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Compromise of 1850

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Compromise of 1850
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Series of measures passed by the U.S. Congress to settle slavery issues and avert secession. The crisis arose in late 1849 when the territory of California asked to be admitted to the Union with a constitution prohibiting slavery. The problem was complicated by the unresolved question of slavery's extension into other areas ceded by Mexico in 1848. In an attempt to satisfy pro- and antislavery forces, Sen. Henry Clay offered a series of measures that admitted California as a free state, left the question of slavery in the new territories to be settled by the local residents, and provided for the enforced return of runaway slaves and the prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia. Support from Daniel Webster and Stephen A. Douglas helped ensure passage of the compromise. Moderates throughout the Union accepted the terms, which averted secession for another decade but sowed seeds of discord.

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US Military Dictionary: Compromise of 1850
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A series of measures adopted by the Congress on September 9, 1850, prior to the Civil War, to address slavery and territory issues and to avert secession by the South. Proposed largely by Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, it included several measures to ensure a balance between free and slave states. It admitted California to the Union as a free state, and from the remaining land acquired in the Mexican War (1846-48), it established Utah and New Mexico as territories with an open status of slavery, a measure that overruled the Missouri Compromise.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

US Government Guide: compromise of 1850
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After the United States won vast southwestern territories from Mexico in 1848, Congress was faced with the question of whether to permit slavery in this region. Antislavery Northerners endorsed the Wilmot Proviso, an amendment to ban the spread of slavery, while Southerners insisted that any restriction on slavery would split the Union. The House of Representatives was so divided that it could not even elect a new Speaker, so solving the territorial problem fell to the Senate. Henry Clay (Whig-Kentucky) returned from retirement to craft one more compromise to save the Union. Clay put together an omnibus bill that would admit California to the Union as a free state, allow New Mexicans to decide whether they wanted slavery, preserve slavery in the District of Columbia, and enact a tough fugitive slave law to allow slave owners to hunt down runaway slaves in the North. Daniel Webster (Whig-Massachusetts) delivered an eloquent appeal for the compromise, warning Southerners who threatened to secede from the Union that there could be “no such thing as peaceable secession.” By contrast, John C. Calhoun (Democrat–South Carolina) spent the last days of his life fighting against the compromise. Clay's strategy was to have the Senate vote upon his compromise as a whole, so that senators would have to accept even the portions of the package they disliked. When this tactic failed, an exhausted Clay left Washington to rest. In his absence, the young Stephen A. Douglas (Democrat-Illinois) took apart the omnibus bill, put together different majorities for each of its parts, and won their passage separately. Although not popular in any section of the country, the Compromise of 1850 delayed civil war in the United States for another decade.

See also Benton, Thomas Hart; Calhoun, John C.; Clay, Henry; Webster, Daniel; Wilmot Proviso

Sources

  • Holman Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and the Compromise of 1850 (New York: Norton, 1964)
US History Encyclopedia: Compromise of 1850
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Compromise of 1850, a designation commonly given to five statutes enacted in September 1850, following a bitter controversy between the representatives of the North and South. The controversy reached a fever pitch during the weeks following the assembling of Congress in December 1849, when the election of a speaker under the customary majority rule was prevented by the unwillingness of the Free Soil members, who held the balance of power, to be drawn into an arrangement with either of the two major parties. In the course of the prolonged balloting, criminations and recriminations passed between the hotheaded spokesmen of the two sections. Pointing to indications that the principle of the Wilmot Proviso might be enacted into law and receive the signature of President Zachary Taylor, southerners insisted as a matter of right upon the recognition of the Calhoun doctrine, which stated that under the Constitution all the territories should be deemed open to Slavery. There was talk of secession unless this principle was recognized in fact or as a basis for some adjustment. Plans were underway for the discussion of a satisfactory southern program at a southern convention called to meet at Nashville in June.

