| The Compromise of 1850 (1849-1850) |
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Sections:- Clay's Resolutions
- John C. Calhoun, "The Clay Compromise Measures"
- Daniel Webster, "Seventh of March" Speech
- William Henry Seward, "Freedom in the New Territories"
- The Compromise of 1850
- The United States in 1850
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| Historical Context
The debate over whether Congress had the authority to regulate slavery in the territories that followed the proposal of the Wilmot Proviso in the late 1840's was finally resolved through a series of enactments that came to be known as the Compromise of 1850. Originally drafted as a package of resolutions by Henry Clay, senator from Kentucky and ultimately revised by Stephen Douglas, senator from Illinois, the Compromise brought a temporary end to the slavery question which was causing much strain within Congress. However, this alleviation was merely temporary, as discontent over the Compromise flourished, particularly among abolitionists.
The Compromise of 1850 began in 1849 with the newly acquired California wishing to be admitted as a free state. This admittance, much like the earlier application of Missouri, would upset the balance of slave and free state representatives in Congress.
Attached Documents
To resolve the issue, Clay created a series of resolutions he wished to be adopted by Congress. After seven months of debate in the Senate, his legislative package was voted down.
The engraving below depicts Henry Clay addressing the Senate. Daniel Webster is seated to the left of Clay and John C. Calhoun is to the left of the Speaker's chair.
The photo is a portrait of Clay, also known as "The Great Compromiser" and "The Great Pacificator."
Questions to Consider
1. Which provisions of Clay's proposed resolutions are designed to please anti-slavery parties?
2. Which provisions are designed to please advocates of popular sovereignty (the practice of allowing the residents of a territory decide the question of slavery for themeselves)?
3. Which provisions are designed to please advocates of slavery?
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| Historical Context
This is among John C. Calhoun's most famous speeches. He was too ill to deliver it himself, so it was read by another senator with Calhoun present in the Senate Chamber. Calhoun, so ill he had to be helped out of the Chamber after the speech by two of his friends, died on March 31, 1850.
Attached Documents
In this speech, dictated in response to Clay's Compromise measures, Calhoun warns the Senate that it must take measures to ensure the Southerners can remain in the union "with their honor and their safety" intact.
Questions to Consider
1. How does Calhoun fear the conflict over slavery will end?
2. What conflicts have driven the opposing parties to the brink of this outcome?
3. How does Calhoun characterize the political relationahip between the two sections of the country? |
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| Historical Context
A month after Henry Clay's two-day speech on the Compromise of 1850, a mortally ill John C. Calhoun summoned the strength to draft a reply, which his colleague James Mason read to the Senate on March 4. Calhoun challenged the Senate to respect the South's institutions and to protect her economic vitality against northern efforts to limit slavery and promote industrial over agricultural interests. Three days later, Daniel Webster, the final member of the "Great Triumvirate," delivered his response to Calhoun. Prepared rather hastily, modelled after Clay's February address, and delivered in a "pain-fully laborious" manner, Webster's three-and-a-half-hour speech has come to be considered a triumph of American persuasive oratory.
Attached Documents
Webster viewed slavery as a matter of historical reality rather than moral principle. He argued that the issue of its existence in the territories had been settled long ago when Congress prohibited slavery in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and divided regions into slave and free in the 1820 Missouri Compromise. He believed that slavery where it existed could not be eradicated but also that it could not take root in the newly acquired agriculturally barren lands of the southwest. Attacking radical abolitionists to boost his credibility with moderate southerners, Webster urged northerners to respect slavery in the South and to assist in the return of fugitive slaves to their owners. He joined Clay in warning that the Union could never be dismembered peacefully.
Webster immediately earned the praise of moderates throughout the country, while reaping the scorn of northern abolitionists who believed he had sold his soul to advocates of the South's "peculiar institution" in return for their support of his presidential candidacy.
Questions to Consider
1. Why does Webster recollect the opinions of the parties involved in the framing and ratification of the Constitution on the subject of slavery in this speech?
