Compromise of 1850

Henry Clay takes the floor of the Old Senate Chamber; Millard Fillmore presides as Calhoun and Webster look on.

The Compromise of 1850 was a series of laws that attempted to resolve the territorial and slavery controversies arising from the Mexican-American War (1846–48). The five laws balanced the interests of the slave states of the South of Missouri and the free states to the north. California was admitted as a free state; Texas received financial compensation for relinquishing claim to lands west of the Rio Grande in what is now New Mexico; the territory of New Mexico (including present-day Arizona and a portion of southern Nevada) was organized without any specific prohibition of slavery; the slave trade (but not slavery itself) was abolished in Washington, D.C.; and the stringent Fugitive Slave Law was passed, requiring all U.S. citizens to assist in the return of runaway slaves regardless of the legality of slavery in the specific states.

The measures, a compromise designed by Whig Senator Henry Clay (who failed to get them through himself), were shepherded to passage by Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas and Whig Senator Daniel Webster. The measures were opposed by Senator John C. Calhoun. The Compromise was possible after the death of President Zachary Taylor, who was in opposition. Succeeding President Taylor was a strong supporter of the compromise, Millard Fillmore. It temporarily defused sectional tensions in the United States, postponing the secession crisis and the American Civil War. The Compromise dropped the Wilmot Proviso, which never became law but would have banned slavery in territory acquired from Mexico. Instead the Compromise further endorsed the doctrine of "Popular Sovereignty" for the New Mexico Territory. The various compromises lessened political contention for four years, until the relative lull was shattered by the divisive Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Issues

Texas

The southwestern boundary of Texas was disputed. The Republic of Texas, which had seceded from Mexico, had been admitted to the United States and claimed territory that now comprises New Mexico. Texas also had $10 million in world debt it could not easily pay. The compromise solution was for the U.S. to pay the debts, while Texas allowed New Mexico to become a territory in the United States.

California

With very rapid population growth after the California Gold Rush, a state convention adopted an antislavery state constitution in late 1849, and applied for admission into the Union as a free state.

Mexican Cession territories

No territorial government had been formed for the remainder of the territory taken from Mexico, including New Mexico and parts of what became Arizona and other states. The Mormon pioneers had organized the "State of Deseret", but Congress was uneasy with the sheer size of the proposed state (which included all of present-day Utah and Nevada and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon, and Idaho including access to the Pacific) as well as its low population and the dominance of the Mormons.

Fugitive Slave Act

The Fugitive Slave Act was a result of the Mexican War to settle turmoil that arose from other decisions made concerning the issues that surfaced from the victory. As a consequence of the Mexican War, the balance in the country between slavery and antislavery territories was briefly upset. The decision to make newly-acquired California a free state, as well as the other provisions after the war that opposed slavery, caused this disturbance. After the United States won California in the Mexican War, a decision had to be made about whether it should become a slave or free state. After it was proclaimed free, pro-slavery Americans were angered by this shift in the balance of power towards free states and threatened secession. The Fugitive Slave Act was strengthened to prevent further turmoil. First enacted in 1793, the bolstered Act aided slaveholders by mandating that all escaped slaves must be returned to their masters, and - more crucially for the impending war - that ordinary citizens were required to aid slavecatchers. Many northern citizens deeply resented this pressure; but in serving their duties, they saw many scenes of such tragedy that former slavery fence-sitters landed squarely on the side of the abolitionists. This renewed act did help appease the Southern states and their contingent slaveowners by assuring the return of the slaves they considered property. However, once the secession threat was quieted, resentment towards this act continued to heighten tensions between the North and South, being thoroughly despised by the former. This Fugitive Slave Act is seen as one of the key steps towards civil war. It was included partly because of the public reaction to the Pearl incident.

Clay and Douglas draft compromise

Congress convened on December 3 1849. On January 29, 1850, Whig Senator Henry Clay gave a speech which called for compromise on the issues dividing the Union. However, Clay's specific proposals for achieving a compromise, including his idea for Texas' boundary, were not adopted, although Clay later claimed credit for drafting the entire compromise. Rather, it was Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Democrat of Illinois, who largely guided the Compromise to passage. The Compromise came to coalesce around a plan dividing Texas at its present-day boundaries, creating territorial governments with "popular sovereignty" (without the Wilmot Proviso) for New Mexico and Utah, admitting California as a free state, abolishing the slave auctions in the District of Columbia, and enacting a harsh new fugitive slave law.

View of Davis and Southern Democrats

Some Southern Democrats, led by Jefferson Davis, opposed Douglas's and especially Clay's compromise because they would have admitted California as a free state, thus disturbing the balance of power between North and South in the Senate, and because they would have negated some of Texas's land claims. They also opposed as unconstitutional the abolition of the slave auctions in the District of Columbia.

View of Seward and Northern Whigs

Most Northern Whigs, led by William Henry Seward who delivered his famous "Higher Law" speech during the controversy, opposed the Compromise as well because it would not have applied the Wilmot Proviso to the western territories and because of the Democratic new fugitive slave law, which would have pressed ordinary citizens into duty on slave-hunting patrols; this provision was inserted by Democratic Virginia Senator James M. Mason to coerce border-state Whigs, who faced the greatest danger of losing slaves as fugitives but who were lukewarm on general sectional issues related to the South into supporting Texas's land claims.

