Although the creation of the Omnibus did not change the political order of battle, it did make for some unusual alliances. The two groups who most opposed the bill, northern Whigs and southern Democrats, came together to sabotage it, though their long-range goals differed sharply. Jefferson Davis was quite active in this legislative marriage of convenience, being generally cited as a manager of the partnership. Another was William Henry Seward, Whig of New York, an important supporter of free soil in general and the proviso in particular. The crafty Seward, with his bushy eyebrows and beaklike nose, had gotten close to President Taylor, although his actions in the Senate did not aim so much toward supporting Taylor’s programs as toward establishing himself as the northern Whig champion of antislavery. In his major speech, he talked about a higher law than the Constitution. Observers noted the collaboration between the tall, erect Mississippian committed to defending southern equality and slavery, as well as the rights of slaveowners in the territories, and the short, stooped New Yorker dedicated to asserting northern supremacy, assaulting slavery, and blocking slaveowners from the territories. In the short term, however, they shared a common purpose—destroying the Omnibus.81
Into the summer the struggle over the crowded legislative vehicle continued. The unending wrangle in what would become the longest session of Congress to that time coupled with a thermometer pushing past 90 degrees caused one harried reporter to cry that the capital was hot as Egypt. This climate led to utter exhaustion, numbing enervation, increasing irritability, and breaking health. Yet almost everyone clung to their posts, though always searching for new tactical advantages.
Away from Washington, the possibility of congressional action undermined a once promising effort that Davis had backed to forge unity in the slave states. The Nashville Convention met in June, but realizing the division in southern opinion, the delegates merely passed resolutions affirming southern rights and went home, though they did resolve to reconvene after the adjournment of Congress to assess its work.
Jefferson Davis did not flinch or bend. The positions he held throughout the steamy summer matched those he had staked out back in the seemingly long-past winter. First and foremost was his opposition to immediate statehood for California, which he thought unfair and more important desperately wounding to the South. The admission of California, he informed the Senate, “obliterated” all protection for the minority South by giving one section control of both houses of Congress. Expressing a deep conviction, he went on, “I feel we have reached the point at which the decline of our Government has commenced, the point at which the great restraints which have preserved it, the bonds which have held it together, are to be broken by a ruthless majority, when the next step may lead us to the point at which aggression will assume such a form as will require the minority to decide whether they will sink below the condition to which they were born, or maintain it by forcible resistance.”82
Even so, California did not consume all of his attention. Always insisting that American possession of the cession negated Mexican law in that area, he moved late in July to repeal explicitly the Mexican statutes abolishing slavery. He lost on a basically sectional vote, which meant that the status of slavery remained murky, but Clay’s argument that it would be illegal was still a possibility. In addition, the Texas boundary continued to be central to Davis, with his efforts directed toward Senate validation of the borders Texas claimed, the Rio Grande in the west as well as the south. The one section of the Omnibus that he could support, the proposed fugitive slave law, seemed to offer the South little in the face of hostile public opinion in the free states. From that base he spoke against providing jury trials for alleged fugitives because the hostility would lead to no enforcement. At the same time, he opposed an attempt to have the federal government recompense the owners of escaped slaves. Southern safety, he explained, lay in “rigid adherence to the terms and principles of the federal compact.” If the South admitted any power of the federal government over slave property, such as that government’s interposing its financial strength between slaveowner and slave, he asked, “where shall we find an end to the action which anti-slavery feeling will suggest?” To him the Constitution obligated the government to return fugitives, not purchase them.83
Even in the midst of what Davis perceived as a fateful time for his state, his section, and his country, he never forgot the elementary but crucial tasks of the politician. During the previous Congress, a Mississippian who said that he was “in humble life … a common farmer, and make no pretensions to Aristocracy,” thanked Davis for sending documents, telling him that no one else in the state delegation had “so far condescended from his high pinnacle of Congressional glory, as to favor me with anything of importance from Headquarters.” Although, as Davis himself reported to a constituent, “the slavery question … renders it very difficult to transact any local business,” he made every effort. Presenting petitions, forwarding government publications, making recommendations and requests for federal appointments, advocating the construction of a marine hospital in Vicksburg and land grants for a projected railroad from Brandon, Mississippi, to the Alabama state line, Davis never flagged in recognizing that Mississippi voters expected his services, an expectation in which he totally concurred. Responding to a concern about the postmastership in Jackson, Davis underscored his conception of his relationship with voters back in Mississippi; he informed his correspondent that he had “kept all the letters I have received on the subject as forming a guide to my future course.” One constituent for whom he was certainly successful was himself. In March he received payment of $3,678 ($2,950.26 plus interest) as reimbursement for his personal expenses incurred in outfitting the First Mississippi Regiment.84
