The Westward Expansion - Admission/Application Essay Example

How the Westward expansion and its consequences pushed the North and the South further apart Inserts His/Her Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name 2 October 2011 There is a major reason for the westward expansion and its consequences pushed the North and the South further apart. The research focuses on the effect of the westward expansion. The research delves on the slave aspect of the westward expansion. The westward expansion and its consequences push the North and the South further apart on the issue of the slaves’ freedom. In addition, the Mexican American War affected the slavery trade because many Southerners crossed the border into Mexico. James Polk The westward expansion and its consequences literally pushed the North and the South further apart. The westward expansion resulted to the reduced need for slaves. The consequences of the westward expansion resulted to the Northerners’ demand for the Southerners to free their slaves. In the West, slavery was abolished. The North moved for the emancipation of the slaves in compliance with the 1787 Constitutional Convention’s mandate. On the other, the South continued to hold on their slaves. The slaves were use to farm the lands. The invention of the cotton gin machine in the 1790s, which increase cotton yield 50 times faster than a person, was one of the reasons the North American no longer needed the slaves. The cotton was invented by Eli Whiney. He was a Northerner. Thus, the North benefited much from the cotton gin’s increase in the production of cotton yield. On the other hand, the South still continued to rely on the slaves to pick and pack the cotton raw materials. Consequently, the Southerners would surely miss the slaves’ forced labor because it would be cheap to main a slave than to pay a free person to pick the cotton products from the cotton plantations. The Southerners felt that the “mountains of ‘white gold’ that began flowing out of the South to textile factories in Great Britain and New England crushed any hope of voluntary abolition” (Mooney 51). The Southerners needed the slaves because they did not have the cotton gin to process the cottons from the cotton plantations. Specifically, “Cotton Production in the American South soared from 461,110 bales in 1817 to 4.8 million bales in (each weighed 500 pounds) 1860, a more than tenfold jump” (Mooney 51). To the South, the slaves were very precious because the slave owners did not find the slaves’ job of picking and process cotton products very glorifying. “Slavery, far from gradually disappearing, spread westward across the continent and became increasingly entrenched in American life” (Mooney 51). In 1819, Missouri was the first state created out of the Louisiana purchase. The Louisiana Purchase encompassed an estimated 560 million acres of land which doubled the size of the United States. Mooney reiterated “The Northerners resisted the creation of another slave state” (Mooney 52). The Northerners were worried that Louisiana’s classification as a slave state would tip the balance between the slave states and the free slave states. The 1819 current status was that there were 11 free slave states and 11 slave states, keeping the balance. The Missouri compromise as a slave state resulted to Maine included as a free slave state. Another factor in the westward expansion and its consequences push the North and the South further apart was the lopsided advantage of the Northerners over the Southerners in the House of Representatives. The Northerners had 105 representatives in the House of Representatives. On the other hand, the Southerners only had 81 representatives in the House of Representatives. The Equality in the Senate resulted to the “sure protection for the Southern interests”(Mooney 52). In terms of interpretation, the westward expansion and its consequences push the North and the South further apart was triggered by their difference in terms of the slave issue. The Northerners rallied to free the slaves because they no longer needed the slaves. The invention of the cotton gin reduced the Northerners’ need for the slaves. On the other hand, the Southerners were not able to invent the cotton gin. Thus, they placed prime importance on the need to retain their slave properties. The Southerners felt that freeing the slaves would be more costly. With the slaves, the plantation owners had to pay for the services of free men and women working on their cotton plantations. There are other factors that influenced the West’s expansion and its consequences that pushed the North and the South further apart. First, Texas demanded freedom from Mexico as a lone star republic; Texas was accepted as part of the United States. Likewise, James K. Polk rallied for the United States’ annexation of Texas. James Polk engineered the Manifest Destiny where all White Americans had the God-given duty to “expand their superior institutions across the territories” (Mooney 54). In addition, Congressman David Wilmot rallied for the approval of the Wilmot Proviso. The proviso stated that slavery should be banned in the territories. In similar fashion, Democratic Senator Stephan Douglas (Illinois) rallied behind his popular sovereignty proposal. The proposal stated that the people of the Western territories have the democratic right to accept or reject slavery. In addition, other situations significantly influenced the West’s expansion and its consequences that pushed the North and the South further apart. Several bills, forming the Compromise of 1850, were rallied and approved by Congress that focuses on eradicating slavery; California was included as a free slave state under the compromise. The “Bleeding Kansas” situation occurred due the to conflict between pro slavery areas of Kansas and the free soil areas of Kansas where 800 pro-slavery Missouri and Kansas residents attacked free soil residents of Lawrence, Kansas. On the side of the slave states, the Fugitive Slave Act “forced all citizens to assist in the capture of runaway slaves…”(Mooney 57). In addition, other vivid situations focused on the slavery issue between the Northerners and the Southerners. The Dred Scott v. Sandford case verdict handed down by the Supreme Court in 1854 stated that the slaves, including Dred Scott, was not a citizen of the United States and did not have any rights, including the right to sue his new White owner, Sandford, in Federal Court since the slaves are classified as “beings of an inferior order” (Mooney 60). To free the Southern slaves, Brown and his companions raided Harper’s Ferry to gather enough guns and ammunitions. The firepower was used to free the slaves held by the Southern White owners in October of 1859. The Election of 1860 focused on the Northerner’s request for Southern Candidate Stephen Douglas to include pro-slavery proposals in his campaign; Stephen Douglas refused for he favored free slavery. The Kansas –Nebraska Act created two territories, Kansas and Nebraska, where the residents were given the free will to determine if they accept or reject slavery. Based on the above discussion, there is a primary reason for the westward expansion and its consequences that pushed the North and the South further apart. The westward expansion precipitated to the decline in the demand for slaves. The slave aspect of the westward expansion was approached differently by the Northerners and the Southerners. Indeed, the westward expansion and its consequences pushed the North and the South further apart, specially on the issue of the slavery. Cited Work: Mooney, Mathew. American History. Read More