In this crisis Henry Clay strode once more on stage and offered a plan to buy off southern threats, as he had done twice before in 1820 and 1833. The ensuing debates of 1850 became the most famous in the history of Congress. Sharing the footlights with Clay were Calhouh and Daniel Webster, the other two members of the great Senate triumvirate that had dominated American statesmanship for decades. All three had been born during the Revolution. They had devoted their careers to preserving the heritage of the Fathers—Clay and Webster as nationalists, and Calhoun as a sectionalist who warned that Union could survive only if the North and South shared equal power within it. All three had known repeated frustration in their quest for the presidency. All were playing in their final show, Clay and Webster as composers of compromise, Calhoun as a brooding presence warning of disaster even after his death at the end of the first act. Some of the rising stars of the next generation also played prominent roles in this great drama: Senators Stephen A. Douglas, William H. Seward, Jefferson Davis, and Salmon P. Chase.
On January 29, 1850, Clay presented eight resolutions to the Senate. He grouped the first six in pairs, each offering a concession to both sections. The first pair would admit California as a state and organize the remainder of the Mexican cession without "any restriction or condition on the subject of slavery." The second pair of resolutions settled the boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico in favor of the latter and compensated Texas by federal assumption of debts contracted during its existence as an independent republic. This would reduce the potential for carving an additional slave state out of Texas but would put the state's finances on sound footing.51 Many holders of Texas bonds
50. Jennings, Nashville Convention, 3–79; quotations from 7, 24–25.
51. The terms of Texas's annexation had authorized its division into as many as four additional states. This authority was never exercised, but in 1850 some southerners hoped for at least one additional state to be cloned from Texas, especially if its claims to part of New Mexico were upheld.
were southerners; the head of a powerful lobby for this part of the Compromise of 1850 was a South Carolinian. Clay's third pair of resolutions called for abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia but a guarantee of slavery itself in the District. If these six proposals yielded slightly more to the North than to the South, Clay's final pair of resolutions tipped the balance southward by denying congressional power over the interstate slave trade and calling for a stronger law to enable slaveholders to recover their property when it fled to free states.52
The eventual Compromise of 1850 closely resembled Clay's proposals. But seven months of oratory, debate, and exhausting cloakroom bargaining lay ahead. And the "Compromise" that finally emerged was not really a compromise in which all parties conceded part of what they wanted, but a series of separately enacted measures each of which became law with a majority of congressmen from one section voting against a majority of those from the other. The Compromise of 1850 undoubtedly averted a grave crisis. But hindsight makes clear that it only postponed the trauma.
Generations of schoolchildren recited the famous Senate speeches of the Compromise debate. "I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American," said Daniel Webster as he began his Seventh of March Address that would cause former antislavery admirers to repudiate him. "I speak to-day for the preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause." Having opposed the Mexican War and supported the Wilmot Proviso, Webster now urged northerners to bury the passions of the past. Do not "taunt or reproach" the South with the Proviso. Nature would exclude slavery from New Mexico. "I would not take pains uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance of nature, nor to re-enact the will of God." As for disunion, Webster warned fire-eaters that it could no more take place "without convulsion" than "the heavenly bodies [could] rush from their spheres, and jostle each other in the realms of space, without causing the wreck of the universe!"53
Webster's speech appealed to a broad range of Americans who by March 1850 were rallying in support of compromise. But it contrasted
52. Southerners had already introduced a stringent fugitive slave bill at this session. For more on the fugitive slave issue see the chapter following.
53. CG, 31 Cong., 1 Sess., Appendix, 269–76.
sharply with addresses by senators speaking for citizens outside that middle range. Three days before Webster's speech, the dying Calhoun gave his valedictory to the nation. Too weak to speak for himself, the gaunt Carolinian sat wrapped in flannels while James Mason of Virginia read his speech to the Senate. Calhoun's prophecies of doom were reflected in the piercing eyes that stared from deep sockets within the shroud. "The great and primary cause" of danger "is that the equilibrium between the two sections has been destroyed." The North had grown faster than the South in population, wealth, and power. This had happened because of discriminatory legislation favoring the North: the Northwest Ordinance and the Compromise of 1820 which excluded southern property from a vast domain; tariffs and federal aid to internal improvements (Calhoun neglected to mention that he had once supported these measures) to foster northern enterprises at southern expense. Yankees had wantonly attacked southern institutions until one by one the bonds of Union had snapped: the Methodist and Baptist denominations had separated into northern and southern churches; voluntary associations were dividing over slavery; political parties themselves were splitting in the same way; soon "nothing will be left to hold the States together except force." What could be done to forestall this fate? Because the North had always been the aggressor, it must cease criticizing slavery, return fugitive slaves, give the South equal rights in the territories, and consent to a constitutional amendment "which will restore to the South, in substance, the power she possessed of protecting herself before the equilibrium between the two sections was destroyed."54 California was the test case. Admission of this free state would serve notice of a purpose to "destroy irretrievably the equilibrium between the two sections." In such circumstances southern states could not "remain in the Union consistently with their honor and safety."55
William H. Seward spoke for Americans at the opposite pole from Calhoun. In a speech on March 11, Seward condemned "any such compromise" as Clay had proposed. Slavery was an unjust, backward, dying institution, said the New York senator. Its days were numbered.
