Jury Paper
...d in 1836 stating that the Rio Grande was the border and therefore blood would be considered shed on American soil. A point that convinced me to vote guilty was that Freemont was ready to fight. He was sent to California by Polk and was ready to fight in case anything went wrong. When Slidell was sent to Mexico to negotiate to buy California it was taken as an insult by the Mexicans who then refused to negotiate. The defense did state that Polk did not want war, but what contradicted that was that Polk was determined to achieve his goal of obtaining California and that to me meant trying without a war and going to war if it meant having to fight for it. The second charge against Polk was intensifying sectional differences and helped cause the civil war. The jury voted not guilty on this charge. The prosecution team brought up the point that Polk voted for...