Compromise of 1850

11 Key excerpts on "Compromise of 1850"

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  Prologue to Conflict

  The Crisis and Compromise of 1850

  • Holman Hamilton(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • The University Press of Kentucky

    (Publisher)

  S. Holt to Joseph Holt, October 27, 1850, Holt Papers, Library of Congress. 168 Prologue to Conflict of the South . . . will be overwhelmed by the 'fire-eaters' And over in England the London Times predicted: This measure, whilst an apparent gain to the South, will ulti-mately, like the others, prove a real gain to the North. 7 In analyzing the Compromise of 1850 as a whole, we see that moderate congressmen and influential noncongressional leaders of similar persuasion had supplied answers (correct or incorrect) to the questions of 1848 and 1849. California was now a state of the Union. Territorial governments had been provided for New Mexico and Utah. The Texas boundary and debt issues had been resolved. A new Fugi-tive Slave Law supplanted the old one. And while slavery was retained in the District of Columbia, the slave trade was restricted there. It is tempting to declare dogmatically that the Compromise of 1850 represented a victory for the North and a defeat for the South. Viewed with the hind-sight available to post-Civil War generations, such an assertion has much to support it. But we find it vital, too, to examine the decade before the war in order to ascertain how the Compromise operated before the election of Abra-ham Lincoln, and in order to examine similarities and dif-ferences between actual and suppositious accomplishments. The Compromise should thus be scrutinized both in terms of its Civil War links and from the standpoint of American society in the 1850-1860 decade. THE FUGITIVE Slave Law was decidely the most explosive part of the Compromise. Summary arrangements for de-termining title to Negroes aroused cries that civil rights were being violated. Doubling the fines formerly assessed against rescuers of runaways was attacked as harsh by vocal 7 Cave Johnson to James Buchanan, November 10, 1850, James Buchanan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; London Times, October 18, 1850.

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  U. S. History

  • P. Scott Corbett, Volker Janssen, John M. Lund, Todd Pfannestiel, Paul Vickery, Sylvie Waskiewicz(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Openstax

    (Publisher)

  With neither side willing to budge, the government stalled on how to resolve the disposition of the Mexican Cession and the other issues of slavery. The drama only increased when on July 4, 1850, President Taylor became gravely ill, reportedly after eating an excessive amount of fruit washed down with milk. He died five days later, and Vice President Millard Fillmore became president. Unlike his predecessor, who many believed would be opposed to a compromise, Fillmore worked with Congress to achieve a solution to the crisis of 1850. In the end, Clay stepped down as leader of the compromise effort in frustration, and Illinois senator Stephen Douglas pushed five separate bills through Congress, collectively composing the Compromise of 1850. First, as advocated by the South, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, a law that provided federal money—or “bounties”—to slave-catchers. Second, to balance this concession to the South, Congress admitted California as a free state, a move that cheered antislavery advocates and abolitionists in the North. Third, Congress settled the contested boundary between New Mexico and Texas by favoring New Mexico and not allowing for an enlarged Texas, another outcome pleasing to the North. Fourth, antislavery advocates welcomed Congress’s ban on the slave trade in Washington, DC, although slavery continued to thrive in the nation’s capital. Finally, on the thorny issue of whether slavery would expand into the territories, Congress avoided making a direct decision and instead relied on the principle of popular sovereignty. This put the onus on residents of the territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. Popular sovereignty followed the logic of American democracy; majorities in each territory would decide the territory’s laws. The compromise, however, further exposed the sectional divide as votes on the bills divided along strict regional lines.