In the face of increasing sectional strife Henry Clay returned to the U.S. Senate in 1849 and on 29 January 1850 suggested a series of resolutions intended to provide the basis for the prompt adjustment of the main questions at issue between the two sections. His resolutions were shortly referred to a select committee of thirteen, of which he was made chairman. Its report (8 May), which covered the ground of Clay's resolutions, recommended an "Omnibus Bill" providing for the admission of California under its free state constitution, for territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico silent on slavery, and for the settlement of the boundary dispute between Texas and the United States. It also recommended a bill for the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia and an amendment to the fugitive slave law.

The hope of compromise was tied up with the fate of the omnibus bill. Clay rallied to his support the outstanding Union men, including Daniel Webster, Lewis Cass, Henry S. Foote, and Stephen A. Douglas; the latter became the active force in the promotion of the necessary legislation. President Taylor wanted the admission of California but no action on New Mexico and Utah until they should be ready to become states; he was, therefore, a formidable obstacle to the plans of the compromisers until his death on 9 July. Even the active support of the bill by his successor, Millard Fillmore, did not offset the fact that the idea of compromise "united the opponents instead of securing the friends" of each proposition.

Compromise as such had clearly failed; the ground that it had contemplated was covered in five statutes each formerly included as sections of the proposed omnibus bill. The act establishing a territorial government for Utah (9 September) contained the important Popular Sovereignty clause providing that any state or states formed out of this territory should be admitted with or without slavery as their constitutions should prescribe. Popular sovereignty deftly removed slavery as an obstacle to congressional organization of these territories, but it did not remove the divisive issue of slavery in the territories from the national political scene. An identical clause was appended to the New Mexico territorial act (9 September), which also resolved the conflict between Texas and the federal government over the Santa Fe region by a cession, with compensation to Texas, to the newly created territory. On the same date, the act admitting California under its constitution—prohibiting slavery in the new state—was approved. The Fugitive Slave Act of 18 September 1850, which amended the original statute of 12 February 1793, provided for the appointment of special commissioners to supplement the regular courts empowered after a summary hearing to issue a certificate of arrest of a fugitive "from labor," which authorized the claimant to seize and return the fugitive (with a fee of ten dollars when the certificate was issued and of only five dollars when denied); in no trial or hearing was the testimony of the alleged fugitive to be admitted as evidence nor was a fugitive claiming to be a freeman to have the right of trial by jury; federal marshals and deputy marshals were made liable for the full value of fugitives who escaped their custody and were empowered to call to their aid any bystanders, or posse comitatus; and any person willfully hindering the arrest of a fugitive or aiding in his rescue or escape was subject to heavy fine and imprisonment, as well as to heavy civil damages. The Act Abolishing the Slave Trade in the District of Columbia was approved on 20 September.

These statutes were presented to the country as a series of compromise measures. They did not, however, magically calm the sectional storm. In the North there was widespread denunciation of the iniquitous features of the Fugitive Slave Act and deliberate declaration that its enforcement would never be tolerated. At the same time the conservative forces organized a series of Union meetings and pleaded the obligations of the North to pacify the South. In the latter section the other four enactments precipitated one of the most serious disunion crises the country had ever faced. In Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina the Southern Rights, or secession, forces were checkmated only by the most strenuous efforts of the Union or Constitutional Union elements. Both sides foreswore old party labels and fought under their new banners to win control over the official state conventions that were ordered. The Southern Rights forces lost in the first test fight in Georgia (see Georgia Platform) and had to carry this moral handicap in the remaining contests. It was not until the elections of 1852 that the country at large made clear its (albeit temporary) acquiescence in what at length became known by the over simple label the Compromise of 1850.

Bibliography

Freehling, William W. The Road to Disunion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Hamilton, Holman. Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1964.

Holt, Michael F. The Political Crisis of the 1850s. New York: Norton, 1983.

Potter, David Morris. The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861. Edited and completed by Don E. Fehrenbacher. New York: Harper and Row, 1976.

Remini, Robert V. Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union. New York: Norton, 1991.

