Why Some Americans Were Opposed to the Mexican War?
The Mexican war was mainly a war that President Polk wanted in effort to obtain more land for the United States. The people who wanted the war were mostly Democrats and Southerners. Southerners supported the war because they were in hope that more land would be acquired meaning more states would be admitted into the union as slave states. For this same reason the Whig Party opposed the war because they were abolitionists. Abolitionists opposed slavery so with the addition of new slave states, their hopes of making the U.S a slave free country were thwarted. Abolitionists such as Members from the Whig party stated that the war was unnecessary since we all ready had enough land. The possessions in Mexico were causing American blood to be spilled on American territory angering many of the Abolitionists. Another reason for the oppositions to the war was because many did not buy into the Manifest Destiny, which basically said that America had a right to claim all of North America. Other Americans did not think that the war was worth spending all of their tax money on. One famous figure that refused to pay his taxes was Henry David Thoreau. His refusal to pay his taxes caused him to wind-up in jail where he wrote one of his most famous pieces, Civil Disobedience, a novel about how to protest with using methods of non-violence. Abolitionists did not see the point in paying money to financially support a cause they were against. If the new territory were to be permitted into the union as slave states, the balance would be thrown of tremendously, which scared them. The main reason for opposition to the war basically was about the slave states and free states issue that had been going on ever since the Missouri Compromise. The Abolitionists really just wanted to keep the upper hand with the increased amount of free states to the number of slave states, making the South’s claim on slavery less strong.