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  The Enduring Vision

  A History of the American People, Volume 1: To 1877

  • Paul Boyer, Clifford Clark, Karen Halttunen, Joseph Kett(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Each section both gained and lost from the Compromise of 1850. The North won California as a free state, New Mexico and Utah as likely future free states, a favorable settle-ment of the Texas–New Mexico boundary (most of the disputed area was awarded to New Mexico, a prob-able free state), and the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia. The South’s benefits were cloudier. By stipulating popular sov-ereignty for New Mexico and Utah, the compromise, to most southerners’ relief, had bur-ied the Wilmot Proviso’s insistence that Congress for-mally prohibit slavery in these territories. But to southerners’ dismay, the compromise left open the question of whether Congress could prohibit slavery in territories outside of the Mexican cession. The one clear advantage gained by the South, a more stringent fugitive slave law, quickly proved a mixed blessing. Because few slaves had been taken into the Mexican cession, the question of slavery there had a hypothetical quality. However, the new fugitive slave law authorized southerners to pursue Fugitive Slave Act A contentious law that was part of the Compromise of 1850 and required the return of all runaway slaves. It denied alleged fugitives the right of trial by jury, did not allow them to testify on their own behalf, permitted their return to slavery merely on the testimony of the claimant, and enabled court-appointed commissioners to collect ten dollars if they ruled for the slaveholder but only five dollars if they ruled for the fugitive. MAP 14.1 THE Compromise of 1850 The Compromise of 1850 admitted California as a free state. Utah and New Mexico were left open to slavery or freedom on the principle of popular sovereignty. Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-300 14-1 The Compromise of 1850 379 of troops marched with Burns to the ship, some fifty thousand people lined the streets.

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  The Laws That Shaped America

  Fifteen Acts of Congress and Their Lasting Impact

  • Dennis W. Johnson(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Over the span of six weeks in August and September, the five separate parts of the Compromise of 1850 were enacted. First, California was admitted into the Union as a free state. Second, the territorial governments and boundaries were established for Utah and New Mexico, and their status as free or slave states would be determined by the territories themselves through their constitutions. Third, the slave trade would be abolished in the District of Columbia by 1851. Fourth, the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act was amended by removing cases from the states and appointing federal commissioners to conduct hearings and issue arrest warrants; it also prohibited slaves from having the right of trial by jury or testifying on their own behalf. Finally, the Texas–New Mexico boundary was established, and Texas was paid $10 million in compensation for its loss of New Mexico lands.

  A fatigued Stephen Douglas summed up the compromise: “The measures are right in themselves, and collectively constitute one grand scheme of conciliation and adjustment …. Neither section has triumphed over the other. The North has not surrendered to the South, nor has the South made any humiliating concessions to the North.”84 Millard Fillmore, in his first annual message to Congress in December 1850, praised the Compromise, assuring the country that it was the “final and irrevocable” settlement of the sectional tensions.85

  The Compromise bought a measure of peace and bought some time. However, it did not fully accomplish what it set out to do: in California, a free state, the senators during the 1850s were pro-southern; slavery continued to exist in Utah and New Mexico; the slave trade was not fully shut down in the District of Columbia; and Texas creditors were not paid immediately.86

  One of the sorest points of contention was the Fugitive Slave Act. For southerners, the principle of states’ rights was a basic article of faith: the federal government could not and should not tell the states what to do. For southerners, states’ rights meant the federal government should not interfere with slavery, pure and simple. But for some northern states, states’ rights meant that they had the right to protect runaway slaves. That’s not what southerners had in mind at all. They demanded the federal government use its power against recalcitrant northern states to help capture and return runaway slaves.87 Eight years before the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act was created, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Prigg v. Pennsylvania

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  The Handy Civil War Answer Book

  • Samuel Willard Crompton(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Visible Ink Press

    (Publisher)

  President Zachary Taylor (1784–1850) was a Southern man, born and bred; he also owned slaves. Taylor was an ardent nationalist, however, a sentiment brought on by many years of service in the U.S. Army. Taylor showed great frustration with the political infighting, and at one point he threatened to use executive action to bring both California and New Mexico into the nation at the same time. And then, on July 9, 1850, Taylor died.

  The timing was so mysterious—or fortuitous, depending on one’s point of view—that Taylor’s body was exhumed in 1991. At that time it was found that there had been no foul play; the worst that could be charged was that the president had eaten a bowl of bad fruit on the Fourth of July, perhaps helping to bring on his death. Taylor’s place in the White House was taken by Vice President Millard Fillmore, who was more open to compromise. As a result, the Compromise of 1850 was hammered out in July and August, and the nation as a whole learned the news in September.

