alrighty, so i wanted to comment about a couple things that i noticed in the reading over the weekend. I learned a lot of new information about how Mexico actually owned a lot of the land that is part of the U.S. today. That being so, we really pushed a lot of people out of their homes, not only the Native Americans but also the Mexicans. I also noticed a key fact that all of the southern plantation owners seemed to believe, and that was that in order for slavery to survive, they needed to be able to spread westward and expand. But the slave owners weren’t the only whites living in the south, and they didn’t want the poorer whites to start agreeing with the North. so they told them lies and said that they could have more control and have a better life if they moved west. But i was wondering what actually happened to those whites. Did they become more prosperous or did things just get worse? I alos really liked how the reading described the fugitive slave law, saying that “no territory could interfere with the right of his slave-master to own slaves” It was a shocking but completely true statement. I was also really shocked at the extreme that the senators went to in their disagreement, i mean they were physically fighting. And they both were high class and had a big position in the government, and they resolved to physical fighting. I guess it shows how intense the opinions of each side were at the time, and how big of a barrier stood between the slavery supporters and the abolitionists.