneath the surface even since the missouri compromise in 1820 so finally we come to the treaty of guadalupe hidalgo this was the treaty that wound up ending putting an end to the war in 1848 mexico surrenders half of loses nearly half of its total territorial area in this territorial acquisition which you can see here pointed out by that arrow basically makes the united states the most powerful country in north america right because of all of the resources there all of the potential of that land as well as securing that continental empire that manifest destiny had as one of its initial goals so the u.s paid mexico 18 million dollars for the lands that were given up um and this was derided by believers in the slave power conspiracy as quote a gift from taxpayers to slave holders so what was uh the consequences what were the consequences of the mexican war well first of all you have all of the indians who lived in this uh area are now living in u.s territory and although we won't have time really to get to it in this class if you take the second half of u.s history we'll talk a lot more about the indian wars that happened on the great plains after the civil war and a lot of that conflict involved native peoples who had only been brought into the american uh body politic or into american territory uh during the mexican war another uh thing that came up was that gold was discovered in california in 1848 right after uh the signing of this treaty california was admitted as a free state in 1850 and then right after that uh the military governor of california vowed to wage a war of extermination against the indians living there right and you kind of see um you know on the left there governor peter burnett quote that a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the indian race becomes extinct all right so he wasn't talking about putting them on reservations or even relocating them uh to a different area right his goal was essentially genocide all right so that was kind of the attitude of the powers that be uh in california at that time um if he couldn't exterminate them he also had floated the possibility of enslaving them and it's important to understand that at this time only 8 000 indians were left living in california the rest of them had been had died due to pandemics disease as well as the abuses that they suffered at the hands of spain during the colonial period another group who lived in this area were the californias the california's were mexican citizens who lived in california and then of course after the united states acquired california the united states is going to crack down on them because these mexican citizens who were descendant from spanish colonial officials they were the large landowners they owned huge estancias large cattle ranches and owned all the valuable resources so a big project in the early days of california was to disfranchise them to take the land away from them and many of them were forced to be tenant laborers um which was a big drop off obviously from their former very elevated position as um the rulers over this territory and so the final consequence uh then of the mexican war is this it reignites this debate of free labor versus slave labor because much of the land that was taken from california lied above the missouri compromise line right you kind of see that line traced out and these territories here that were acquired as a result of the treaty of guadalupe hidalgo again adds a lot more territory to the united states above the missouri compromise line and if you look for a point of comparison at the amount of territory below that line versus above you can see that a growing fear among southerners that there would be much more uh possibility to open up uh and free labor states above the line than to be able to create slave states below that line right and that had the possibility the threatening possibility of uh overturning the balance that had existed in the senate up to this point and then finally we come to the political fallout right the political fallout from the mexican american war so this massive acquisition of territory is going to lead to the creation of the free soil party in 1848 and their party slogan was free soil for free labor for free men right and this is kind of goes along the lines of what david wilmott was talking about when he made his proposal is that to avoid the extension of slavery into these western territories because it would reduce the amount of opportunities for white wage laborers it would be unfair competition for white farmers who couldn't compete with large farmers who were using enslaved labor the party at this time was criticized in some circles as quote white man-ism right in other words this uh that it was an effort to make the west an exclusive territory reserved only for white people and the free soil party um actually had a lot of popularity uh in the american political system you see here the results uh of the 1848 election martin van buren who previously it served as vice president to andrew jackson actually won 10 percent of the vote wasn't able to win any electoral college votes but the fact that he gained 10 percent of all the votes cast during that 1848 election showed that this kind of sentiment right this belief that extension of slavery into the territories would be bad for white people right a different kind of anti-slavery argument than we've been talking about before showed that they were going to be a political force in the years to come so that's all for this lecture thanks for listening and we will see you for lesson 4b