President Polk wanted to acquire California from Mexico, and he sent John Slidell to Mexico with a twenty-five million dollar max to buy California. The Mexican government did not let John Slidell present his case and sent him back to the US. Polk then had to come up with a new idea of how to acquire California from Mexico and decided to provoke war. Polk sent Zachary Taylor and a small detachment of troops to the Rio Grande, which in effect caused trouble with the Mexican Army. In April, the year of 1848 the Mexicans crossed the Rio Grande and attacked Zachary Taylor and his men. This caused the beginning of the war. The Mexicans perspective was that the Americans were on Mexican soil but Polk used the term, “Blood spilt on US soil” to distract the fact they were in Mexican territory. The North heavily disagreed with this. Abraham Lincoln challenged Polk to point on a map where the US troops were engaged, and James Russell Lowell wrote “Southern scheme to steal bigger pens to cram in slaves.” Despite this the US Congress still voted for war after Polk pointed out Mexico failed to negotiated.
The Civil War was inevitable because the Mexican war, Nullification crisis, Fugitive Slave Act and other events. These acts alone would have given enough reason for the tension to break and war to begin between the two sides. If the Civil War did not take place then the conflicts would continue to build until a larger problem arose and a war much bigger would have taken its place. The Civil War became something that was unavoidable and was going to happen no matter