Whig President Zachary Taylor attempted to sidestep the entire controversy by pushing to admit California and New Mexico as free states immediately, avoiding the entire territorial process and thus the Wilmot Proviso question. Taylor's stand was unpopular among Southerners.

Northern Democrats and Southern Whigs did support the Compromise. Southern Whigs, many of whom were from the border states, supported the stronger fugitive slave law.

Debate and results

On April 17, a "Committee of Thirteen" agreed on the border of Texas as part of Clay's plan. The dimensions were later changed. That same day, during debates on the measures in the Senate, Vice President Millard Fillmore and Thomas Hart Benton verbally sparred, with Fillmore charging that the Missourian was "out of order". During the heated debates, Compromise floor leader Henry S. Foote of Mississippi drew a pistol on Senator Benton.

In early June, nine slaveholding Southern states sent delegates to the Nashville Convention to determine their course of action should the compromise take hold. While some delegates preached secession, eventually the moderates ruled, and they proposed a series of compromises, including extending the geographic dividing line designated the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to the Pacific Coast.

The various bills were initially combined into one "omnibus" bill, which failed to pass the Senate because only a minority supported all the provisions. The situation was changed by the death of President Taylor and the accession of Fillmore on July 9, 1850. The influence of the new administration was now thrown in favor of the compromise. Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas and his supporters in the House assembled different majorities for each of five separate bills. The Northern Democrats held together and supported each of the bills and gained Whigs or Southern Democrats to pass each one. All passed and were signed by President Fillmore between September 9 and September 20, 1850.

1. California was admitted as a free state. It passed 150-56. (Hamilton, Holman. Prologue to Conflict. University of Kentucky Press, copyright 1965. P. 160)
2. The slave trade was abolished (the sale of slaves, not the institution of slavery) in the District of Columbia.
3. The territories of New Mexico (including present-day Arizona) and a much-smaller Utah were organized under the rule of popular sovereignty. It passed 97-85.
4. The Fugitive Slave Act was passed, requiring all U.S. citizens to assist in the return of runaway slaves. It passed 109-76.
5. Texas gave up much of the western land which it claimed and received compensation of $10,000,000 to pay off its national debt.

Implications

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made any federal marshal or other official who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave liable to a fine of $1,000. Law-enforcement officials everywhere in the United States had a duty to arrest anyone suspected of being a fugitive slave on no more evidence than a claimant's sworn testimony of ownership. The suspected slave could not ask for a jury trial or testify on his or her own behalf. In addition, any person aiding a runaway slave by providing food or shelter was to be subject to six months' imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. Officers capturing a fugitive slave were entitled to a fee for their work.

The Compromise in general proved widely popular politically, as both parties committed themselves in their platforms to the finality of the Compromise on sectional issues. The strongest opposition in the South occurred in the states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, but unionists soon prevailed, spearheaded by Georgians Alexander Stephens, Robert Toombs, and Howell Cobb and the creation of the Georgia Platform. This peace was broken only by the divisive Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 introduced by Stephen Douglas, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and led directly to the formation of the Republican Party, whose capture of the national government in 1860 led directly to the secession crisis of 1860-61.

Many historians argue that the Compromise played a major role in postponing the American Civil War for a decade, during which time the Northwest was growing more wealthy and more populous, and was being brought into closer relations with the Northeast. During that decade, the Whigs collapsed, bringing about a major realignment with the new Republican Party dominant in the North. But others argue that the Compromise only made more obvious pre-existing sectional divisions and laid the groundwork for future conflict. In this view, the Fugitive Slave Law helped polarize North and South, as shown in the enormous reaction to Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law aroused feelings of bitterness in the North.

The delay of hostilities for ten years allowed the free economy of the northern states to industrialize. The southern states, to a large degree based on slave labor and cash crop production, lacked the ability to heavily industrialize . By 1860, the northern states had many more miles of railroad, steel production, modern factories, and population. The North was better able to supply, equip, and man its armed forces, an advantage that would prove decisive in the later stages of the war.

References

• H. D. Foster, "Webster's Seventh of March Speech," American Historical Review, 27 (1922), 245-270 online in JSTOR
• Holman Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850 (1964), the standard historical study
• Holman Hamilton. "Democratic Senate Leadership and the Compromise of 1850," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 41, No. 3. (Dec., 1954), pp. 403-418. in JSTOR
• Holman Hamilton. Zachary Taylor, Soldier in the White House (1951)
• Holt, Michael F. The Political Crisis of the 1850s (1978).
• Michael F. Holt, The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War (2005).
• Johannsen, Robert W. Stephen A. Douglas (1973) (ISBN 0195016203)
• Morrison, Michael A. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (1997) (ISBN 0807823198)
• Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union (1947) v 2, highly detailed narrative
• Mark J. Stegmaier, Texas, New Mexico, and the Compromise of 1850: Boundary Dispute and Sectional Crisis, Kent State University Press, 1996. 434 pp.
• Remini, Robert. Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (1991)
• James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, vol. i. (New York, 1896).
• Rozwenc, Edwin C. ed. The Compromise of 1850. (1957) convenient collection of primary and secondary documents; 102 pp.
• Sewell, Richard H. "Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States 1837-1860" New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
• Charles M. Wiltse, John C. Calhoun, Sectionalist, 1840-1850 (1951)

External links

• Compromise of 1850
• Compromise of 1850 and related resources