54. Calhoun probably had in mind his posthumously published proposal, in Disquisition on Government, for a "concurrent majority" in which the country would have a northern and a southern president each with a veto power over congressional legislation.
55. CG, 31 Cong., 1 Sess., Appendix, 451–55.
"You cannot roll back the tide of social progress." Not only did the Constitution sanction the power of Congress to exclude slavery from the territories, but also "there is a higher law than the Constitution," the law of God in whose sight all persons are equal. The present crisis "embraces the fearful issue whether the Union shall stand, and slavery, under the steady, peaceful action of moral, social, and political causes, be removed by gradual voluntary effort, and with compensation; or whether the Union shall be dissolved and civil war ensue, bringing on violent but complete and immediate emancipation."56
Seward's Higher Law speech caused a sensation. Southerners branded it "monstrous and diabolical"; Clay pronounced it "wild, reckless, and abominable." Even Taylor condemned it. "This is a nice mess Governor Seward has got us into," the president observed to a pro-administration editor. "The speech must be disclaimed at once."57 Disclaimed or not, Seward's sentiments represented opinion in the upper North as accurately as Calhoun's expressed that of the lower South. Nevertheless, men from the upper South and lower North continued to work feverishly for a settlement between the two extremes. While oratory continued before crowded galleries, committees sought a compromise that could command a majority.
A special Senate committee of thirteen with Clay as chairman reported a bill that combined several measures in one package: admission of Ca
lifornia; organization of two territories (New Mexico and Utah) without restrictions on slavery; and settlement of the Texas boundary dispute in favor of New Mexico with compensation to Texas of $10 million to fund her pre-statehood debt. Derisively labeled an "Omnibus Bill" by President Taylor, this package was designed to attract a majority from both sections by inducing each to accept the parts it did not like in order to get the parts it wanted. The approach seemed promising enough to defuse the fire-eaters at the Nashville Convention which met on June 3. Disunion fever had abated since late winter. No delegates came from six slave states and only a few unofficial delegates from two others. Whigs in particular were conspicuous by their absence. Recognizing that it had no mandate for radical action, the convention adopted a wait-and-see attitude. Delegates passed a resolution favoring extension
56. Ibid., 260–69.
57. Nevins, Ordeal, I, 301–2. Seward carried the title "Governor" because he had served as governor of New York.
of the 36° 30′ line to the Pacific and adjourned to reconvene again after Congress acted.58
But as the legislators labored through the heat of a Washington summer it became obvious that the omnibus strategy was backfiring. A pro-compromise bloc of upper-South Whigs and lower-North Democrats emerged in support of the strategy. But they numbered fewer than one-third of each house. Most other congressmen signified their intention to vote against the package in order to defeat the parts they opposed. A three-way split among the Whigs grew increasingly bitter. Taylor and most northern Whigs insisted on their California-only policy, believing that acquiescence in (potential) slavery in New Mexico and Utah would wreck the party in the North. Lower-South Whigs adamantly opposed a free California. Clay's pro-compromise Whigs endured the slings and arrows of both sides. The hostility of Taylor toward Clay and Webster became especially caustic.
Into this volatile atmosphere came a new crisis in late June. A handful of civilians and soldiers had convened a convention in Santa Fe to write a free-state constitution. It was ratified by an electorate casting fewer than eight thousand votes. Taylor urged the admission of New Mexico along with that of California, thereby doubling the insult to southern honor. Meanwhile the governor of Texas threatened to uphold with force his state's claim to Santa Fe and all the rest of New Mexico east of the Rio Grande. A clash between Texans and the U. S. army seemed imminent. As July 4 approached, southerners bristled with threats to fight for Texas. "Freemen from the Delaware to the Rio Grande [will] rally to the rescue," squeaked Alexander Stephens with all the bellicosity his ninety pounds could muster. And "when the 'Rubicon' is passed, the days of this Republic will be numbered."59 Taylor did not flinch. After preparing orders for the Santa Fe garrison to stand firm, he spent a hot Fourth of July listening to speeches at the unfinished Washington Monument. Assuaging his hunger and thirst with large quantities of raw vegetables, cherries, and iced milk, the president fell ill next day and died on July 9 of acute gastroenteritis.
Whether for weal or woe, Taylor's death marked a turning point in the crisis. The new president, Millard Fillmore, was a New York Whig hostile to the Seward faction in his own state. Sympathetic to the Compromise,
58. Jennings, Nashville Convention, 135–66.
59. Holman Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850 (Lexington, Ky., 1964), 105.
this northern president tilted almost as far South as the southern President Taylor had tilted North. Fillmore shelved New Mexico's application for statehood and gave his support to the omnibus. Nevertheless, the Senate spent a month passing a bewildering series of amendments and rescindments of amendments before sending Clay's measure down to defeat on July 31. Exhausted and disillusioned, the once-redoubtable Kentuckian left Washington to recuperate at Newport. His younger colleagues remained in the caldron on Capitol Hill to pick up the pieces.