While Davis battled the Omnibus and tended to constituent service, for the second time in four months he had to face the loss of an important person in his life. On a wickedly hot Fourth of July, Zachary Taylor spent much of the day outdoors participating in Independence Day activities. Upon returning to the Executive Mansion, he gorged himself on cold liquids as well as raw fruits and vegetables. Shortly thereafter he was struck with acute gastroenteritis and grew steadily worse. After a lifetime of surviving frontier hardships and battlefield dangers, the old general died in his bed in the White House on July 9. Among family members and close associates at his bedside were Jefferson and Varina Davis, who related that the president’s final words were addressed to his former son-in-law. Although details of their personal relations during the months of the congressional session have not survived, the two men clearly retained their close ties in spite of their fundamentally opposed approaches to California and the rest of the Mexican Cession, though both for different reasons wanted the Omnibus overturned. Taylor had obviously adhered to the pledge he earlier made to Davis: the younger man should take his own political course, no matter its direction, but he would never lose the affection and friendship of his first father-in-law. In turn, Davis retained genuine fondness and deep respect for Sarah Knox’s father, who had become his wartime commander and his friend.85
Taylor’s death did alter the political alignment, for it removed an implacable foe of compromise from the White House. Through all the maneuvering in Congress, Taylor did not move at all, demanding the admission of California as a free state and the same for New Mexico upon application, with nothing else added. Ascending to the executive chair, Vice President Millard Fillmore of New York did not share Taylor’s obdurate aversion to compromise. Although Fillmore did not start out as a champion of the Omnibus, he soon climbed aboard, putting behind it all the power of his administration, including Webster as the new secretary of state.
Initially, presidential backing did not seem to matter. As summer with its wilting heat dragged on, the political prospects of the Omnibus seemed more akin to the constantly shifting breezes of spring. On some days it appeared that nothing could deter the smooth-running Omnibus, on others that it would sputter and stall. Finally, at the end of July with the Senate
ready to vote, the sad-faced opponents of the Omnibus feared the worst. Then, with astonishing rapidity, the finely crafted mechanism began to come apart. It all started on July 31 with a motion to delete a particular provision about the governance of the territory east of the Rio Grande prior to a final settlement of the Texas–New Mexico boundary. When that move succeeded, other parts began to clank. Within hours all had broken and failed. As an exasperated Clay walked out of the Senate chamber, opponents rejoiced, including Jefferson Davis, with a “gleaming smile” upon his countenance. “The great omnibus broke down,” a Mississippi congressman wrote home. “A mountain has been in labor and a mouse has been born.”86
Although Davis and fellow resisters of the Omnibus delighted in its wreck, their joyous mood was short-lived. Despondent and frustrated at the ruin of his hopes, an exhausted and sick Henry Clay departed torrid Washington for cool Newport, Rhode Island. Clay’s departure opened the way for others equally committed to compromise to steer a different form of settlement through the Senate. At the forefront of this legislative initiative was Democrat Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, who, like Seward, would have a momentous role in Jefferson Davis’s political future. With short, stubby legs, Douglas stood only five feet four inches, but he had broad shoulders, a massive head topped with thick black hair, and incredibly dynamic energy. He had always believed that the best chance for a successful compromise lay in presenting separate measures to the Senate and constructing majorities for each, with the core supporters of compromise, chiefly northern Democrats and southern Whigs, voting for almost every bill, and additional votes coming from elsewhere on particular matters, such as northern Whigs for California statehood and southern Democrats for a fugitive slave law. In this new drive Douglas enjoyed the crucial backing of the Fillmore administration, which was essential to get the necessary cooperation from northern Whigs, whether in the form of aye ballots or abstentions.
Using these tactics, Douglas and the administration prevailed. Almost immediately after the demolition of the Omnibus, Douglas went to work in earnest, and by mid-September the Senate passed each part of the compromise, though the final version did not track exactly the propositions Clay had offered back in the winter. California was admitted as a free state and without qualification, but the rest of the Mexican Cession was handled differently. The Senate created two territories, New Mexico and Utah, without the proviso and with the stipulation that either could enter the Union free or slave as each state constitution prescribed, though the New Mexico bill contained some different wording that implied a territorial legislature might prohibit slavery. After much debate the Texas–New Mexico border was set where it now exists. Although Texas did not get its desired western boundary on the Rio Grande, it received considerably more territory than Clay ever wanted to give. This agreement was critical, for jingoistic politicians in Texas threatened to use force to impose the boundary of their choice, possibly resulting in an armed clash with both New Mexicans and U.S. Army troops in the territory. Also, the federal government would pay the Texas debt. A Fugitive Slave Law, which made the federal government responsible for returning escaped slaves, passed, with no provision for a jury trial for the alleged fugitives. Finally, as Clay wished, the slave trade in the District of Columbia was abolished, though slavery itself remained untouched there.
