Finally, Texas claimed parts of eastern New Mexico and threatened to send its state militia to militarily enforce its territorial claims.[110][111]
While a Southern slaveowner himself, Taylor believed that slavery was economically infeasible in the Mexican Cession, and so opposed slavery in those territories as a needless source of controversy.[111] His major goal was sectional peace, preserving the Union through legislative compromise.[112] As the threat of Southern secession grew, he sided increasingly with antislavery Northerners such as Senator William H. Seward of New York, even suggesting that he would sign the Wilmot Proviso to ban slavery in federal territories should such a bill reach his desk.[113]
In Taylor's view, the best way forward was to admit California as a state rather than a federal territory, as it would leave the slavery question out of Congress's hands. The timing for statehood was in Taylor's favor, as the California Gold Rush was well underway at the time of his inauguration, and California's population was exploding.[114] The administration dispatched Representative Thomas Butler King to California, to test the waters and advocate statehood, knowing that Californians were certain to adopt an anti-slavery constitution. 