—Arthur C. Cole/T. M.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Compromise of 1850
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Compromise of 1850. The annexation of Texas to the United States and the gain of new territory by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the close of the Mexican War (1848) aggravated the hostility between North and South concerning the question of the extension of slavery into the territories. The antislavery forces favored the proposal made in the Wilmot Proviso to exclude slavery from all the lands acquired from Mexico. This, naturally, met with violent Southern opposition. When California sought (1849) admittance to the Union as a free state, a grave crisis threatened. Also causing friction was the conflict over the boundary claims of Texas, which extended far westward into territory claimed by the United States. In addition, the questions of the slave trade and the fugitive slave laws had long been vexing. There was some fear that, in the event of strong antislavery legislation, the Southern states might withdraw from the Union altogether.

The possibility of the disintegration of the Union was deprecated by many but was alarming to some, among them Henry Clay, who emerged from retirement to enter the Senate again. President Taylor was among those who felt that the Union was not threatened; he favored admission of California as a free state and encouragement of New Mexico to enter as a free state. These sentiments were voiced in Congress by William H. Seward. John C. Calhoun and other Southerners, particularly Jefferson Davis, maintained that the South should be given guarantees of equal position in the territories, of the execution of fugitive slave laws, and of protection against the abolitionists.

Clay proposed that a series of measures be passed as an omnibus compromise bill. Support for this plan was largely organized by Stephen A. Douglas. The measures were the admission of California as a free state; the organization of New Mexico and Utah territories without mention of slavery, the status of that institution to be determined by the territories themselves when they were ready to be admitted as states (this formula came to be known as popular sovereignty); the prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia; a more stringent fugitive slave law; and the settlement of Texas boundary claims by federal payment of $10 million on the debt contracted by the Republic of Texas.

These proposals faced great opposition, but Daniel Webster greatly enhanced the chances for their acceptance by his famous speech on Mar. 7, 1850. Taylor's death and the accession of conservative Millard Fillmore to the presidency made the compromise more feasible. After long debates and failure to pass the omnibus bill, Congress passed the measures as separate bills in Sept., 1850. Many people, North and South, hailed the compromise as a final solution to the question of slavery in the territories. However, the issue reemerged in 1854 with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and seven years later the factions were fighting the Civil War.

Bibliography

See E. C. Rozwenc, The Compromise of 1850 (1957); H. Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict (1964).

Law Encyclopedia: Compromise of 1850
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This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

A program of legislative measures enacted by Congress to reconcile the differences existing between the North and South concerning the issue of slavery in newly formed territories of the United States.

The historical background of the enactment of the Compromise of 1850, also known as the Omnibus Bill, involved the increasingly hostile relationship between the northern and southern states of the Union over the existence of slavery. This hostility was partly due to the reluctant enforcement by northern states of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which established procedures for the return of runaway slaves to their owners. The dissension was exacerbated in 1848 when the United States annexed Texas and gained new territories under the provisions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which brought about the end of the Mexican American War. Abolitionists continued to favor the antislavery stance of the Wilmot Proviso prohibiting slavery in the lands acquired from Mexico, which was proposed in 1846, but was never enacted into law. The South vehemently opposed the exclusion of slavery from the new territories.

In 1849 the request of California to join the Union as a free state resulted in heated debates on the floor of Congress. Many viewed the situation as a grave threat to the existence of the Union. Henry Clay returned to the Senate to propose measures, based upon the ideas of Stephen Douglas, that would reconcile the different positions of the North and South. The proposals included the admission of California into the Union as a free state, the right of the New Mexico and Utah territories to determine the slavery issue for themselves at the time of their admission to the Union, the outlawing of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and the congressional enactment of the more stringent Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (9 Stat. 462).

Due to the efforts of Daniel Webster and others, these controversial measures, which initially caused heated debate, were enacted by Congress in September 1850. Although labeled a compromise due to its position on slavery, the Compromise of 1850 had short-lived effect as a solution to the issue in light of the subsequent problems resulting in the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 (10 Stat. 277) and the onset of the Civil War less than ten years later.

