For nearly thirty years, this compromise bought a truce, and people went about their everyday lives. But this complacency ended abruptly in 1846, when the United States went to war with Mexico. Southerners, backed by Democratic president James K. Polk, were eager to take Mexican lands. Northern Whigs like the Shermans, though, were convinced that the war was a Southern plot to annex much of Latin America, bringing in new Southern states and swinging the balance of power in the nation decisively toward the slave states.