And it was by pieces that the "Compromise" finally passed. Representing the new generation, Stephen A. Douglas came on stage to star in the third act. A man whose capacity for liquor was exceeded only by his capacity for work (the combination would kill him eleven years later at the age of 48), Douglas earned the sobriquet Little Giant for his great political prowess contained in a frame five feet four inches tall. Never a believer in the omnibus strategy, Douglas stripped the vehicle down to its component parts and put together a majority for each of those parts. Northerners of both parties and border-state Whigs supplied the votes for admission of California, prohibition of the slave trade in the District, and payment of $10 million to Texas (quickly accepted) to settle the border dispute with New Mexico. Many northern Democrats joined southerners of both parties to enact a stronger fugitive slave law and organize Utah and New Mexico as territories without restrictions on slavery. Fillmore helped the cause by persuading enough northern Whigs to abstain from the votes on the fugitive slave and territorial bills to allow their passage. On all these measures the divisions occurred mainly along sectional rather than party lines, another sign that the existing two-party system was crumbling under the weight of slavery.60
Nevertheless, Douglas's achievement seemed to have broken the deadlock that had paralyzed government and threatened the republic since 1846. It lanced the boil of tension that had festered in Congress during one of its longest and most contentious sessions in history. Most of the country gave a sigh of relief. Champagne and whiskey flowed freely in the capital. Tipsy crowds shouting "The Union is saved!" serenaded the politicians who had saved it. "Every face I meet is happy," wrote one observer. "The successful are rejoicing, the neutrals have all joined the winning side, and the defeated are silent." President Fillmore
60. The roll-call votes in both houses are conveniently presented in Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict, 191–200.
christened the Compromise "a final settlement" of all sectional problems, and this phrase soon became the hallmark of political orthodoxy. Only Calhounites and Free Soilers challenged its finality.61
But these curmudgeons of the right and left were temporarily isolated. When the Nashville Convention met again in November only half of the delegates—from seven states—showed up. Even these true believers seemed to recognize the futility of their proceedings. They passed resolutions denouncing the Compromise and affirming the right of secession. But their only concrete proposal was a call for another Southern Rights convention—somewhere, sometime. South Carolina fire-eaters came away from Nashville determined that next time they would not dawdle in cooperative action with other states, which only sicklied o'er the native hue of resolution with the pale cast of thought. They would act alone in the expectation that other states would follow.62
Free Soilers also condemned "the consummation of the iniquities of this most disgraceful session of Congress"—as Charles Francis Adams expressed it. Salmon P. Chase believed that "the question of slavery in the territories has been avoided. It has not been settled."63 He was right. In its final form the legislation organizing Utah and New Mexico specified that when admitted as states "they shall be received into the Union, with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission." This said nothing about slavery during the territorial stage. The omission was deliberate. Congress passed the buck by expediting the appeal of territorial laws to the Supreme Court. As it happened, no slavery case came up from these territories. Several slaveholders carried their property to Utah, where Governor Brigham Young and his legislature obliged them by legalizing the institution in 1852 (the same year that the Saints openly endorsed polygamy). New Mexico also enacted a slave code in 1859. But neither territory was likely to strengthen the South in Congress. The census of 1860 counted twenty-nine slaves in Utah and none in New Mexico; in any event, statehood for either was distant. California furnished an irony that may have settled Calhoun more comfortably in his grave. Court decisions in that state permitted the "sojourn" (sometimes for several years) of slaveowners with their property. For a time in the 1850s California probably had
61. Nevins, Or
deal, I, 343, 345–46.
62. Jennings, Nashville Convention, 187–211.
63. Adams quoted in Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict, 167; Chase quoted in Potter, Impending Crisis, 116.
more slaves than Utah and New Mexico combined. And this new free state did not tip the Senate balance against the South, for its senators were Democrats of a decidedly doughface cast.64
"I think the settlement of the last session and the firm course of the Administration in the execution of the fugitive slave law have given a new lease to slavery," wrote a North Carolina Whig at the beginning of 1851. "Property of that kind has not been so secure for the last twenty-five years."65 He was wrong—and precisely because of the administration's "firm course" in enforcing the fugitive slave law. Although one of the least-debated parts of the Compromise, this measure turned out to be the most divisive legacy of the "final settlement."
64. Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict, 174–77, 203–4; William E. Franklin, "The Archy Case: The California Supreme Court Refuses to Free a Slave," Pacific Historical Review, 32 (1963), 137–54; Paul Finkelman, "The Law of Slavery and Freedom in California 1848–1860," California Western Law Review, 17 (1981), 437–64.
65. William A. Graham to his brother, Jan. 6, 1851, in Nevins, Ordeal, I, 349.
3
An Empire for Slavery
I
On all issues but one, antebellum southerners stood for state's rights and a weak federal government. The exception was the fugitive slave law of 1850, which gave the national government more power than any other law yet passed by Congress. This irony resulted from the Supreme Court's decision in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842).
Battle Cry of Freedom Page 11
