The integration of the new territories represented not only a benefit to the United States but also a source of many challenges. The imbalance that emerged between North and South, supporters and opponents of slavery, led to a severe crisis that was never fully resolved before the Civil War. Thus, it is essential to consider the event that influenced the rise of the sectional problem and to establish which one had the most influence.
It is essential to recognize that all three events concerned the issue of slavery. For example, the Mexican-American War increased tensions in society. Moreover, the war demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the Missouri Compromise (Huntington, 2020, 1:00:47). At the same time, the purpose of the Compromise in 1850 was to grant certain concessions to both sides. The North obtained the state of California as a free one (Huntington, 2021, 00:10:26). There was a prohibition on the slave trade in the metropolitan District of Columbia, a restriction on the expansion of slave-holding Texas at the expense of its neighbors. The Southerners were content with a new law to capture fugitive slaves and no restrictions on slavery in Utah and New Mexico (Stegmaier, 2019). Thus, enacting the act did not fulfill the objective but only exacerbated the sectional crisis.
The most influential factor in the initiation of the Civil War was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The abolitionists perceived it as a surrender to the slaveholders. Southerners struggled to expand slavery into the new territory (Huntington, 2020, 00:30:48). Southerners and Northerners rushed to repopulate the new regions with natives from their states, which led to bloody confrontations between settlers. It is this event that better explains the sectional crisis and its consequences.
Therefore, all three events significantly impacted the rise of the sectional crisis. However, the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act resulted in the South and the North confronting each other in the same territory. The law’s passage disturbed the equilibrium between the northern and southern states, which aspired to control the new areas, eventually leading to the Civil War. Accordingly, their attempts to impose different rules on it led to the sectional crisis and Civil War tension.
References
Huntington, J. S. (2020). Manifest destiny and Westward expansion [Video]. YouTube.
Huntington, J. S. (2021). Politics of sectionalism [Video]. YouTube.
Stegmaier, M. J. (2019). A strife of tongues: The Compromise of 1850 and the ideological foundations of the American Civil War by Stephen E. Maizlish. The Journal of the Civil War Era, 9(2), 311-313.