As the Civil War broke out in 1861, you could draw a line in the East to separate the North from the South. You couldn't do that in the West, where loyalties were mixed.
The South expected to annex a corridor from the Rio Grande in Texas to the California coast, giving them a clear path to the riches of the California gold fields and a vast swatch to expand slavery, notes historian Ray C. Colton in The Civil War in the Western Territories.
“They expected the Spanish American population o
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