Causes of breakdown of consensus as to the nature of American Union?

Question

Reasons for the breakdown of consensus as to the nature of American Union between the end of Mexican war and the outbreak of Civil War in april 1861.

Answer 1

The Mexican War was the culmination of the expansionist Manifest Destiny era. Texas had been admitted to the Union as a slave state, and after the war, as a result of the Compromise of 1850, California was admitted as a free state, with slavery to be determined by voters in the New Mexico and Utah territories.

Southerners were under pressure to expand slavery because, with the Northern population growing rapidly, the slave states would just be blown away.

Presidential election results in 1848 (Zachary Taylor), 1852 (Frankllin Pierce), and 1856 (James Buchanan) were acceptable to the South, but the formation of the new anti-slavery Republican Party in 1854 made the South very nervous.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 extended slavery above the old Missouri Compromise line, and abolitionist John Brown's activities soon turned Kansas Territory into "Bloody Kansas."

A Fugitive Slave Law and the related Dred Scott case required escaped slaves to be returned from the North to the South. Harriett Tubman and the Underground Railway helped many slaves to edscape to Canada.

Harriett Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," inflamed Northern sentiment.

John Brown hoped to incite a slave revolt when he raided the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (nor West Virginia). Brown was captured by Robert E. Lee and later hanged, but national emotions were sky-high.

The election of 1860 was the straw that broke the camel's back. Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, was completely unacceptable to the South, and South Carolina voted to secede just before Lincoln took office.

By the time he took the oath of office, seven Southern states had seceded, and a few weeks later, the Confederates began shelling the Union Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor.

The Civil War was underway.

Answer 2

It is due to the fact that the education system in the United States is now far below that of China and India and Africa.... someone here in the U.S. has been pushing Education to be downgraded