Did the north have more land that could become free states than the south had for future slave states?

Answer 1

Probably if you were to total up all the acreage north of 36 degrees 30 minutes latitude, which was the dividing line (this is a line running east-west from the southern border of Missouri) which was not yet part of a state, there would have been more land to the north of the line than to the south. Particularly since California had already been admitted as a free state. I don't know that southern leaders worried too much about that though, because they could always have created smaller states on the south side of the line, and thus matched the northern side state for state. This could have kept the balance between slave states and free states in the Senate. The southern leaders did resent that there was ANY of the western territory into which a slave-owner could not take his slaves. This western land was almost all won from Mexico in the Mexican War of 1846-48. The Mexican War was only popular in the south and west, and was largely fought and won by men from the south and west. The north and the northeast especially were bitterly opposed to the Mexican War, and these were also the areas where the abolitionists were most active.