Compromise of 1850
The struggles about the compromise of 1850 might readily have taken another course, and one materially different. They certainly would have been incomparably harder, if the contest on the slavery question had been further complicated by an immediately approaching presidential election. The period of calm which, so far as a presidential campaign was concerned, the people enjoyed and were to enjoy for some time, contributed, probably, more than anything else, to make the confident assurances of those who brought about the compromise, appear sufficiently justified, in the near future, to allow the people, far and wide, to lull themselves into an ominous security, which grew greater from day to day.
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had divided the Louisiana Purchase between free and slave territory at 36° 30' (the general boundary between Arkansas and Missouri), except that Missouri was to be slave. The extreme pro-slavery members, about one fifth of the House and one fourth of the Senate, based their opposition on the ground that Congress had no power to legislate on slaveholding in the Territories, it being a fundamental right implied in the Constitution; but the majority admitted the jurisdiction by passing the bill.
The joint resolution for admitting Texas in 1845 extended the same line to any new bodies formed out of that State; and was supported by the most ultra slavery men, as taking the merest sliver from them and securing solidly the enormous remainder. When the Mexican war seemed likely to add new territory, the Wilmot Proviso of 08 August 1846, attempted to bar slaveholding from it, as did existing Mexican law; and the struggle to prevent this transformed political parties.
After the annexation had taken place, 02 February 1848, bills for organizing the Territories of New Mexico and California were introduced: at first in an omnibus bill with Oregon (the Clayton Compromise), to force all of them to permit slaveholding, then to extend the Missouri compromise line to the Pacific (including in slave territory nearly all the present New Mexico and Arizona, and the entire southern half of California); then the Democratic Senate receded from the Oregon "hold-up," and the House repeatedly attempted to organize the other bodies as territories with the proviso; while the Senate regularly killed the bills, and once attempted to attach its own as rider to an appropriation bill.
This went on till the end of 1849, when the gold discoveries in California forced the hand of both the Southern slavery party and its Northern allies. The immense immigrant population there formed a constitution prohibiting slavery, and demanded admission of California as a State. Even the deniers of the right of Congress to legislate on slavery had always admitted that the people of a State had the right to live under any constitution they pleased; and the Democrats, to hold their vote in North and South, now took the position that the inhabitants of an inchoate State should be allowed to decide their own destinies.
As this meant the immediate reinforcement and ultimate supremacy of the free States, the Southern Whigs and Democrats began to draw together, and formulated the doctrine that the people of a Territory had no right to exclude the industrial or social system of any part of the Union; that Congress should force them to rescind such exclusion if made; and that the exclusion, if permitted, was a wrong which justified secession.
But California was not a Territory: it was a body of unorganized settlers who would come in as a State from the first, and certainly could be admitted by Congress on their own terms. The Southern leaders, therefore, resolved that they should not be admitted except by passing through the territorial stage, so as to come under the congressional prohibition.
The more vehement of the Southern extremists insisted on the organization of California, Utah, and New Mexico as Territories with no restriction as to slavery. The Free Soilers and many others, both Whigs and Democrats, demanded the immediate admission of California as a State and the territorial organization of Utah and New Mexico with the prohibition of slavery. Further to complicate the problem a bill was introduced to facilitate the recapture of fugitive slaves. Mr. Clay, the hero of two compromises—the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Tariff Compromise of 1833—aspired to win new laurels. He proposed to admit California; to organize Utah and New Mexico as Territories without restriction, but acknowledging that slavery had then no legal existence there, having been abolished by Mexico before the cession; to pay Texas for some alleged claim to New Mexico; to forbid the introduction of slaves into the District of Columbia for sale, and to make provision for the recovery of fugitive slaves.
Zachary Taylor, a slaveholder, but a moderate and just-minded man, had been inaugurated as President in March 1849, and his first congress met in December. The Senate had a large Democratic majority; the House was so evenly divided that the few Free Soilers held the balance, and it required 63 ballots and three weeks to elect a speaker, Howell Cobb of Georgia.
