IN-CLASS ESSAYS

IV. Long-answer Essay Questions

A long-answer essay is a seven- to eight-paragraph consideration of a historical issue.

First of all, you need to choose the question you want to answer. I might ask a question like: "Why and how did the Mexican-American War cause controversy in the United States and contribute to sectional disunity?"

This requires that formulate an opinion about the question being asked. This opinion will become your thesis statement-that is, an opinion you will support with facts you have culled from lectures and reading. For example, you might work from the thesis:

"The Mexican-American War caused controversy in the United States because it increased the land and economic resources of the nation. This meant that differences between northern and southern views of economic development were magnified and ultimately exacerbated sectional tension."

The next step is to write the body of the essay. Basically these paragraphs will demonstrate to your reader that he or she ought to agree with the validity of your thesis statement. In the case of the sample thesis above, you would use specific examples to show how the war created problems between the northern and southern sections of the country. You might begin with a paragraph looking at the criticism of President Polk's initial declaration of war, especially the belief on the part of Northerners that he had caused the war for the sole purpose of adding a slave state to the Union. You could then have a paragraph that considers congressional attempts to prevent this outcome by means of the Wilmot Proviso, which, had it passed, would have stipulated that all land brought into the United States by the war be free territory. A third paragraph could look at the way that political parties cracked along sectional lines as a result of the Wilmot Proviso, demonstrating that the issue of slavery overrode parties. This should lead into a discussion of the Compromise of 1850, a political agreement that was passed in response to the controversial admission of California (land acquired from Mexico) into the Union as a free state.

Your final paragraph is your conclusion. In this paragraph, you sum up your argument for a second time, although with different words than you employed on your opening paragraph. This is your chance to look back and assure yourself that your essay proves what your thesis said it would and to remind the reader once again that the conclusions you have reached are correct.

Keep in mind that despite the extra length you still must focus your argument. The question does not ask for a detailed description of the military strategy behind the war, for example; nor does it require a lengthy explanation of how Texas broke away from Mexico in the first place. The point of the answer is not to provide an encyclopedic work on all aspects of the Mexican-American War, but to explore a particular part of it. Make sure that the information you use to answer the question is actually relevant to it. This will make for a stronger response and assure that you have sufficient time to complete your test.

Your final essay might look like this:

"The Mexican-American War caused controversy in the United States because it increased the land and economic resources of the nation. This meant that differences between northern and southern views of economic development were magnified and ultimately exacerbated sectional tension. Differences between Northerners and Southerners as to the direction the country should take economically as it expanded could no longer be ignored; from the start, Northerners objected that the war was a narrow sectional attempt to add slave territory to the United States, regardless of the good of the nation as a whole. The South responded to attempts to limit the expansion of slavery as a sign that the North wanted to destroy its economic and social foundation by relegating it to the status of a permanent minority. In the end, the conflict was so severe that the predominant parties, the Democrats and the Whigs, fractured along sectional lines, further reducing the ability of the nation to solve its problems politically.

After Texas broke away from Mexico, there was interest in annexing the Lone Star Republic to the United States. However, when John C. Calhoun presented annexation as a matter of extending slave territory, the Senate voted down the measure. To many Northerners, the addition of a new slave state in no way justified the risk of war with Mexico, which had never accepted Texas's secession. But in 1845, at the very end of his presidency, John Tyler pushed an annexation bill through Congress, and John Polk, the incoming president, began to look for ways to persuade Mexico to give up even more land. He tried negotiations and considered declaring war on Mexico on the basis of debts the Mexican government owed to American citizens. He finally provoked the Mexican government by placing American troops on the land between the Rio Nueces and the Rio Grande, which was claimed by both the United States and Mexico. Mexican troops attacked, and Polk demanded and got a declaration of war.

From the beginning, the war was controversial. Some congressmen complained that Polk was ignoring constitutional limitations on his power by creating a situation in which Congress had no choice but to support the war. Some Northerners, like the writer Henry David Thoreau, protested paying for a war they felt would lead to immoral ends-the addition of slave states to the Union. In the South, by way of contrast, much of the objection to the war came from politicians who felt that the country's aims were not sweeping enough. Some advocated taking all of Mexico, not just part of it.

The sectional difficulties raised by the war were further indicated by the attempt of David Wilmot, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, to an amendment onto a routine military appropriations bill. The Wilmot Proviso, as they measures became known, called for banning slavery in any territory acquired by the United States as a result of the war with Mexico. Both Whigs and Democrats from the South joined together to oppose the Wilmot Proviso, while Northerners from both parties supported it almost unanimously. The bill passed the House but failed in the Senate, convincing Southerners that it was only their numeric equality in the Upper House that prevented the more powerful North from banning slavery.

The United States' acquisition of about a third of Mexico's territory created new and even more severe problems. Southerners assumed that the land would be slowly settled by slaveholders, but when gold was discovered in California in 1849, the state filled rapidly with miners rather than planters. When California demanded admission to the Union as a free state in 1850, Southerners opposed the move-they had learned the vital importance of their equality in the Senate, and with no new slave states on the horizon, they blocked California's entrance. This resulted in a showdown between President Zachary Taylor and Congress and ultimately led to the passage of the Compromise of 1850.

The Compromise of 1850 was an attempt to close the rift that the Mexican-American War's expansionism had created. It allowed for the introduction of California into the Union as a free state, but balanced this with a more stringent federal fugitive slave law. It addressed on ongoing boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico in the latter's favor, but stipulated that the federal government would pay off debts Texas owed from its days as an independent republic. The compromise also banned the slave trade in Washington D.C. Although the compromise passed, it served to accentuate the conflict between the free and slave states. The compromise could not pass as a complete measure as its author, Henry Clay, had hoped-Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois got it through by breaking it into its component parts and pasting together a different majority for each of the bills. No congressman voted for every measure, and support fractured neatly along sectional, not party, lines. It was increasingly clear that the party system could not withstand the stress of determining what to do with the vast acreage that the United States had obtained from the war.

In the long run, the Mexican-American War brought to the surface tensions that had been simmering in the United States since the adoption of the Constitution. Because the Mexican-American War made economic expansion the predominant American concern and because the ambitions of those from the northern and southern regions could not mutually coexist, controversy and sectional disunity were the inevitable consequences of the conflict."