Assess the reasons why Westward Expansion caused frictions between Northern and Southern States in the US during the 1850's.

Westward expansion was only an issue of political contention because of slavery. While Southern states wanted to see the protection and expansion of slavery and hence the protection and expansion of their economic rights, Northern states wanted to see the expansion of industry and wage paying jobs. Slavery was important for the Southern states because it was an economic institution. If slavery was not expanded to the new territories of the west then it would be under threat where it already existed in states East of the Mississippi River. The differences in the economic institutions of the North and South had created a divide and a situation where the South thought it had to expand westwards in order to protect slavery. Finally, political mismanagement exacerbated this issue of slavery expansion by not sticking to the Missouri compromise of 1819. 

Key ideas

Manifest destiny, evidence: Horace Greeley – ‘go west young man’, Senator Wilmot – west should be ‘for the sons of toil of my own color and race’. 

Slavery, evidence: Lincoln – slavery is ‘the only substantial difference’ between the north and south, Abolitionists – Harriet Beecher Stowe ‘you’re the little old lady who made this Great War’. Uncle toms cabin sold 300,000 copies. Frederick Douglass called slavery ‘a remnant of barbarianism’. John brown raid. 

Economics, evidence: $8 billion tied up in slaves. Very important financially. 5 million bales of cotton exported in 1860.1860 80% of southerners work in agriculture. 40% of northerners. Shows how economics made southern and northern societies different.