Compromise of 1850
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The Compromise was greeted with relief, although each side disliked specific provisions. Texas surrendered its claim to New Mexico but received debt relief and the Texas Panhandle, and retained the control over El Paso that it had established earlier in 1850. The South avoided the humiliating Wilmot Proviso but did not receive desired Pacific territory in Southern California or a guarantee of slavery south of a territorial compromise line like the Missouri Compromise Line or the 35th parallel north. As compensation, the South received the possibility of slave states by popular sovereignty in the new New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory, which, however, were unsuited to plantation agriculture and populated by non-Southerners; a stronger Fugitive Slave Act, which in practice outraged Northern public opinion; and preservation of slavery in the national capital, although the slave trade was banned there except in the portion of the District of Columbia that rejoined Virginia.
The Compromise became possible after the sudden death of President Zachary Taylor, who, although a slaveowner himself, tried to implement the Northern policy of excluding slavery from the Southwest. Whig leader Henry Clay designed a compromise, which failed to pass in early 1850. In the next session of Congress, Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas (Illinois) narrowly passed a slightly modified package over opposition by extremists on both sides, including Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.
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[edit] Background
The Texas Annexation resolution had required that if any new states were formed out of Texas’ lands, those north of the Missouri Compromise line would become free states.[1]
Senator Joseph Underwood referred to "the threatened civil war, unless we appease the hot bloods of Texas."[2]
According to historian Mark Stegmaier, "The Fugitive Slave Act, the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, the admission of California as a free state, and even the application of the formula of popular sovereignty to the territories were all less important than the least remembered component of the Compromise of 1850--the statute by which Texas relinquished its claims to much of New Mexico in return for federal assumption of the debts..."[3][4] Stegmaier also refers to "the principal Southern demand for a division of California at the line of 35° north latitude" (just north of Santa Maria and the Grapevine) and says that "Southern extremists made clear that a congressionally mandated division of California figured uppermost on their agenda."[5]
During the deadlock of four years, the Second Party System broke up, Mormon pioneers settled Utah, the California Gold Rush settled California, and New Mexico under a federal military government turned back Texas's attempt to assert control over territory Texas claimed as far west as the Rio Grande. The eventual Compromise of 1850 preserved the Union, but only for another decade. Proposals for compromise included:
- The Wilmot Proviso banning slavery in any new territory to be acquired from Mexico, not including Texas which had been annexed the previous year. Passed by the United States House of Representatives in August 1846 and February 1847 but not the Senate. Later an effort to attach the proviso to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo also failed.
- Failed amendments to the Wilmot Proviso by William W. Wick and then Stephen Douglas extending the Missouri Compromise line (36°30' parallel north) west to the Pacific (south of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California), allowing slavery in most of present day New Mexico and Arizona, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Southern California, as well as any other territories that might be acquired from Mexico. The line was again proposed by the Nashville Convention of June 1850.
- Popular sovereignty, developed by Lewis Cass and Douglas as the eventual Democratic Party position, letting each territory decide whether to allow slavery.
- William L. Yancey's "Alabama Platform," endorsed by the Alabama and Georgia legislatures and by Democratic state conventions in Florida and Virginia, called for no restrictions on slavery in the territories either by the federal government or by territorial governments before statehood, opposition to any candidates supporting either the Wilmot Proviso or popular sovereignty, and federal legislation overruling Mexican anti-slavery laws.
- General Zachary Taylor, who became the Whig candidate in 1848 and then President from March 1849 to July 1850, proposed after becoming President that the entire area become two free states, called California and New Mexico but much larger than the eventual ones. None of the area would be left as an unorganized or organized territory, avoiding the question of slavery in the territories.
- The Mormons' proposal for a State of Deseret incorporating most of the area of the Mexican Cession but excluding the largest non-Mormon populations in Northern California and central New Mexico was considered unlikely to succeed in Congress, but nevertheless in 1849 President Taylor sent his agent John Wilson[disambiguation needed] westward with a proposal to combine California and Deseret as a single state, decreasing the number of new free states and the erosion of Southern parity in the Senate.
- Senator Thomas Hart Benton in December 1849 or January 1850: Texas's western and northern boundaries would be the 102nd meridian west and 34th parallel north.
- Senator John Bell (with the assent of Texas) in February 1850: New Mexico would get all Texas land north of the 34th parallel north (including today's Texas Panhandle), and the area to the south (including the southeastern part of today's New Mexico) would be divided at the Colorado River of Texas into two Southern states, balancing the admission of California and New Mexico as free states.[6]
- First draft of the compromise of 1850: Texas's northwestern boundary would be a straight diagonal line from the Rio Grande 20 miles north of El Paso to the Red River (Mississippi watershed) at the 100th meridian west (the southwestern corner of today's Oklahoma).
