The reading for this week was for the most part focused on the idea of Manifest Destiny and how the United States began to annex\u00a0other lands into their country. Starting with the death of President Harrison (which is the most absurd thing I have ever heard of) the United States mission to move in on other lands became what seemed like the most important thing to the presidents. After Texas expressed their want to become a part of the United States, along with the fact that the British stood a chance to take control of the Republic, new President John Tyler jumped on the chance to annex, which he just barely got done before Polk was sworn into the Presidency.<\/p>\n

With another new\u00a0president the United States was told that there were four major goals to be completed: “the settlement of the Oregon question, the reduction of the protectionist tariff of 1842, reestablishment of the independent treasury, and the acquisition of California.” (306)\u00a0It only makes sense that half of our countries goals were to gain more land since it was our destiny to expand. Polk sent in men to go to the Mexican border, basically in an attempt to start war and take over California. Although it may not have been constitutional, Polk started the war and then got\u00a0approval from the congress. His rival, Calhoun, did not take kindly to this abuse of power as he was an opponent of the war and said the Polk “had unconstitutionally engineered the country into war.” (310)<\/p>\n

As any other story of pre-civil war America, slavery had to find its way into this situation. The idea of whether the newly admitted lands would be slave or free territories started dividing the Whig party as sectionalism became more important that ideology. I think this is similar to what my classmate SpEdwards was saying in the beginning of his post as he spoke on how Polk thought the new lands would unify the country, but instead it gave the North and South more reason to divide. As we bring up often in class, I feel that the Wilmot Proviso was\u00a0one of the early precursors of the Civil war that we had coming. The parties split and Calhoun “saw the\u00a0proviso as a\u00a0golden opportunity to unite southerners across party lines” (319) and it didn’t take the\u00a0north long to\u00a0align the same way. Hence the divide that we later see fighting against one another in the civil war over the same issue, abolition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The reading for this week was for the most part focused on the idea of Manifest Destiny and how the United States began to annex\u00a0other lands into their country. Starting with the death of President Harrison (which is the most absurd thing I have ever heard of) the United States mission to move in on … <\/p>\n

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