  What did the Compromise of 1850 entail?

  In several different pieces of legislation, shepherded through Congress by Henry Clay (1777–1852), the Compromise of 1850 attempted to settle the slave question for once and for all.

  California was admitted as the thirty-first state of the Union. California entered as a free state, in which slavery was expressly forbidden. The slave trade in the District of Columbia was abolished (slavery itself was not). It had long been a source of embarrassment that men and women were bought and sold within a few blocks of the White House and the Capitol. New Mexico and Utah were organized as territories, and it was agreed that when they were ready for statehood, the people of those territories would exercise popular sovereignty, meaning they would vote whether to enter as slave or free states. Finally, perhaps most importantly, a new, much tougher Fugitive Slave Law was written.

  How was the Compromise of 1850 received?

  With enthusiasm and rejoicing. North and South, East and West, Americans believed that this set of congressional actions would settle, perhaps bury, the slave question for good. There were fireworks in some cities and towns, and parties in which Northern and Southern men and women congratulated each other for having saved the republic. Almost everyone agreed that the question of California’s admittance had brought about a serious crisis and

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  The Origins of the American Civil War

  • Brian Holden Reid(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  action – the decisions taken by politicians – which determine the chain of circumstances that result in war or peace.

  The Compromise of 1850

  The confrontation culminating in the Compromise of 1850 was the most dangerous crisis confronting the Union since the Nullification Crisis, seventeen years before. It has been correctly identified as a ‘fruit’ of manifest destiny. The extension of American civilization across the continental heartland could serve only to resuscitate sectional strife. At bottom, this perennial and unavoidable conflict was paradoxical. As one historian has observed, ‘If the removal of sectional controversy opened the way to new expansion, expansion would, in its train, bring on a renewal of sectional controversy’. The issues under discussion, although they were expressed in drab and legalistic language, came to assume a graphic and ominous symbolic significance.26 In the opinion of various historians, the Compromise eventually arrived at should be judged an ‘Armistice’ and the process by which it was agreed, a forerunner (though successful, on this occasion) of the final crisis that followed a decade later. In Bruce Collins’s view ‘The crisis of 1850 was a dress rehearsal for the show-down of 1860–1. Many of the arguments were the same. Many of the participants were the same’.27 The focus of the discussion here should be, not how and why the political crisis developed in the way that it did, but rather, why the efforts at compromise were successful and, further, why civil war did not erupt ten years before the detonation of 1861?

  This significant sectional crisis grew out of the attempts to bring statehood to the immense patrimony seized after the Mexican War. In California this issue was especially urgent after the Gold Rush of 1849; that territory desired early admission to the Union as a ‘free’ state and had already advanced very far in organizing its own government unaided by federal agencies. President Zachary Taylor was anxious that, if this wish was not speedily attended to, California would declare her independence. The South demanded a new ‘slave’ state to balance this increase in the non-slave states. The threat of anarchy in the South West was given further point by the claim aggressively advanced by Texas to all the territory held by New Mexico, east of the Rio Grande, which included Santa Fé. The federal government denied this claim and the possibility presented itself of a bloody clash between federal troops and Texas volunteer forces. The threat of civil war was indeed very real and took a more substantial and menacing form than just politicians uttering windy threats at one another in Washington.28

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  Politics and America in Crisis