- The Compromise of 1850, proposed by Henry Clay in January 1850, guided to passage by Douglas over Northern Whig and Southern Democrat opposition, and enacted September 1850,
- admitted California as a free state including Southern California
- organized Utah Territory and New Mexico Territory with slavery to be decided by popular sovereignty.
- Texas dropped its claim to land north of the 32nd parallel north and west of the 103rd meridian west in favor of New Mexico Territory, and north of the 36°30' parallel north and east of the 103rd meridian west which became unorganized territory. In return the US government assumed Texas's debts. El Paso, where Texas had successfully established county government, was left in Texas.
- Also, the slave trade was abolished in Washington, D.C. (but not slavery itself)
- and the Fugitive Slave Act was strengthened.
[edit] Clay and Douglas draft compromise
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[edit] 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.Mexican War hero Zachary Taylor avoided the issue as the Whig candidate during the 1848 U.S. presidential election but then as President 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 and surprised them because Taylor was a Southerner.
Northern Democrats and Southern Whigs supported the Compromise. Southern Whigs, many of whom were from the border states, supported the stronger fugitive slave law.
[edit] 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 Senator 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 slave holding 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 by 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.
- California was admitted as a free state. It passed 150-56. (Hamilton, Holman. Prologue to Conflict. University of Kentucky Press, copyright 1965. P. 160)
- The slave trade was abolished (the sale of slaves, not the institution of slavery) in the District of Columbia.
- The Territory of New Mexico (including present-day Arizona) and the Territory of Utah were organized under the rule of popular sovereignty. It passed 97-85.
- The Fugitive Slave Act was passed, requiring all U.S. citizens to assist in the return of runaway slaves. It passed 109-76.
- Texas gave up much of the western land which it claimed and received compensation of $10,000,000 to pay off its national debt.
[edit] Implications
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.[7] During that decade, the Whig Party had completely broken down, being replaced with the new Republican Party dominant in the North and the Democrats in the South.[8] 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. Furthermore, the Compromise of 1850 led to a breakdown in the spirit of compromise in the United States in the antebellum period, directly before the Civil War. The Compromise exemplifies this spirit, but the deaths of influential senators who worked on the compromise, primarily Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, contributed to this feeling of increasing disparity between the North and South.
The delay of hostilities for ten years allowed the free economy of the northern states to continue to industrialize. The southern states, to a large degree based on slave labor and cash crop production, lacked the ability to industrialize heavily.[9] By 1860, the northern states had added many more miles of railroad, steel production, modern factories, and population to the advantages it possessed in 1850. 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.
[edit] Issues
Three major types of issues were addressed by the Compromise of 1850, to wit: a variety of boundary issues; status of territory issues; and the issue of slavery. While capable of analytical distinction, the boundary and territory issues were actually included in the overarching issue of slavery. Pro- and anti-slavery interests were each concerned with both the amount of land on which slavery was permitted and with the number of States which respectively would be in the slave or free camps. Since Texas was a slave state, not only the residents of that State, but the pro- and anti-slavery camps on a national scale had an interest in the size of the state of Texas.The general solution that was adopted by the Compromise of 1850 was to transfer a considerable part of the territory claimed by the state of Texas to the federal government, to formally organize two new territories, the Territory of New Mexico and the Territory of Utah, which expressly would be allowed to locally determine whether they would become slave or free Territories, to add another free state to the Union (California), adopt a severe measure to recover slaves who had escaped to a free state or free territory (the Fugitive Slave Law), and to abolish the slave trade in the District of Columbia.
[edit] Texas
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However, neither Mexico nor the Republic of Texas had the military strength to effectively assert its territorial claim. On December 29, 1845, the Republic of Texas simultaneously was annexed to the United States and became admitted to the Union as the 28th state. Texas was staunchly committed to slavery, with its constitution making illegal the unauthorized emancipation of slaves by their owners. With this annexation the United States inherited the territorial claims of the former Republic of Texas against Mexico. The territorial claim to the area between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande River and Mexican resistance to it led to the Mexican-American War. On February 2, 1848 that war was concluded by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Among the provisos of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was the recognition by Mexico of the area between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande River being a part of the United States.
The State of Texas was heavily burdened with debt which had arisen during its struggles as the Republic of Texas. The federal government agreed to pay $10,000,000.00 in "stock" in trade for the transfer of a large portion of the claimed area of the State of Texas to the territory of the federal government and for the relinquishment of various claims which Texas had upon the federal government. (This "stock" bore interest at the rate of 5 %, which interest was collectible every six months, and the principal was redeemable at the end of fourteen years.)
