The South and the Mexican War Page: 2

                                
Senate of the United States of America, and The Congressional
Globe, reveals that the Southern congressmen did not unani-
mously support the war. Many Democrats, particularly the
Southwesterners, revealed strong expansionist sentiments; but
the Southern Whigs did not share their enthusiasm for the war
or for territorial acquisitions, nor did Democratic Senator
John Caldwell Calhoun of South Carolina and some of his
Democratic friends from the Southeast. A majority of the
Southern Whig congressmen favored disavowing all territorial
indemnity; Calhoun made a slight concession to the expan-
sionist fever in the country, but he wanted to limit
drastically the amount of territory acquired through the war,
preferring only Upper California, which he believed would
not sustain slave labor.
Southern newspapers and the published correspondence and
memoirs of Southern politicians provide additional evidence
of the attitude of Southerners toward the war without ap-
preciably altering the pattern shown by the members of
Congress. Some Whig papers, such as the Arkansas State
Gazette of Little Rock, took a more moderate stand on the
war and territorial acquisitions than most Southern Whig
congressmen, indicating that some degree of pro-war sentiment
and expansion fever probably existed among Southern Whigs.
Calhoun's newspaper organ, The Charleston Mercury, and two
volumes of Calhoun's correspondence published under the
auspices of the American Historical Association are