The House followed the Senate in passing each element of the compromise, and on September 20, President Fillmore signed the final bill. What was known as the Compromise of 1850 had become law. It offered the South considerably more on both the territorial issue and the particulars of the Fugitive Slave Law than had Clay’s original package. Whether the Compromise of 1850 was a true compromise or not has divided historians, but it had surely become much less one-sided in its journey through Congress. Yet despite general approbation from all parts of the country on the apparent settlement of so many difficult issues, passage of the Compromise did not please Jefferson Davis at all. Detailed studies of legislative history give Davis a perfect voting record in the anti-Compromise bloc. In the end, his votes matched closely the positions he had held throughout. He voted against California as a state, against the adjusted Texas boundary, and against outlawing the slave trade in the District of Columbia. He said yes on the fugitive-slave legislation. Omitting the proviso and allowing for the possibility of a future slave state won his vote for the Utah bill, but he was recorded as not voting on New Mexico. The possible implication of language regarding slavery during the territorial phase may have deterred him, or he could possibly have been unofficially paired (meaning that a proponent and an opponent mutually agreed to miss the vote), for almost two dozen senators were absent.87
He always saw California statehood as the most crucial question, for it would immediately and directly affect the sectional balance of power, and he battled it with all his strength and power. On August 2, Davis, along with nine other southern senators, pledged in writing “to avail ourselves of any and every means” to prevent admission unless the Missouri Compromise line applied. Then, on the thirteenth, the day the Senate passed the California bill, he was one of ten southerners who signed a solemn protest against California statehood that they wanted printed in the Senate Journal. At the end, facing defeat, but still denouncing the admission of California, Davis announced that because he knew the outcome, he would no longer argue the merits of the bill and would offer no further opposition, not “for want of will, but for the want of power.” His feelings about California bored so deep that he even entertained the notion of physically taking the California bill from the secretary of the Senate and “tearing it to pieces,” but because only six other southern senators indicated a willingness to participate, the great ripping never occurred.88
Throughout the futile struggle to throttle California statehood and strangle the Compromise, Davis vehemently denied that either he personally or those he represented desired disunion. “I have not spoken of disunion to the Senate,” he proclaimed. Disunion was “an alternative not to be anticipated—one to which I could only look forward as the last resort.” Nor did “threats of civil war” exercise him, for he “believe[d] it to be a phantom of politicians.” In his opinion, the people of the country did not want sectional conflict. As for himself, he spoke proudly. “I, sir, am an American citizen,” calling the Union “my country.” Yet his constitutionalism required a qualification: “I am a citizen of the United States, it is true, because I am a citizen of a State,” and “allegiance, I know, is first due to the State I represent.” Davis insisted that while his “affections begin” with his Mississippi, they “are not bound by the limits of the State.” He ringingly declaimed, “I belong to no State and no section, when the great interests of the Union are concerned.” That declaration was not without constraints, however, for he continued, “I belong to the State which is my home when the Union attempts to trample upon her rights.” The tension inherent in Davis’s massive labor to hold these two taut lines, which often pulled against each other, exploded in his response to those senators who dared name him a disunionist. He riposted in “monosyllables.”89
Although Davis emphasized his loyalty to the Union, he did not accept the Compromise of 1850 as ending discussion or settling all matters, at least not right away. When Congress finally adjourned on September 30, a “weary” and “disgusted” Davis prepared to leave for Mississippi, where he intended to carry on his campaign against what Congress had wrought.90
CHAPTER EIGHT
“The Cloud Which Had Collected”
When Congress adjourned on September 30, Jefferson Davis left Senate debates and defeats behind, but he took his deep concern about the Compromise of 1850 home with him. He departed from Washington immediately after the session, stopped briefly in Baltimore where Varina had preceded him to shop for furniture, then headed south, and reached Mississippi in mid-October. Almost at once he plunged into a three-week speaking tour through the west-central part of the state.1
Davis was eager to mingle with
his constituents. On the floor of the Senate, he had claimed that they shared his view of the iniquity of the Compromise. When Henry Foote asserted that the state’s voters agreed with him, Davis responded that as soon as both men could confer with Mississippians, his stance would be substantiated. Additionally, Davis believed it imperative to share his sense of the peril the South faced from the antislavery North as well as to expose what he saw as the sham of the Compromise.2
Davis mounted the hustings with the overwhelming majority of Mississippi Democrats shouting huzzas for him. The Jackson Mississippian had already proclaimed that he enjoyed the “unqualified approval” of his party, while the Vicksburg Sentinel decreed him “faithful” and announced that “the most enthusiastic reception ever given to a public man in Mississippi awaits him at the hands of the people.” Across the state cries rang forth that he “commanded the spontaneous admiration of her people,” that he “st[oo]d up manfully and with judgement for our rights and honor.” Later, when the legislature convened, it commended Davis and the four congressmen for their conduct while it censured Foote for his.3
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