The Constitution does not permit Congress to unilaterally reduce the territory of any State. Article IV, Section 3, of the United States Constitution provides in pertinent part that "no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State ..., without the Consent of the Legislature[ ] of the State[ ] concerned as well as of the Congress." Accordingly, the first statute of the Compromise of 1850 had to take the form of an offer to the Texas State Legislature, rather than a unilateral enactment. The Texas State Legislature did ratify the bargain and in due course the transfer of a large swath of land from the State of Texas to the federal government was accomplished.
Texas was allowed to keep the following portions of the erstwhile disputed land: that which is south of the 33rd parallel, and that which is south of the 36°30' parallel north and east of the 103rd meridian west. The rest of the land which had been disputed between Mexico and the Republic of Texas was transferred to federal government.
[edit] Organization of two new Territories
The first law of the Compromise of 1850 also organized the Territory of New Mexico. The second law, also enacted September 9, 1850, organized the Territory of Utah.The land committed to each of these newly organized territories was drawn from two distinct sources.
One of these sources was the Mexican Cession of 1848. The Mexican Cession was a major provision of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the treaty which concluded the Mexican-American War on February 2, 1848. The land transferred from Mexico to the United States by the Mexican Cession included all of present-day California, Nevada and Utah, most of present-day Arizona, most of the western part of present-day New Mexico, present-day Colorado west of the crest of the Rocky Mountains, and a small portion of present-day Wyoming. (A strip of land along the southern border of present-day Arizona and New Mexico was not acquired from Mexico until 1853 with the Gadsden Purchase.)
The other of these sources was land which had been claimed by the Republic of Texas. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo made no mention of the claims of the Republic of Texas; Mexico simply agreed to a Mexico-U.S. border south of both the "Mexican Cession" and the Republic of Texas claims.[10] Prior to the Compromise of 1850, this disputed land had been claimed but never controlled by the State of Texas. This land included present-day eastern New Mexico, southern and western parts of present-day Colorado, and small parts of present-day Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.
As discussed in the previous section of this article, the land claim transferred from Texas to the federal government was in trade for a federal assumption of Texan debt. The portions of this particular land that became part of the Territory of New Mexico or the Territory of Utah, respectively, were only provisionally assigned to these newly organized territories. The final assignment of their respective portions of this erstwhile disputed land had to await ratification by the Texas State Legislature for constitutional reasons discussed in the previous section of this article. That ratification was achieved and these newly organized territories were thus able to incorporate these areas under their respective jurisdictions.
The land assigned to the Territory of New Mexico, which was derived from the Mexican Cession of 1848, consisted of most of the present-day State of Arizona, most of the western part of the present-day State of New Mexico, and the southern tip of present-day Nevada, i.e., that which is south of the 37th parallel.
The land provisionally assigned to the Territory of New Mexico that had been transferred from Texas consisted of most of present-day eastern New Mexico, a portion of present-day Colorado, i.e., that which is east of the crest of the Rocky Mountains, west of the 103rd meridian, and south of the 38th parallel, and a small portion of present-day Wyoming.
In fact, New Mexico was never divided at the Rio Grande but was captured as a whole early in the Mexican War and governed as a unit by the federal government.
The land assigned to the Territory of Utah, which was derived from the Mexican Cession of 1848 consisted of present-day Utah, most of present-day Nevada, i.e., all that is north of the 37th parallel, a major part of present-day Colorado, i.e., that which is west of the crest of the Rocky Mountains, and a small part of present-day Wyoming.
The land provisionally assigned to the Territory of Utah that had been transferred from Texas consisted of most of present day eastern New Mexico, and some of present-day Colorado that is east of the crest of the Rocky Mountains.
A key provision of each of the laws respectively organizing the Territory of New Mexico and the Territory of Utah was that slavery would be either permitted or prohibited as a local option (Popular Sovereignty). This was an important repudiation of the Wilmot Proviso, which would have forbidden slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico.
[edit] California
California became part of the U.S. after the Mexican War. Its great Gold Rush in 1848-49 quickly brought in enough people to form a state, and at their constitutional convention they unanimously rejected slavery. The third statute of the Compromise of 1850, enacted on September 9, 1850, admitted California to the Union as the 31st State.[edit] Fugitive Slave Law
The fourth statute of the Compromise of 1850, enacted September 18, 1850, is informally known as the Fugitive Slave Law or the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. (It bolstered the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.) The new version of the Fugitive Slave Law required federal judicial officials in all States and federal territories, including in those States and territories in which slavery was prohibited, to actively assist with the return of escaped slaves to their masters in the States and territories permitting slavery. In addition to federal officials, the ordinary citizens of free States could be summoned into a posse and be required to assist in the capture and/or custody and/or transportation of the alleged escaped slave. This particular law was so rigorously pro-slavery as to prohibit the admission of the testimony of a person accused of being an escaped slave into evidence at the judicial hearing to determine the status of the accused escaped slave. Thus, if a freedman were claimed to be an escaped slave under the Fugitive Slave Law he or she could not resist his or her return to slavery by truthfully telling his or her own actual history.The Fugitive Slave Act was a result of the Mexican-American War, passed 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. This act bolstered the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, 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 slave catchers. 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 slave owners 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.[11]
The result of the Fugitive Slave Act was that any federal marshal or other official who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave was 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.
