mexican war does is it forces the issue because with the acquisition of all this land, with a treaty of guadalupe hidalgo in 1848, there is the question of what's going to happen and many people, i'm sure, thought that at least they would have some time before they had to make those hard decisions. but we know what happens. in 1848, gold is discovered in california. by 1849, there's a gold rush in california has hundreds of thousands of people and quickly jumps from unorganized backwater territory with relatively few u.s. citizens to applying for admission to the union. in california, of course, comes in with a compromise of 1850, which breaks that precedent of keeping a balance between free and slave states and in return, the south gets a much fugitive slave act, which is ultimately going to backfire because that generates growing resentment in the north and it actually fuels abolitionist sentiments. so, yes, the conversation is definitely going on and it's only going to get much pronounced as we get closer to the civil war and as we continue to look at some potential topic areas for the us hist