Why Did Southern States Feel Betrayed By President Zachary Taylor?

With no doubt was the secession of the eleven southern states a very important event in our country’s history. Resulting in Civil War, which lasted four years, leaving over one-half million deaths, destruction, and great sectional hatred, has affected our country till today. The great question is what caused the southern states to secede? If slavery truly was the culprit behind this, if it was to what extent was it? Was the person leading our country at the time in fault for southern secession? If any what were other factors? All of these questions are still debated today.

Thoughts of secession arouse when the Wilmot Proviso was passed. The Wilmot Proviso stipulated that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any territory to be acquitted from Mexico. This made southerners, who supported the Mexican American war, feel betrayed as if they were not being treated fairly. This angered southerners, so John C. Calhoun came into defense and argued that the territories were the property of the states together and not the United States Federal Government, so therefore they had no right to prohibit in any territory any type of property that was legal in any of the states.

In response the North in defense argued that government did have the right to pass such laws because of the precedent laws such as the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and Northwest Ordinance of 1787. These issues along with more cause North and South to be disputing all the time. The Wilmot Proviso was what started the turmoil but what really topped things off was the Compromise of 1850.

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This Compromise really angered Southerners for the following reasons. At the time president Zachary Taylor opposed the expansion of slavery and he wanted to enter California as a free state. This made southerners very angry and at the same time scared. They were scared because this threw off the balance in Congress of free and slave states, this meant that the North w…