The Matter of Southern/Confederate Secession and the Civil War in the 1850s vs. 1860s

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The Matter of Southern/Confederate Secession and the Civil War in the 1850s vs. 1860s

By BlueandGrayl

First Sergeant

Joined May 26, 2018

Location Corona, California

 This is a redux of a previous thread, "Question of Southern/Confederate Secession and the Civil War in the 1850s vs. 1860s," from five years ago and I think it is worth revisiting here given the what if potential from such a scenario. As you know, I've read Mark Joseph Steigmaier's Texas, New Mexico and the Compromise of 1850 along with Fergus M. Bordewich's America's Great Debate, John C. Waugh's On the Brink of Civil War, Holman Hamilton's Prologue to Conflict, The Southwestern Historical Quarterly's The Taylor-Neighbors Struggle Over the Upper Rio Grande Region and a few other books as well as contemporary newspaper accounts from the Texas State Gazette, The New York Tribune and a few others. All of them cover an obscure dispute between Texas and New Mexico over the latter's boundaries and almost led to something far more serious.
 

Just to get all of you up to speed with what I've said before and the subject in question, here is an overview of what happened generally speaking:

Recap

As a matter of fact, secession and the Civil War were actually quite close to happening between 1849 and 1850. As many of you know, the United States acquired a large tract of land from Mexico, including present-day California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, in what became known as the Mexican Cession. However, this land acquisition led to a major problem as to what to do with the territories, which was whether they would be free or slave causing a crisis between the North and the South similar to the legislative debates over Missouri in 1819-1820 over the balance of the states. But it wasn't just the territories such as California and New Mexico, there was also the matter of slavery and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., as well as the fugitive slaves escaping and Texas' debt accumulated from its days as an independent republic from 1836 to 1846. Northern Democrat Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania tried to ban slavery in the newly acquired territories by writing the Wilmot Proviso in 1846, which was able to pass in the Senate in the year 1847 but ultimately was rejected and an attempt to attach it to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 failed.

Amidst all this debate, Texas and its boundary claims over the easternmost portions of New Mexico (which was barely just organized) in particular became the flashpoint of what Kentucky politician Henry Clay called "the crisis of the crisis" (in "The Speeches of Henry Clay" he mentions Texas numerous times in its relation to the United States)

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/the-matter-of-southern-confederate-secession-and-the-civil-war-in-the-1850s-vs-1860s.204731/post-2688474