Act of Congress:

Compromise of 1850

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Slavery presented innumerable problems to the United States prior to 1850, but none proved more unsolvable than those connected with westward expansion. Heated arguments arose over the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the admission of Missouri into the Union (1820–1821), and the annexation of Texas (1845). Each time politicians responded with some type of compromise that allowed the Union to continue with a slaveholding section and a free labor section. The Compromise of 1850 was the last important compromise between North and South over slavery and it did not last. By the end of 1863, in the midst of Civil War, almost all the provisions of the Compromise of 1850 had been repudiated.

The Mexican War of 1846–1848 generated the conflict that produced the Compromise of 1850. Northern Democrats, upset at Southern domination of the party, rallied behind a slogan of slavery prohibition from any territory acquired from Mexico—the Wilmot Proviso. But President James K. Polk desired to fill out the continental boundaries of the United States, and in the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) he obtained the area now consisting of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. Southern politicians immediately denounced the Wilmot Proviso and insisted slavery could expand into any territory acquired by the United States. Between 1847 and the beginning of 1850, Congress was consumed by the slavery expansion issue and it burned away all other issues. The problem simply would not go away.

At the same time California was annexed to the United States as a territory, settlers found gold and within one year California had enough population to become a state. But if California became a free state, it would tip the balance of free to slave states in the nation in favor of the free states. The politics of the situation became desperate. In the 1848 election, the citizenry voted Zachary Taylor into the White House. Taylor, who was a Louisiana slaveholder, nonetheless believed the western territories would be free and so he favored the admission of both California and New Mexico as free states. This outraged Southern politicians and by December 1849 they were speaking of secession.

Henry Clay, called the "Great Compromiser" because of his previous roles in resolving sectional conflicts, was sent back to the U.S. Senate by Kentucky to forge a compromise. He fashioned legislation that he believed resolved all standing issues between the free and slave states. These issues were the admission of California as a free state; the implementation of a settler decision on slavery in the territories of Utah and New Mexico; the abolition of the slave trade in Washington, D.C.; a new fugitive slave law; a new boundary between Texas and New Mexico; and the federal government's agreement to pay the state debts of Texas. Clay placed all these matters in one bill called the "Omnibus." The Omnibus, however, failed to obtain the necessary majority to pass and failed on July 31, 1850. Clay soon left the Senate in disgust.

What changed the situation, however, was the death of Zachary Taylor and the installation of Millard Fillmore as president. Fillmore gave signals that he would sign a compromise act if one were passed by Congress. Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas and Georgia representative Howell Cobb leapt at the opportunity. They divided the Omnibus into separate bills, calculating they could win a majority for each bill even though the composition of the majority would change with every vote. And so in August and September 1850, separate bills passed the Senate and the House representing the elements of Clay's original Omnibus bill; those separate pieces of legislation were referred to as "The Compromise of 1850."

But the Compromise of 1850 was weak and destined to a short life. The Fugitive Slave Law created a furor in the North;

Southerners in the Gulf states debated leaving the Union in 1850 and 1851, but retreated in the face of overwhelming support for the Union. More importantly, Stephen A. Douglas's ill-conceived legislation to start territorial government in the Kansas and Nebraska territories (the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854), reignited the slavery extension issue and so undid much of the good achieved by the Compromise of 1850. The unsolvable nature of the slavery issue then produced Southern secession in 1860 and 1861, which in turn led to the War for the Union from 1861–1865.

During the Civil War, the Union Congress ended the Fugitive Slave Law, emancipated slaves in the District of Columbia and then throughout the Union with the Thirteenth Amendment. So the Compromise of 1850, except for the settlement of the New Mexico-Texas boundary and the admission of California to the Union, was entirely unraveled in the space of fifteen years.

Bibliography

Brock, William R. Parties and Political Conscience: American Dilemmas, 1840–1850. Millwood, NY: KTO Press, 1979.

Hamilton, Holman. Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1964.

Huston, James L. Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Johannsen, Robert W. Stephen A. Douglas. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union, Vol. 1: Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847–1852. New York: Scribners, 1947.

Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.

Stegmaier, Mark J. Texas, New Mexico, and the Compromise of 1850: Boundary Dispute and Sectional Crisis. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996.

