The documents argue that the annexation of Texas and the Mexican-American War were major causes of the Civil War because they intensified the national debate over the expansion of slavery into the western territories. The annexation of Texas and territories acquired from Mexico after the war raised the question of whether those lands would legalize slavery or remain free soil. Northern Free Soil advocates did not want slavery to expand further, while Southerners and slaveholding interests wanted to spread slavery westward. This intensified sectional tensions and was a major factor leading to the Civil War as the nation struggled over the status of slavery in the new lands.

1. QUESTION
Explain why it is sometimes argued that the annexation of
Texas and the Mexican War were major causes of the Civil
War.
DOCUMENT A
DOCUMENT B
But, sir the issue now presented is not whether slavery
shall exist unmolested where it now is, but whether it shall be
carried to new and distant regions, now free, where the footprint
of a slave cannot be found. This, sir, is the issue....We are
fighting this war for Texas and for the South. I affirm it - every
intelligent man knows it - Texas is the primary cause of this
war....
Now, sir, we are told that California is ours, that New
Mexico is ours - won by the valor of our arms. They are free.
Shall they remain free? Shall these fair provinces be the
inheritance and homes of the whole labor of freemen or the
black labor of slaves? This, sir, is the issue- this the question.
The North has the right, and her representatives here have the
power.
Source: Speech by David Wilmot: Appeals for free soil, 1847.
DOCUMENT C
All the territory of the Union is the common property of all
the states - every member, new or old, of the Union, admitted to
partnership under the constitution, has a perfect right to enjoy
the territory, which is the common property of all. Some of the
territory was acquired by treaty from England - much of it by
cession from the older states; yet more by treaties with Indians,

2. and still greater quantities by purchase from Spain and France;
- large tracts again by the annexation of Texas - and the present
was will add still more to the quantity yet to be entered by
citizens of the United States, or of those of any of the countries
of Europe that choose to migrate thither. Al this land, no matter
whence it was derived, belongs to all states jointly....[N]o citizen
of the United States can be debarred from moving thither with
his property and enjoying the liberties guaranteed by the
constitution....
Source: The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, October,
1847.
DOCUMENT D
It can no longer be doubted that this is a war of
conquest....A war of conquest is bad; but the present war has
darker shadows. It is a war for the extension of slavery over a
territory which has already been purged, by Mexican authority,
from this stain curse. Fresh markers of human beings are to be
established; further opportunities for this hateful traffic are to be
opened; the lash of the overseer is to be quickened in new
regions; and the wretched slave is to be hurried to
unaccustomed fields of toil. It can hardly be believed that now,
more than eighteen hundred years since the dawn of the
Christian era, a government, professing the law of charity and
justice, should be employed in war to extend an institution
which exists in defiance of these sacred principles.
It has already been shown that the annexation of Texas
was consummated for this purpose. The Mexican war is a
continuance, a prolongation, of the same efforts; and the
success which crowned the first emboldens the partisans of the
latter, who now, as before, profess to extend the area of
freedom, while they are establishing a new sphere for
slavery....But it is not merely proposed to open new markets for
slavery: it is also designed to confirm and fortify the "Slave
Power."....Regarding it as a war to strengthen the "Slave
Power," we are conducted to a natural conclusion, that it is
virtually, and in it consequences a war against the free States of
the Union.
Source: Charles Sumner, written for the Massachusetts legislature in April,
1847.

3. DOCUMENT E
I proceed now to a consideration of what is to me the
strongest argument against annexing Texas to the United
States. This measure will extend and perpetuate slavery....
As far back as the year 1829, the annexation of Texas
was agitated in the Southern and Western States; and it was
urged on the ground of the strength and extension it would give
to the slaveholding interest....The great argument for annexing
Texas is, that I will strengthen "the peculiar institution" of the
South, and open a new a vast field for slavery....
By this act, slavery will be perpetuated in the Old States
as well as spread over new. It is well known, that the soil of
some of the old states has become exhausted by slave
cultivation....It is by slave breeding and slave selling that these
states subsist....By annexing Texas, we shall not only create
[slavery] where it does not exist, but breathe new life into it,
where its end seemed to be near. States, which might and
ought to throw it off, will make the multiplication of slaves their
great aim and chief resource.
Source: Reverend William Ellery Channing, A Letter to Hon. Henry Clay,
1837.
DOCUMENT F
I do not, then, hesitate to avow before this House and the
country, and in the presence of the living God, that if by your
legislation you [northerners] seek to drive us from the territories
of California and New Mexico, purchases by the common blood
and treasure of the whole peoples, and to abolish slavery in this
District [Washington, D.C.] thereby attempting to fix national
degradation upon half the states of this Confederacy, I am for
disunion. And if my physical courage be equal to maintenance
of my convictions or right and duty, I will devote all I am and all I
have on earth to its consummation.
Source: Congressman Robert Toombs of Georgia's response on the floor of
the House to Northern efforts to keep slavery out of the territories; December
13, 1849.
DOCUMENT G