  The Coming of the Civil War

  • Michael Green(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Besides approving California’s admission as a free state, senators created Utah and New Mexico territories and left slavery up to their residents—repealing the Com- promise of 1820’s ban on slavery north of Missouri’s southern border, but so implic- 40 Politics and America in Crisis itly and quietly that it went unnoticed. Lawmakers agreed to pay the debt Texas racked up as an independent republic. They settled the boundary between Texas and New Mexico, not to the liking of the Texans, but taking enough of New Mexico’s claim to pacify them. They approved the new fugitive slave law the South wanted. They prohibited the slave trade in the District of Columbia. Together, these meas- ures comprised the Compromise of 1850. They also had to win the approval of another house of Congress. The House’s discussion of the compromise has received far less attention than the Senate’s. No lead- ers or orators of the fame of Clay and Webster shepherded the bills through the House, and none of those involved became lightning rods during the 1850s, as Douglas did, or cabinet officials of historical significance, as Seward and Chase did. But the meas- ures passed through techniques similar to those in the Senate. Cobb justified the fears of those who considered him too moderate by ruling for the compromise forces on pro- cedural questions. Kentucky’s Linn Boyd, his appointee to chair the Committee on Territories, shared his moderate Democratic leanings and helped guide the legislation. Again, northern Democrats dominated the pro-compromise voting, joined by moder- ates of both sections and parties. If the House debate proved less dramatic, that can be blamed partly on having to follow the Senate and partly on comments like Boyd’s: “I am astonished at the patience with which our constituents have borne our procrasti- nation. I think we have talked enough—in God’s name let us act.” The House passed the legislation.

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  The Brief American Pageant

  A History of the Republic

  • David Kennedy, Lizabeth Cohen, Mel Piehl, , David Kennedy, Lizabeth Cohen, Mel Piehl(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  The immense area in dispute had been torn from the side of slaveholding Texas and was almost certain to be free. The South had halted the drive toward abolition in the District of Columbia, at least temporarily, by permitting the outlawing of the slave trade in the federal district. But even this move was an entering wedge toward complete eman-cipation in the nation’s capital. Most alarming of all, the drastic new Fugitive Slave Law of 1850—“the Bloodhound Bill”—stirred up a storm of opposition in the North. The fleeing slaves could not testify on their own behalf, and they were denied a jury trial. These harsh practices threatened to create dangerous precedents for white Americans. Freedom-loving northerners who Compromise of 1850 Admitted California as a free state, opened New Mexico and Utah to popular sovereignty, ended the slave trade (but not slavery itself ) in Washington, D.C., and introduced a more stringent fugitive slave law. Widely opposed in both the North and South, it did little to settle the escalating dispute over slavery. Fugitive Slave Law (1850) Passed as part of the Compromise of 1850, it set high penalties for anyone who aided escaped slaves and compelled all law enforcement officers to participate in retrieving runaways. Strengthened the antislavery cause in the North. Map 18.1 Slavery after the Compromise of 1850 Regarding the Fugitive Slave Act provisions of the Compromise of 1850, Ralph Waldo Emerson declared (May 1851) at Concord, Massachusetts, “The act of Congress . . . is a law which every one of you will break on the earliest occasion—a law which no man can obey, or abet the obeying, without loss of self-respect and forfeiture of the name of gentleman.” Privately he wrote in his Journal , “This filthy enactment was made in the nineteenth century, by people who could read and write. I will not obey it, by God.” Gulf of Mexico A T L A N T I C O C E A N P A C I F I C O C E A N 110°W 100°W 90°W 80°W 70°W 40°N 30°N 120°W MAINE 6 N.H.

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  Fugitive Justice

  Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial

  • Steven Lubet, Steven Lubet(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Belknap Press

    (Publisher)

   On January 29, 1850, Henry Clay introduced eight resolutions on the floor of the Senate, intended to quell the controversy and save the Union. Among other measures, Clay called for the admission of California as a free state, counterbalanced by the organization of the New Mexico and Utah territories “without any restriction or condition on the subject of slavery”; for the abolition of the public slave trade in the District of Columbia, but without limiting slavery itself; and finally for the enactment of a stronger fugitive slave law. Although negotiation of the eventual Compromise of 1850 took much of the following year, its prospects were greatly enhanced in early March when Daniel Webster took the floor to speak in favor of Clay’s proposals. Previously known as an opponent of slavery, Webster created a commotion at the very opening of his Seventh of March Address: “I wish to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a northern man, but as an American. I speak today for the preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause.” The “preservation of the Union,” as everyone well understood, meant an accommo-dation with slavery. Webster announced that he would not join other North-erners who wanted to to prohibit slavery in New Mexico and he denounced “the Wilmot” as a “taunt or indignity” toward the South. When it came to the recapture of fugitive slaves, Webster went even further. The complaints of the South, he said, had a “just foundation,” in that The Compromise of 1850 41 there has been found at the North, among individuals and among legislators, a disinclination to perform fully their constitutional duties in regard to the return of persons bound to ser vice who have escaped into the free States. In that respect, the South, in my judgment, is right, and the North is wrong. Northern political leaders and legislatures, he said, had indeed engaged “excuses, evasions [and] escapes” to avoid fulfilling their lawful obligations to deliver up fugitives.