2. How does Webster answer the charges against the North levied by Calhoun three days earlier?
3. Why does Webster vow that he would never vote for a measure to outlaw slavery in New Mexico?
4. What is Webster's opinion of the fugitive slave laws? Why does he hold this opinion?
5. What consequences does Webster predict if the South leaves the union? |
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| Historical Context
Four days after Webster's celebrated "Constitution and the Union" address, Seward rose on the Senate floor to deliver a speech that he called "Freedom in the New Territories." The freshman senator spent several intense weeks on the preparation of his statement, realizing that it could be taken as the North's answer to Calhoun.
Attached Documents
Southern extremists argued that the Constitution alone provided sufficient authority for the extension of slavery to the territories; the Senate need not waste its time debating new laws on the subject. Seward acknowledged that the Constitution's framers had recognized the existence of slavery and protected it where it existed, but the new territory was governed by a "higher law than the Constitution" -- a moral law established by "the Creator of the universe." The New York senator, opposing all legislative compromise as "radically wrong and essentially vicious," demanded the unconditional admission of California as a free state. He warned the South that slavery was doomed and that secession from the Union would be futile.
Questions to Consider
1. Seward argues that the two allusions to slaves in the Constitution do not validate the argument that the Founders regarded slaves as property and the insitution of slavery as legitimate. Do you agree or disagree with Seward's interpretation of the Constitution? Why or why not?
2. How much importance should be attributed to the Founder's intent when interpreting the Constitution? In other words, do you think that the Constitution is a flexible document meant to be adapted to contemporary circumstances or do you think we should try to adhere to its original meaning? Explain.
3. Why does Seward emphasize that "states are not parties to the Constitution as states; it is the Constitution of the people of the United States"?
4. Why, according to Seward, is slavery detrimental to the nation?
5. How does Seward view the threats of secession? Why does he regard them in this manner?
6. What are Seward's views on the subjects of abolition and emancipation?
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| Historical Context
The Compromise of 1850, a series of five statues sheparded to passage by Stephen A. Douglas, was approved in September. By essentially breaking up Clay's Resolutions, he was able to cobble together different coalitions to support the bills separately.
Attached Documents
This Compromise called for the admittance of California as a free state, set the present boundaries for Texas, allowed the territories of New Mexico and Utah to be organized on the basis of popular sovereignty, strengthened the fugitive slave law, and abolished the slave trade in Washington D.C. Such provisions directly contradicted certain tenets of the Missouri Compromise, resulting in discontent among many northerners.
The video (2:54 minutes) explains the development of the federalized fugitive slave law, which was to become the most contentious part of the agreement between the North and South. The speaker also challenges the notion of the South as the champion of "state's rights" and provides insight into Lincoln's feelings about the law.
Questions to Consider
1. In what ways did the Compromise of 1850 nullify the Missouri Compromise?
2. How do Clay's Resolutions differ from the five statues that comprised the Compromise of 1850?
3. Why do you think the legislation comprising the Compromise of 1850 passed when Clay's Resolutions had previously failed?
4. Summarize the five provisions of the Compromise of 1850 legislation.
5. How did the balance of slave and free states evolve before the Civil War?
6. Summarize Lincoln's view of the fugitive slave law. Do you agree with his reasoning? Why or why not?
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This map shows how the United States had become a nation containing two, rival social and economic systems by 1850. Although many northern states actively discriminated against African-Americans in law, they forbade human slavery. Southern states increasingly defined themselves by their reliance upon such servitude, both terms of economic systems of production and racial castes. In 1850 the Congress, led by Stephen Douglas of Illinois, hammered out a convoluted compromise legislation that promised to ease the mounting political tensions between the two sections. But Douglas' drive to organize the Kansas and Nebraska territories west of Iowa and Missouri for statehood only reopened the sections' competition for political primacy. The question remained: Would the new states of Kansas and Nebraska allow slavery, or ban it? This issue brought Abraham Lincoln from political retirement and helped to organize the new Republican Party. Both sought to prevent slavery's expansion into the new territories.
Questions to Consider
1. Why did the Compromise of 1850 make the status of slavery in Kansas and Nebraska ambiguous?
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