4. Article V
The boundary line between the two Republics shall commence
in the Gulf of Mexico, three leagues from land, opposite the
mouth of the Rio Grande, otherwise called Rio Bravo del Norte,
or opposite the mouth of its deepest branch, if it should have
more than one branch emptying directly into the sea; from
thence up the middle of that river, following the deepest
channel, where it has more than one, to the point where it
strikes the southern boundary of New Mexico; thence,
westwardly, along the whole. Southern boundary of Mew
Mexico (which runs north of the town called Paso) to its western
termination; thence, northward, along the western line of Mew
Mexico, until it intersects the first branch of the river Gila; (or if it
should not intersect any branch of that river, the to the point on
the said line nearest to such branch, and thence in a direct line
to the same;) thence down the middle of the said branch and of
the said river, until it empties into the Rio Colorado; thence
across the Rio Colorado, following the division come between
Upper and lower California, to the Pacific Ocean...
Source: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848.
DOCUMENT H
Source:
DOCUMENT I
Whereas, in the settlement of the difficulties pending
between this country and Mexico, territory may be acquired, in
which slavery does not exist. And, whereas, Congress, in the
organization of a territorial government, at an early period of our
political history, established a principle worthy of imitation in all
future time, forbidding the existence of slavery in free territory;
therefore, Resolved, that in any territory, which may be acquired
from Mexico, over which shall be established territorial
government, slavery, or involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, should be for ever prohibited; and that in any act or
resolution, establishing such government, a fundamental
provision should be inserted to that effect. This resolution,
which was a palpable violation of the Missouri compromise, the

5. territory to be acquired lying on both sides the compromise line,
was sustained, on a motion to lay it on the table, by the whole
Northern vote, except 21 Democrats....
Provided, That there shall be neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude, in the territories hereby ceded, otherwise
than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have
been duly convicted for attaching this article to the treaty, there
were 15 northern votes an article which palpably violated the
Missouri compromise line, if that was a final compromise line; if
not, it palpably violated the Constitution.
Source: The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, January,
1856.
DOCUMENT J
….Texas has been absorbed into the Union in the inevitable
fulfillment of the general law which is rolling our population
westward; the connexion of which with that ratio of growth in
population which is destined within a hundred years to swell our
numbers to the enormous population of two hundred and fifty
millions (if not more), is too evident to leave u sin doubt of the
manifest design of Providence in regard to the occupation of
this continent. It was disintegrated from Mexico in the natural
course of events, by a process perfectly legitimate on its own
part, blameless on ours; and in which all the censures due to
wrong, perfidy and folly, rest on Mexico alone. And possessed
as it was by a population which was still bound by myriad ties of
the very heartstrings to its old relations, domestic and political,
their incorporation into the Union was not only inevitable, but
the most natural, right and proper thing in the world – and it is
only astonishing that there should be any among ourselves to
say it nay.
Source: John L. O’Sullivan; The United States Magazine and Democratic
Review, 1845.
DOCUMENT K
….Now, I hold that Illinois has a right to abolish and prohibit
slavery as she did, and I hold that Kentucky has the same right
to continue ad protect slavery that Illinois has to abolish it. I hold
that New York has as much right to abolish slavery as Virginia
has to continue it, and that each and every state of this Union is

