The deadlock of territorial expansion along the Missouri Compromise line (1836-1848)

Abstract

The 1840s are associated with expansionism because this is the decade in which all arguments combined to justify a "land hunger" which had only been increasing since the beginnings of the American republic.
Agrarian Democrats saw the West as an antidote to urbanization and industrialization ; enterprising Whigs (especially in the N) looked to the new commercial opportunities of the West.