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Recommended: Westward expansion ,manifest destiny and imperialism

Manifest Destiny set up the stage for the coming Civil War. American’s began moving west for unsettled land; with this expansion, the north and the south started debating about slavery. The debate was if slavery should be allowed in the newly established territories. The territories where composed of the land that the United States received by the Missouri compromise 1820, the Mexican Cession in 1848, the Compromise of 1850 with Mexico and the Gadsden Purchase of 1852 (Kennedy 388). The controversy over how slavery would be extended into these new territories as they petitioned to become states were the major political crisis’ that eventually lead to the Civil War.
Popular sovereignty participated in building the tension between the north and the south; popular sovereignty was a doctrine that stated that the sovereign people of a territory should themselves determine the status of slavery (Kennedy 378), the new doctrine, the Kansa Nebraska act, undid the Missouri compromise which stated that no states could enter as slave states pass the 36030. With this new act Kansas was allowed to determine, itself if it was going to enter the Union as a free or slave state. Fearing that the balance of power in the senate would be thrown off, if Kansas entered at a free state, southerners started moving into the territory to try and dominate the vote to be for slavery. However, at the same time northern settlers were moving to the territory to try and keep it a free state. Although Kansas was closer to the north and was more likely to enter as a free state it was next to Missouri, a slave state. Since Kansas was next to a slave state the south thought that it had a chance to enter as a slave state. With popular sovereignty being the new pol...

... middle of paper ...

...m, while the south, pro slavery, thought the federal government was controlling them and limiting their states’ rights.
The addition of the western territories into the United States played a large role in the coming civil war at the time. The addition of slavery in the territories threatened the balance in congress. Even with the compromises that the government where trying to make to keep peace between the north and the south they didn’t solve the underlying problem. The undoing of the Missouri compromise with the Kansan Nebraska act was supposed to be a better compromise, however this action back fired on the government and led to the first bloody battle that eventually led to a gruesome Civil War.

Works Cited

Kennedy, David M., and Lizabeth Cohen. The American Pageant: A History of the
American People. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013. Print.

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