Religious Conviction

War! Since the beginning of time mankind had fought over religious conviction. Personal values and moral have set cultural status and their beliefs.

One benefit from the Mexican War is the negotiation between the U.S and Mexico threw the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This treaty ended the brutal war between the two countries. The U.S paid $ 15 million obtained the past territories of Texas, New Mexico, and California. A long-term advantage of the treaty gave the U.S the advantage to expand economically threw exports and trade by western expansion and opening ports to the Pacific Ocean. Gold became a valuable resource worth much more than the cost of the territories, which also opened an opportunity to grow internationally with countries like China. One major short-term setback of the Mexican War "gave fuel to a burning flame". The northerners and the southerners exploded which ignited the break of the Civil War. The north and the south had very different view of politics, religion, and culture. As quoted from Heretta is that " Ideology (the pursuit of absolutes) replaced politics (the art of compromise) as the ruling principle of American politics", the country was now in turmoil and started to divide a nation that was becoming a whole.

The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act was the biggest impact at hand. The North felt that slavery should not have been established in the new territories and the South opposed.

The most obvious benefit to the United States was the gaining of land that equates to "525,000 square miles that included all of the current states of California, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico; most of Arizona and Colorado; and parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming" (Depalma 20). As you have stated, this expansion facilitated a more efficient trade route with Asia via the Pacific Ocean. Additionally, the expansion supported the popular belief of "Manifest Destiny", the broadening of Republican institutions west to the Pacific (Henretta 378). While the war shaped the boundaries of the U.S., as we know it today, it cost many lives and ultimately resulted in an increase of tensions over slavery that led to the onset of the Civil War (Depalma 19).

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