History Dictionary: Compromise of 1850
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A set of laws, passed in the midst of fierce wrangling between groups favoring slavery and groups opposing it, that attempted to give something to both sides. The compromise admitted California to the United States as a “free” (no slavery) state but allowed some newly acquired territories to decide on slavery for themselves. Part of the Compromise included the Fugitive Slave Act, which proved highly unpopular in the North. Senator Henry Clay was a force behind the passage of the compromise.

  • The Compromise of 1850 shows how difficult it was to accommodate the two sides of the slavery question. It failed to prevent the Civil War, which broke out just over ten years later.

    • Wikipedia: Compromise of 1850
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    Events leading to
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    Northwest Ordinance
    Missouri Compromise
    Tariff of 1828
    Nullification Crisis
    Nat Turner's slave rebellion
    The Amistad
    Mexican–American War
    Wilmot Proviso
    Manifest Destiny
    Compromise of 1850
    Uncle Tom's Cabin
    Kansas-Nebraska Act
    Bleeding Kansas
    Dred Scott v. Sandford
    Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry
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    Henry Clay takes the floor of the Old Senate Chamber; Millard Fillmore presides as Calhoun and Webster look on.

    The Compromise of 1850 was an intricate package of five bills, passed in September 1850, defusing a four-year confrontation between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North that arose from expectation of territorial expansion of the United States with the Texas Annexation (December 29, 1845) and the following Mexican-American War (1846–1848). It avoided secession or civil war at the time and quieted sectional conflict for four years until the divisive Kansas-Nebraska Act.

    The Compromise was greeted with relief though each side disliked specific provisions. Texas gave up its claim to New Mexico but received debt relief, El Paso, and the Texas Panhandle. The South did not get their keenly desired Pacific territory in Southern California or extension of the Missouri Compromise line allowing slavery anywhere south of parallel 36°30' north. As compensation, the South got the possibility of slave states via 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, though the slave trade was banned there except in the Virginia portion of the District of Columbia which rejoined Virginia.

    The Compromise became possible after the sudden death of President Zachary Taylor who although a Southerner himself tried to implement the Northern policy of excluding slavery from the Southwest. Whig Senator Henry Clay (Kentucky) designed a compromise which failed to pass in early 1850; in the next session of Congress, Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas (Illinois) and Whig Senator Daniel Webster (Massachusetts) narrowly passed a slightly modified package over opposition by extremists on both sides including Senator and former Vice-President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.

    Contents

    Background and earlier proposals

    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.

    Senator Joseph Underwood referred to "the threatened civil war, unless we appease the hot bloods of Texas."[1] 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..."[2][3] 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."[4]

    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.

    Texas

    The Republic of Texas was proclaimed on March 2, 1836 at the Convention of 1836. The Battle of San Jacinto (April 21, 1836) resulted in the defeat of Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Santa Anna was captured the next day (April 22, 1836). On May 14, 1836 Santa Anna and interim President of Republic of Texas David G. Burnet signed the Treaties of Velasco. The Treaties of Velasco recognized the Rio Grande River as the western boundary of the Republic of Texas. The Treaties of Velasco were repudiated by the government of Mexico on the ground that Santa Anna was not formally the President at the time he signed them. To the extent that there was a de facto recognition Mexico treated the Nueces River as the western boundary of the Republic of Texas. A huge area lay between the two rivers.

    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.

    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.[5] 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.

    California

    In 1846, 33 settlers proclaimed a Republic of California independent from Mexico. The rebel government had little effect and gave way to US control in less than a month.

    The California Gold Rush starting on January 24, 1848 quickly attracted a much larger and multi-ethnic population to California. Anglo-Americans were a majority, with more from the North than the South, especially in Northern California[citation needed].

    The third statute of the Compromise of 1850, enacted on September 9, 1850, admitted California to the Union as the 31st State.

    Geographically, the State of California was bounded in 1850 on the east by the Territory of New Mexico (south of the 37th parallel) and the Territory of Utah (north of the 37th parallel), and on the north by the Territory of Oregon.

