In the late nineteenth century many differences were rising amongst the free states and the slave states in the United States. Their rivalries started generating when the Northern and the Southern states, both decided they each wanted to take control over the federal government. The free states North of the Ohio River were exorbitantly against the concept of slavery, while the Southern slave states sturdily advocated it. These utmost differences between the two regions commenced with the acquisition of an excessive amount of land from Mexico. This issue arose sectionalism between the States, which led the South to be reliant on slaves for economic reasons. With the pledge to prohibit slavery in new territory, the election of Abraham Lincoln…show more content… annexed Texas and was forced to deal with the issue of slavery. When the United States gained control over the Mexican territory, now called Texas, they were confronted with a colossal controversy; whether the land would be admitted a free or a slave state. The abolitionist movement mostly from the North was strictly against adding more land into the realms of slavery, while the South was longing for the opportunity to enumerate the slave population. Consequently, the Wilmot Proviso was proposed to congress by David Wilmot to established a set of laws or principles that dealt with the deterioration of the expansion of slavery in the new land that had been acquired from Mexico. Unfortunately the Proviso did not become a law for the fact that slave states outnumbered free states, and the congress was not in bearings to deal with the issue. Notwithstanding, after the issue of the Wilmot Proviso was put aside, the compromise of 1850 admitted California as a free state and ultimately allowing popular sovereignty to decide the issue on slavery over the territory that would be acquired in the future. It was up to the people to decide whether to promote or ban slavery in new states. Additionally, encompassed with the Compromise of 1850 was the Fugitive Slave Act that suppressed the North’s authority to interfere with runaway slaves. Conclusively, after all the conflict over the status of newly acquired land, it proceeded to encompass sectional conflict, leading to a division in the political parties from both, the North and
