Question: after texas what is the next likely candidate for american annexation

title: Texas annexation
text: The Missouri crisis of 1819 -- 1821 sharpened commitments to expansionism among the country 's slaveholding interests , when the so - called Thomas proviso established the 36 ° 30 ' parallel , imposing free - soil and slave - soil futures in the Louisiana Purchase lands . While a majority of southern congressmen acquiesced to the exclusion of slavery from the bulk of the Louisiana Purchase , a significant minority objected . Virginian editor Thomas Ritchie of the Richmond Enquirer predicted that with the proviso restrictions , the South would ultimately require Texas : `` If we are cooped up on the north , we must have elbow room to the west . '' Representative John Floyd of Virginia in 1824 accused Secretary of State Adams of conceding Texas to Spain in 1819 in the interests of Northern anti-slavery advocates , and so depriving the South of additional slave states . Then - Representative John Tyler of Virginia invoked the Jeffersonian precepts of territorial and commercial growth as a national goal to counter the rise of sectional differences over slavery . His `` diffusion '' theory declared that with Missouri open to slavery , the new state would encourage the transfer of underutilized slaves westward , emptying the eastern states of bondsmen and making emancipation feasible in the old South . This doctrine would be revived during the Texas annexation controversy .