Notes for the Final

Mexican American War
-Began with Americans being invited to settle in Tejas by Mexico.
-declared independence, asked for help from US
-Polk, seeing a way to force Mexico to give up New Mexico, sent in troops
-eventually forced the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ceding New Mexico and Texas to USA

Wilmot Proviso
-Intended to prevent introduction of slavery in any ex-Mexican territory
-Did not pass

Compromise of 1850
-California as a free state
-Texas got financial compensation for releasing lands west of the Rio Grande
-Territory of New Mexico was organized without prohibition of slavery (popular sovereignty)
-No slave trade in DC
-Stringent fugitive slave law

Kansas-Nebraska Act
-Created territories of Kansas and Nebraska
-Assigned them Popular sovereignty
-Denounced as buckling under to the South
-Led to Bleeding Kansas
-War between 'Free-Soilers' and 'Border
Ruffians' (from Missouri)
-Attack on Lawrence (destroyed printing
Presses)
-John Brown (Pottawatomie Creek) killed five
Proslavery men with broadswords
-Lecompton Constitution

Election of 1860
-Democrats split over Breckinridge (lower South) and Douglass (Missouri)
-Republicans (Lincoln) won all of north and west
-Also, Union party with candidate Bell won some upper south (prounion southern Whigs)
-Just before his inauguration, the first wave of successions, beginning with South Carolina
-Jefferson Davis inaugurated president of the Confederacy in Feb 1861
-Ft Sumter, opening shots of Civil War (Confederates fired upon the Union fort) on April 12, 1861, led to second wave of secessions
-Many battles ensued