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.Known at times as the Black Beltbecause of the richness of its soil, the land had belonged to theIndians until the federal government forcibly removed themfrom it in 1835 1837 and opened the region to planters from thecoastal South.Movement into the region was driven by thegrowth of Northern textile mills; as mill operations expanded, alucrative market for processed cotton emerged.Southernplanters responded by buying millions of acres of land in placeslike Mississippi and Alabama.As the planters moved in to culti-vate the land and enrich themselves, they brought along theirslaves.Approximately 2.5 million slaves worked the land in theAmerican South by 1850, creating a permanent bond between AB-MASON-DIXON-Interior 12/15/03 8:52 PM Page 63Erasing the Line: Crises of the 1850s 63slavery and prosperity.Slavery was paramount to continued eco-nomic growth and more deeply embedded than ever inSouthern society.Slavery, moreover, anchored Southern cultureand produced a collective identity that regarded change andinnovation with suspicion, if not as threats.Weighed down bycotton and slaves, the South looked toward a future identical toits past and refused to budge.Two distinct worlds, separated by vast cultural landscapes aswell as the Mason-Dixon and Missouri Compromise lines, hadhardened into position.Compromise thus became at once moreimportant and less likely as time went on.Americans were stilltalking to one another but were less inclined to listen.The direc-tion taken by future debates depended on how willingAmericans were to respect the concept of boundaries, howeverfictitious or arbitrary.California offered the first real test of justhow far both sides were willing to go.The United States went to war with Mexico in 1846 largelyto gain control of the western half of the continent, particularlyCalifornia, which at the time possessed the finest natural harboron the Pacific Coast, San Francisco.Propelled by the idea of aGod-given mission to spread its power and influence across thecontinent, a process Americans referred to as Manifest Destiny, America coveted what Mexico had.National leaders promotedexpansion with an almost religious zeal and developed plans forit.Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, successive presidentialadministrations and their spokesmen in the press agitated for anAmerica that spanned the continent.All of them presumed thatany dispute over land acquired in the process would be settledunder the conditions of the Missouri Compromise, namely bythe Compromise Line.President John Tyler labored tirelessly forthe annexation of Texas under this assumption.Newly inde-pendent from Mexico in 1836, Texas waited almost ten years forits repeated petitions to gain a sufficient number of sympatheticears in Washington.Tyler listened intently and, as the final act ofhis tenure as president, pushed through Congress a joint resolu-tion for Texas annexation in the spring of 1845.By December of AB-MASON-DIXON-Interior 12/15/03 8:53 PM Page 6464 THE MASON-DIXON LINEJames Polk was elected president in 1844 on a platform of expansion, and hesucceeded in adding the Oregon Territory and California to the United States.The newly acquired territory brought back the issue of whether new stateswould allow slavery, leading to disagreement, anger, and violence.that year, Texas gained statehood.Being below the 36º30' lineand heavily populated with Southerners, it entered the Union asa slave state.Tyler s successor, James K.Polk, made expansion the center-piece of his presidency.Polk ran for office in 1844 on the slogan AB-MASON-DIXON-Interior 12/15/03 8:53 PM Page 65Erasing the Line: Crises of the 1850s 65 54º40' or Fight, a reference to the proposed border between theUnited States and British Canada, and a promise to grab theWest from Mexico.Once elected, Polk fulfilled both pledges tothe greatest extent he could.In 1846, his administration signed atreaty with Great Britain, giving the Oregon Territory, below the42º line, to the United States.That same year, Polk took thecountry to war with Mexico.Using a series of transparentlyprovocative and deceptive devices, Polk engineered a war thatwas understood, even at the time, to be a flagrant land grab.Polkand Manifest Destiny enthusiasts of his type wanted the West;they wanted California.Signs of trouble appeared within weeks of the opening ofhostilities.Polk grasped for a massive tract of land that, much aswith the Louisiana Purchase over 40 years earlier, would have tobe divided between the North and South.Without a doubt,states would eventually be formed in the West; whether theywould be free or slave was the issue.A congressman fromPennsylvania, of all places, stepped forward to propose an orga-nizational model.Having some experience with lines of divisionbetween North and South, Pennsylvania s David Wilmot sug-gested a plan, known as the Wilmot Proviso, which turned onthe exclusion of slavery from any and all territory taken fromMexico
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