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  American History, Volume 1

  • Thomas S. Kidd(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • B&H Academic

    (Publisher)

  11

  The Crisis of the 1850s

  I n April 1850, Congress was embroiled in the vicious debate over the admission of new states to the Union, including California, Utah, and New Mexico. The most divisive issue was whether those states should be allowed to have slavery. Free-Soilers wanted to stop expansion of slavery into the West. White southerners saw the effort to stop slavery’s expansion as an attack on their right to expand and prosper on the western lands. As proslavery senator Harry Foote of Mississippi made a motion to send a compromise plan to committee, Free-Soiler senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri broke into the debate and insisted that the Senate was controlled by the followers of John C. Calhoun, the southern Slave Power that would force slavery on the new states. Foote defended southerners and shouted that the “culumniators” of the southern political leaders would get nowhere. Benton, who had been bickering with Foote for months, left his desk on the floor and strode toward the Mississippi senator. Foote pulled out a pistol, cocked it, and pointed it at Benton.

  Benton, held back by colleagues and enraged by the sight of the gun, tore open his suit coat and shouted, “I am not armed! I have no pistols! I disdain to carry arms. Let him fire! Stand out of the way and let the assassin fire!” Foote did not shoot—he actually kept trying to regain the floor as the furor settled down. (The Senate investigated Foote for plotting to murder Benton, but members determined he had acted in self-defense.) This was the state of American national politics as of 1850. It was eleven years before the killings began in the American Civil War.

  The Fugitive Slave Law

  Many in the North and South hoped the Compromise of 1850 would end the “agitation” over the slavery question in national politics. But as long as there were unorganized western territories, and as long as western territories sought to become states, an end to agitation seemed unlikely.

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  Congress and the Crisis of the 1850s

  • Paul Finkelman, Donald R. Kennon(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Ohio University Press

    (Publisher)

  At this point, the Illinois Democrat, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, put the compromise back together. This was the ultimate irony of Clay’s and Fillmore’s machinations against Taylor. Designed to promote Clay and reg -ular Whigs, and to undermine Taylor, the compromise ended up catapult -ing the Democrat Douglas to greater prominence and devastating Fillmore’s presidency and the Whig Party. Douglas broke the compromise into its component parts and pushed them through Congress one at a time, with a small group of southern and north -ern senators and representatives voting for all, or almost all, the measures, and then picking up the rest of the southerners or northerners for particular issues. This new con W guration of the legislation as a series of separate and The Appeasement of 1850 65 disconnected laws undermined any pretense of an actual compromise between competing parties. The W nal outcome overwhelmingly favored the South, because, at most, only two parts of the original compromise— California statehood and closing the public slave trade in Washington, D.C. —had strong northern support or re X ected northern interests. Thus, the W nal Compromise of 1850 favored the South over the North and slavery over freedom. 45 Potter called it the Armistice of 1850 . But, in fact, it might best be seen as the Appeasement of 1850 . Southerners blus-tered and threatened to destroy the Union; Texans threatened to invade New Mexico. A frightened and inexperienced accidental president—only the fourth northerner in the nation’s history to hold the o Y ce—was easily cowed into giving southerners everything they wanted. Leaderless northern -ers in Congress caved as well. The South gained everything it wanted, and the North received almost nothing in return. The appeasement was orches -trated with the active support of a northern Whig president working closely with a northern Democrat to defeat the interests of most northerners.

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