Antebellum 1852
With a three party race for the presidency, it was going to be a messy election year. The Whigs would move to nominate Millard Fillmore as their candidate, he was a firm supporter of the abolition of slavery and only his inner circle of associates knew that for publically he was known only for his belief in the containment of it. The Republicans would politely ask that Cass not run do to his alienation of the Whig party, what they would do instead was move to have Senator Stephen A. Douglas to run, while the Federalists would move to have James Buchanan as their pick. It would become clear that after the first debate that it would be a race between Douglas and Fillmore, with Buchanan being made second fiddle to Douglas’ boisterous and unwillingness to surrender during the debates. Fillmore was actually projected to lose after Douglas had close to a 70% projected vote, but Fillmore was able to regain a lot of ground after publically stepping up and vowing to help end the Franco-Russian war which had now spilled into its sixth year and had now drawn in Sweden, German Confed., Britain, Austria, and many other nations.
His vow along with more mudslinging then ever seen in an election before would seal the fate of Douglas, as Fillmore would win with a narrow margin of 18-15. He would place Zach Taylor as the Secretary of War, John Fremont as his Vice President, and as his Secretary of State as John Clayton. He had a large amount of business to deal with, angry southerners, promising to end a foreign war, and the return of a Mormon presence.
With his election, you would have a push to have slavery expand into Kansas and the Arizona/New Mexico Territories. Now, while technically all still within legal limits of previous treaties, Fillmore and the rest of the Whigs would vehemently oppose it. They would set up small organizations in Kansas to try and convince people to end the practices of slavery or to just move people out West, but this would only enrage the Pro-slavery homesteaders. Eventually it would spread to town to town conflicts, highlighted by an Anti-Slavery raid on Topeka which left twelve dead and large stockpiles of crops and luxuries burned and by the Pro-Slavery “massacre” of fifteen people in Lincoln and the burning of numerous buildings. It wouldn’t be resolved till Fillmore would move 2,500 soldiers to end the hostilities. As for New Mexico and Arizona, Fillmore would turn to the man who helped to end the previous slavery conflict, Stephen Douglas. Douglas had returned to Illinois and retook his position as Senator, however he had a deep disliking to the Whig Party. So when Fillmore went him, he agreed to do it but planned to do everything he could to aggravate the Whig party. His Arizona treaty would flat out say that slavery was allowed to expand into Arizona or New Mexico solely because it was up to the states to vote on it when they could apply for it. This practice would be called Popular Sovereignty. To further the hostilities, Northern Radical Abolitionist John Brown along with 50 of his supporters led a raid at the Harpers Ferry Arsenal with the intent to start a Slave Rebellion. He and his men got there but were ambushed by Joe Johnston and 100 Marines along with a small portion of the Virginia militia. Brown and his accomplices would be captured and executed after a trial found them guilty of attempting to start a rebellion and arming of slaves.
Next came the vow to end the war in Europe, which as stated before expanded into more than just the Franco-Russo war. The war had completely devastated most of Central and Eastern Europe with the Germans and Swedes, they had previously signed a mutual protection pact against the other powers, combined having to fight off an Austro-Franco blitz. The British on the other hand were continuing with their policy of limited raids on the French coastline which angered not only the French but also the German Allies who needed a true deployment of troops to help stem the tide of French troops crossing the Rhine. The Russian however had been busy trying to force the French to end their blockade of the Bosphorus straits after diplomatic ties were severed, while the Austrians were yet again taking the brunt of the Russian army in Galicia. Fillmore would do what he could and called for a ceasefire and peace talks to be held in Washington. He wanted to end the war so that he could help bring back lost income since the British basically encircled France and blocked off the Mediterranean as they always did and strangled the economies of Austria and France. All nations would send diplomats and the Peace talks of Washington would be almost as ferocious as the actual fighting. Terms would eventually be reached after almost two months of bickering and arguing, with everyone returning all captured territory, while French were allowed to only have a 5 ships in Bosphorus at any given time, not including merchant ships. Each nation would return bitter and many thought that a second round of fighting would start at any minute.
With many people heading west to California for their chance to strike it rich, they started to encounter other people along the way and more often than not they would be harassed or even have their horses and wagons stolen from. It was the Mormons who had fled Ohio after the “Great Exodus” as they called it, they had set up shop next to the Great Salt Lake, and they called their new home Salt Lake City. They had lived rather peacefully under Mexican rule, it wasn’t until the Mexican-American War that they had to eventually start watching out for American aggression. Some Mormon border settlements like Ogden and Zion would see large amounts of travelers and many were hostile and treated many of the Mormons like mud. It got really bad in the summer of 1855 where a wagon train of 150 people was stopped by the Silver Legion and when they refused to pay the toll, no one knows who shot first but, the entire wagon train would be killed. This would lead Fillmore to basically declare war on the Mormons, and he would send Brigadier General McClellan with 5,000 men to go and get the Governor Brigham Young. The US army would reach the Mormon town of Zion, on the border of Mormon territory and they would receive a small amount of skirmisher fire, McClellan knew that this wasn’t going to end well and had his men clear out the town of Zion, to which he took minimal casualties. Took make matters worse, a group of townspeople had released the armies pack animals, and McClellan was forced to make the decision of either just raiding town to town for supplies or just fall back to US soil. He would go with the first choice and then march to Provo, where they would encounter a militia who unlike many previous, fought hard and inflicted close to one hundred casualties before being forced to fall back. Little McClellan would then march to Murray and face a similar fate there. The US Army would be tired but the previous two battles they had closed to within a few miles of Salt Lake. Young would rise to the occasion and rally his men, and meet the US at Murray, the numbers would be 4,700 US soldiers and close to 3,000 Mormons. They would lead a night attack and while they inflicted a lot of casualties, but they would be repelled and Young was captured by an Italian immigrant who joined the US Army. He was then brought back to US soil, while the army was picked off the entire way back. He would be tried for treason and found guilty, he had two choices, either resist and face execution or sign the Utah Treaty. The Treaty would see Young replaced as governor, and the Silver Legion disbanded, in turn all acts of treason would be forgiven. He would refuse and would be hanged by the end of September 1855. The new governor Albert Johnson,he was appointed by Fillmore, would sign the treaty and turn Utah basically into a police state.
One thing that Fillmore would get right is his endorsement of Horace Mann, a man from Massachusetts who emerged as the leading figure in Education reform. He argued that for the nation to advance, they would need to begin truly educating their youths in the academic areas of reading, writing and mathematics. His system would become adopted in most of the states.
The end of 1855 would be uneventful, with a war, or rebellion depending on who you asked, fought on American Soil Fillmore's approval numbers plummeted and the Whigs began planning on who would replace him. Rivals argued he spent more time trying to have a good foreign policy but lacked when it came to the home front. The Federalist party had basically morphed into the Republican party and saw the rise of Stephan Douglas and Joshua Duncan, he had turned his eye’s toward politics and one a seat on the House of Representatives in South Carolina, they would become the leading figures in the party. With the old guard of Federalists all but dead, Hamilton being the only one of the big three still alive, he began to voice out his opposition of slavery from the safety of New York. He would bring a few older Federalist voters to the Whigs. Southern Politicians at the turn of the next election threaten that if the next president Whig or Republican threatened slavery, Secession would be the only answer.
So when you mean the USA annexed northern Mexico do you mean the entire Baja Peninsula, Chihuahua, Durango, Nuevo Leon, Sonora, and Tamaulipas as well as the entire OTL US Southwest region (including California)?
