Annexation of Texas was now the hottest political issue in the nation. On the one hand were the Southerners eager to increase the power of the slave bloc in Congress and the nationalists who dreamed of a continental United States. Against them was the steady pressure of the Whig Party, led by Henry Clay, and the anti-slavery Democrats backing Van Buren. These feared that annexation would precipitate a war with Mexico and wished in any case to block an accretion of Southern power.
