|
Everything west of texas had huge bearing on the Civil War.
The extension of slavery into the west was a critical issue that brought on the war.
The 1820 Compromise had everything north of the Louisiana Purchase as free (south as slave).
We later siezed territories from Mexico, California was admitted as a free state and the territories were to be slave.
Then Stephen Douglas (Sen) proposed that the Kansas and Nebraska territories be opened to settlement and wanted the status of slavery to be decided by popular sovereignty. The act (Kansas-Nebraska Act) convinced the North that the South wanted to open all federal territories to slavery and brought into existence the Republican party, which was committed to excluding slavery from the territories.
Then Dred Scott happened, which basically turned the whole country into a slave nation.
|