On their meeting Taylor had sent a message recommending California's wish to become a State, to their favorable consideration; on 21 January 1850, he sent a special message, declaring that the people would not sustain them in denying the Californians the right of self-government. The South, nevertheless, was passionately determined not to yield; and Henry Clay undertook one of the great compromises which were the pride of his life, the shortest-lived and most destructive compromise in American history.
The difficulty was to find anything that either side wanted badly enough to take as a price for yielding. For the South, this was found in the Fugitive Slave Law, which Alexander H. Stephens declared to be the very essence and heart of the whole compromise, and the breach of which by the Northern personal liberty laws was accounted the crowning justification of secession; and in a money indemnity to Texas for abandoning her claim to the Rio Grande as a western boundary, which that State was ready to fight for, but the payment for which would raise the market value of her bonds, largely held in the South. For the North, it was found in the admission of California as a free State, and the prohibition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia — the latter a mere sop, as slavery was not abolished in the District.
The sacrifices were, that the South gave up the right of insisting that no free State should be admitted into the Union except as paired with a slave State, and so in her own view gave the North the fruits of the Mexican war; the North gave up the proviso, and the right of stopping the interstate slave trade, though this was later stricken out.
On 16 January a bill had been brought into the Senate to organize "the Territories of California, Deseret [Utah], and New Mexico; on the 29th Clay unfolded his compromise, in eight resolutions: (1) admitting California with her free-State Constitution; (2) organizing the remainder of the newly acquired lands as territories, without restriction as to slavery, as it "did not exist [there] by law, and was not likely to be introduced," — merely staving off the question till they formed State governments; (3, 4) annulling Texas' claim to New Mexico, but paying her a blank indemnity; (5, 6) non-abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia without the consent of Maryland, but prohibition of the slave trade in it; (7) a more effectual fugitive slave law; (8) non-interference with the interstate slave trade.
Clay said that the question with the South was one of interests, with the North one of sentiment, and the latter was easier to sacrifice than the former. The northern members and their constituents did not agree to this, nor did the South as to the equivalents; and after two months' debate the question was referred to a compromise committee of 13, of which Clay was chairman.
On 8 May it reported a bill of four parts, known in history as the Omnibus Bill (par excellence, for there have been others), to be passed or rejected as a whole. The essential changes were, that New Mexico and Utah were forbidden to pass laws respecting slavery, that California should not be admitted unless this were granted, that the blank for the Texas indemnity should be filled with $10,000,000, and that no mention was made of the interstate slave trade.
It will be observed that the gains in this revised "compromise" were pretty much all by the South. The bill of course embodied the specific legislation needed to make the resolutions effective. Part 1 consisted of the provisions for admitting California, New Mexico, and Utah, and indemnifying Texas; Parts 2 and 3 were the Fugitive Slave Law of history; Part 4 the provisions about the District of Columbia. This bill was stormily debated for nearly three months more, until 31 July, and amended until one item only was left, that admitting Utah, which passed the next day. Meantime Texas was arming and threatening war, and other States proposing to aid it; and Congress saw that the bills must be passed in some shape.
The items were therefore voted on as separate bills, and all passed in Clay's form: Texas bill — Senate, 10 August, 30 to 20; House, 4 September, 108 to 97. California — Senate, 13 August, 34 to 18; House, 7 September, 150 to 56. New Mexico — Senate, 14 August, 27 to 10: House (together with the Texas bill), 4 September. 108 to g7. Fugitive Slave Bill — Senate, 23 August, 27 to 12; House, 12 September, 109 to 75; District of Columbia — Senate, 14 September, 33 to 19; House, 17 September, 124 to 47.
The Fugitive Slave Law, the vital part of the compromise, was also its assured ruin, as it gradually turned the entire North into abolitionists; but the immediate cause of its collapse was the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which repealed not only the Missouri Compromise, but the present compromise which practically reaffirmed that.
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