6. a sovereign power, with the right to do as it pleases upon this
question of slavery, and upon all its domestic institutions….
Now, my friends, if we will only act conscientiously and
rigidly upon this great principle of popular sovereignty, which
guarantees to each state and Territory the right to do as it
pleases on all things, local and domestic, instead of Congress
interfering, we will at peace one with another. Why should
Illinois at war with Missouri, or Kentucky with Ohio, or Virginia
with New York, merely because their institutions differ? Our
fathers intended our institutions should differ. They knew that
the North and the South, having different climates, productions,
ad interests, required different institutions.
Source: First Lincoln-Douglas Debate; Ottawa, August 21, 1858.
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR DOCUMENTS USED
Doc. A – Gretz, Katherine R. ed. Retrieving the American Past:
1810-1860. Boston: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2002. 94-95
(Map: Territory added to U.S.)
Doc. B – Wilmot, David. "David Wilmot Appeals for Free Soil
(1847)." The American Spirit: The Ninth Edition. Eds. Thomas A.
Bailey and David M. Kennedy. Boston, NY: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1998. 396-397.
Doc. C – Gretz, Katherine R. ed. Retrieving the American Past:
1810-1860. Boston: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2002. 90-91.
(The Expansion of Slavery Justified).
Doc. D – Sumner, Charles. "The Expansion of Slavery
Condemned: April 1847." Retrieving the American Past: 1810-
1860. Ed. Katherine R. Gretz. Boston: Pearson Custom
Publishing, 2000. 92-93.
Doc. E – Channing, Reverend William Ellery. "A Letter to Hon.
Henry Clay, 1837." United States History. John J. Newman and
John M. Schmalbach. New York: Amsco school Publications,
Inc., 2002. 236.
Doc. F – Toombs, Congressman Robert. "Response on the
floor of the House to northern efforts to keep slavery out of the
territories: December 13, 1849" United States History. John J.
Newman and John M. Schmalbach. New York: Amsco School

7. Publications, Inc., 2002. 260.
Doc. G – Mitchell, Roth. Reading the American West. Addison-
Wesley Educational Publishers Inc., 1999. 122-123. (The Treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo)
Doc. H – Dollar, Charles M., and Gary W. Reichard,
eds. American Issues: A Documentary
Reader. Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 1994. Random House, Inc.,
1988. 165-166. (Map: Annexation of Texas).
Doc. I – "The Union – The Dangers Which Beset it. Number
One." The United States Democratic Review/Volume 37, Issue
1, January 1856.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgibin/query/r?ammem/ncps:@field(DOCI
D+@lit(AGD162-0037-3))::
Doc. J – O’Sullivan, John L. "John L. O’Sullivan Advocates
Manifest Destiny." Retrieving the American Past: 1810-1860.Ed.
Katherine R. Gretz. Boston: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2002.
91.
Doc. K – Douglas, Stephen. "First Debate: Ottawa, August 21,
1858."http://www.umsl.edu/~virtualstl/dred_scott_case/text
s/deb1.htm
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR WORKS REFERENCED
Blaine, James. "The Missouri Compromise
(1820)." http://www.multied.com/documents/Miscompromis
e.html
Crittenden, Senator John. "The Crittenden Compromise:
December 18,
1860."http://kuhttp.cc.ukans.edu/carrie/docs/texts/critee~1.
html
Douglas, Stephen. "Speech at Atlon, Illinois, October 15,
1858." United States History. John J. Newman and John M.
Schmalbach. New York: Amsco School Publications, Inc., 2002.
262-263.
Lincoln, Presiden Abraham. "The Lower South Secedes." The
Emergence Of Lincoln: Prologue to Civil War. Allan Nevins.
Charles Scribners’s Sons, 1950. 330-331.
Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union. Charles Scribner’s Sons,

8. 1947. 386-387. ( Fugitive Slave Law)
Polk, President James K. "This is the House that Polk built." Mr.
Polk’s War. John H. Schroeder. The University of Wisconsin
Presss, 1959. 42-43.
Polk, President James K. "Triumph of the Letheon." Mr. Polk’s
war. John H. Schroeder. The University of Wisconsin Press,
1959. 42.
Stringfellow, Thornton. "The Bible Argument (1860)." The Gilder
Lehrman Institute of American History,
2002.http://www.gliah.uh.edu/documents/documentsp2.cfm
?doc=41