    California was expressly admitted as a State free of slavery. A subsequent effort to divide the state received some support from those who hoped to establish a slave state on the Pacific coast, but it failed.

    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.[6]

    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.

    Banning Slave Trade in District of Columbia

    The fifth law, enacted on September 20, 1850 prohibited the slave trade (but not slavery itself) in the District of Columbia.[7] 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[8]). Alexandria County was returned to Virginia in 1846,[9] and the slave trade remained an important part of the economy of Alexandria.

    Background and earlier proposals

    Missouri Compromise Line 36°30'. States colored by later Civil War alignment, not 1850.

    Soon after the war started and long before negotiation of the US-Mexico border, the question of slavery in the territories to be acquired polarized the Northern and Southern United States in the most bitter sectional conflict up to this time, which lasted for a deadlock of four years during which 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. Eventually the Compromise of 1850 preserved the Union, but only for another decade. Proposals 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 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 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.[10]
    • 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).
    US Territories 1850.jpg
    • 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.

    No southern territory dominated by Southerners (like the later short-lived Confederate Territory of Arizona) was created.

    Clay and Douglas draft compromise

    Congress convened on December 3, 1849. On January 29, 1850, Whig Senator Henry Clay gave a speech which called for compromise on the issues dividing the Union. However, Clay's specific proposals for achieving a compromise, including his idea for Texas' boundary, were not adopted, although Clay later claimed credit for drafting the entire compromise. Rather, it was Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Democrat of Illinois, who largely guided the Compromise to passage. The Compromise came to coalesce around a plan dividing Texas at its present-day boundaries, creating territorial governments with "popular sovereignty" (without the Wilmot Proviso) for New Mexico and Utah, admitting California as a free state, abolishing the slave auctions in the District of Columbia, and enacting a harsh new fugitive slave law.

    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.

    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.

    1. California was admitted as a free state. It passed 150-56. (Hamilton, Holman. Prologue to Conflict. University of Kentucky Press, copyright 1965. P. 160)
    2. The slave trade was abolished (the sale of slaves, not the institution of slavery) in the District of Columbia.
    3. 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.
    4. The Fugitive Slave Act was passed, requiring all U.S. citizens to assist in the return of runaway slaves. It passed 109-76.
    5. Texas gave up much of the western land which it claimed and received compensation of $10,000,000 to pay off its national debt.

    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.[11] 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.[12] 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 heavily industrialize [13]. 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.

    References

    Text document with red question mark.svg
    		 This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (April 2009)
    • H. D. Foster, "Webster's Seventh of March Speech," American Historical Review, 27 (1922), 245-270 online in JSTOR
    • 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).
    • Michael F. Holt, 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. http://books.google.com/books?id=yoZCx5MnOO0C. 
    • Morrison, Michael A. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (1997) (ISBN 0807823198)
    • Allan Nevins, 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)
    • James Ford Rhodes, 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)
    1. ^ #Keleher, p.41
    2. ^ http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-20118802.html
    3. ^ Mark J. Stegmaier (1996). Texas, New Mexico, and the compromise of 1850: boundary dispute & sectional conflict. http://books.google.com/books?id=RDp6AAAAMAAJ. 
    4. ^ Stegmaier, p. 172 and p. 177
    5. ^ "Handbook of Texas Online: Compromise of 1850". http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/CC/nbc2.html. 
    6. ^ David L. Lewis, District of Columbia: A Bicentennial History, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1976), 54-56.
    7. ^ Davidson, James West. The American Nation: Beginnings Through 1877 Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: P
    8. ^ Alexandria Archaeology Museum, Discovering the Decades: 1840s. Accessed 2009.09.09.
    9. ^ "Retrocession of Alexandria". The New York Times, August 17, 1873.
    10. ^ 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. 
    11. ^ Robert Remini, The House: A History of the House of Representatives (2006) p. 147
    12. ^ Holt, Michael F. The Political Crisis of the 1850s (1978).
    13. ^ Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Fruits of Merchant Capital (1983).

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