[edit] Banning slave trade in Washington, D.C.
The fifth law, enacted on September 20, 1850 prohibited the slave trade (but not slavery itself) in the District of Columbia.[12] Significantly, before this particular measure could be passed, the extent of the District of Columbia was drastically reduced. The original District of Columbia was 10 miles square and consisted of Washington County (including the City of Washington), derived from the State of Maryland and Alexandria County, including the City of Alexandria, derived from Virginia. Alexandria was a major center for the slave trade. Many freedmen settled in the District of Columbia. One of the major interim planks of the Abolitionist Movement was to abolish slavery, and especially the slave trade, in the national capital. Fearing what such a move would do to their business, many Alexandrians supported a movement in favor of retrocession of the portion of the federal District of Columbia obtained from Virginia (there were other reasons as well[13]). Alexandria County was returned to Virginia in 1846,[14] and the slave trade remained an important part of the economy of Alexandria.[edit] References
- ^ Joint Resolution of Congress, Mar. 1, 1845
- ^ #Keleher, p.41
- ^ http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-20118802.html
- ^ Mark J. Stegmaier (1996). Texas, New Mexico, and the compromise of 1850: boundary dispute & sectional conflict. Kent State University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=RDp6AAAAMAAJ.
- ^ Stegmaier, p. 172 and p. 177
- ^ W. J. Spillman (January 1904). "ADJUSTMENT OF THE TEXAS BOUNDARY IN 1850.". Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 7. http://books.google.com/books?id=mNQ1AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA185&lpg=PA185.
- ^ Robert Remini,The House: A History of the House of Representatives (2006) p. 147
- ^ Holt, Michael F. The Political Crisis of the 1850s (1978).
- ^ Elizabeth Fox-Genovese,Fruits of Merchant Capital (1983).
- ^ "Handbook of Texas Online: Compromise of 1850". http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/CC/nbc2.html.
- ^ David L. Lewis, District of Columbia: A Bicentennial History, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1976), 54-56.
- ^ Davidson, James West. The American Nation: Beginnings Through 1877 Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: P
- ^ Alexandria Archaeology Museum, Discovering the Decades: 1840s. Retrieved 2009.09.09.
- ^ "Retrocession of Alexandria". The New York Times, August 17, 1873.
[edit] Further reading
- Foster, Herbert D. (1922). "Webster's Seventh of March Speech and the Secession Movement, 1850". American Historical Review 27 (2): 245–270. doi:10.2307/1836156.
- Heidler, David S., and Jeanne T. Heidler. Henry Clay: The Essential American (2010), major scholarly biography; 624pp
- 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).
- Holt, Michael F. 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)
- William Aloysius Keleher (1951). Turmoil in New Mexico. Santa Fe: Rydal Press. ISBN 9780826306326. http://books.google.com/books?id=yoZCx5MnOO0C.
- Knupfer, Peter B. "Compromise and Statesmanship: Henry Clay’s Union." in Knupfer, The Union As It Is: Constitutional Unionism and Sectional Compromise, 1787-1861 (1991), pp. 119–57.
- Morrison, Michael A. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (1997) (ISBN 0807823198)
- Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union (1947) v 2, highly detailed narrative
- Mark J. Stegmaier (1996). Texas, New Mexico, and the compromise of 1850: boundary dispute & sectional crisis. Kent State University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=RDp6AAAAMAAJ.
- Remini, Robert. Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (1991)
- Remini, Robert. At the Edge of the Precipice: Henry Clay and the Compromise That Saved the Union (2010) 184 pages; the Compromise of 1850
- Rhodes, James Ford. 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)
[edit] External links
- Compromise of 1850
- Compromise of 1850 and related resources
- Texas Library and Archive Commission Page on 1850 Boundary Act
Categories: 1850 in law | 1850 in American politics | Pre-state history of California | New Mexico Territory | History of United States expansionism | Slavery in the United States | United States federal territory and statehood legislation | History of the United States (1849–1865) | 31st United States Congress
