U.S. Expansion in the 1840s The decade of the 1840s was the period in w

At the same time, however, the decade of the 1840s saw the slavery issue pushed to the forefront of American political life, and it was an issue intimately connected with the question of westward expansion. As vast new territories were brought into the union, slavery and antislavery interests came into confrontation over whether the annexed lands would be settled as "free" or "slave" territories  which, down the road, would necessarily imply their admission to the Union as either "free" or "slave" states, and thus alter the future power balance between the regions.

At the beginning of the 1840s, Americans were moving westward across the Great Plains at an accelerating rate, but it was not certain that this would lead to a political expansion of the United States. What is now the American Southwest, including California, belonged to Mexico. North of California, Spain and Russia had withdrawn from territorial contention, but competition remained between Britain and the United States. In this c

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