Slavery and four years of war

by Joseph Warren Keifer

XVI COMPROMISE MEASURES—1850

The slavery agitation first began in 1832 on a false tariff issue, and precipitated upon the country in 1835, on the lines of nullification and disunion, and was again revived at the close of the Mexican War, and continued violently through 1849 and 1850. The year 1850 will be ever memorable in the history of the United States as a year wherein all the baleful seeds of disunion were sown, which grew, to ripen, a little more than ten years later, into disunion in fact. Prophetically, a leading South Carolina paper in its New Year-Day edition, said:

"When the future historian shall address himself to the task of portraying the rise, progress, and decline of the American union, the year 1850 will arrest his attention, as denoting and presenting the first marshalling and arraying of those hostile forces and opposing elements which resulted in dissolution."

At the close of Polk's administration an inflammatory address, drawn and signed by Calhoun and forty-one other members of Congress from the slave States, was issued, filled with unfounded charges against the North, professing to be a warning to the South that a purpose existed to abolish slavery and bring on a conflict between the white and black races, and to San Domingoize the South, which could only be avoided, the address states:

"By fleeing the homes of ourselves and ancestors, and by abandoning our country to our slaves, to become the permanent abode of disorder, anarchy, poverty, misery, and wretchedness."

This manifesto did not go quite to the extent of declaring for a dissolution of the Union, but it appealed to the South to become united, saying, if the North did not yield to its demands, the South would be the assailed, and

"Would stand justified by all laws, human and divine, in repelling a blow so dangerous, without looking to consequences, and to resort to all means necessary for that purpose."(66)

The Southern Press was set up in Washington to inculcate the advantages of disunion, and to inflame the South against the North. It portrayed the advantages which would result from Southern independence; and assumed to tell how Southern cities would recover colonial superiority; how ships of all nations would crowd Southern ports and carry off the rich staples, bringing back ample returns, and how Great Britain would be the ally of the new "United States South." In brief, it asserted that a Southern convention should meet and decree a separation unless the North surrendered to Southern demands for the extension of slavery, for its protection in the States, and for the certain return of fugitive slaves; it urged also that military preparation be made to maintain what the convention might decree.

A disunion convention actually met at Nashville, near the home of Jackson, but the old hero was then in his grave.(67) It assumed to represent seven States. It invited the assembling of a "Southern Congress." South Carolina and Mississippi alone responded to this call. In the Legislature of South Carolina secession and disunion speeches were delivered, and throughout the South public addresses were made, and the press advocated and threatened dissolution of the Union unless the North yielded all.(68)

All this and more to immediately effect the introduction of slavery into California and New Mexico. The South saw clearly that the free people of the Republic were resolved that there should be no more slave States, but believed that the mercantile, trading people, and small farmers of the North would not fight for their rights, and hence intimidation seemed to them to promise success.

It had its effect on many, and, unfortunately, on some of America's greatest statesmen.

By a singular coincidence the Thirty-first Congress, which met
December, 1849, embraced among its members Webster, Clay, Calhoun,
Benton, Cass, Corwin, Seward, Salmon P. Chase, John P. Hale, Hamlin
of Maine, James M. Mason, Douglas of Illinois, Foote and Davis of
Mississippi, of the Senate; and Joshua R. Giddings, Horace Mann,
Wilmot of Pennsylvania, Robert C. Schenck, Robert C. Winthrop,
Alexander H. Stephens, and Thaddeus Stevens, of the House.

To avert the impending storm of slavery agitation then threatening disunion, Clay, by a set of resolutions, with a view to a "lasting compromise," on January 29, 1850, proposed in the Senate a general plan of compromise and a committee of thirteen to report a bill or bills in accordance therewith.

His plan was:

1. The admission of California with her free Constitution.

2. Territorial governments for the other territory acquired from Mexico, without any restriction as to slavery.

3. The disputed boundary between Texas and New Mexico to be determined.

4. The bona fide public debt of Texas, contracted prior to annexation, to be paid from duties on foreign imports, upon condition that Texas relinquish her claim to any part of New Mexico.

5. The declaration that it was inexpedient to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, without the consent of Maryland and the people of the District, and without compensation to owners of slaves.

6. The prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia.

7. A more effectual provision for the rendition of fugitive slaves.

8. A declaration that Congress has no power to interfere with the slave trade between States.

These resolutions and the plan embodied led to a most noteworthy discussion, chiefly participated in by Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Benton, Seward, and Foote. The debate was opened by Clay. He favored the admission of California with her already formed free State Constitution, but he exclaimed:

"I shall go with the Senator from the South who goes farthest in making penal laws and imposing the heaviest sanctions for the recovery of fugitive slaves and the restoration of them by their owners."

He, however, tried to hold the olive branch to both the North and the South, and pleaded for the Union. He pathetically pleaded for mutual concessions, and deprecated, what he then apprehended, war between the sections, exclaiming:

"War and dissolution of the Union are identical."

After prophesying that if a war came it would be more ferocious, bloody, implacable, and exterminating than were the wars of Greece, the Commoners of England, or the Revolutions of France, Senator Clay predicted that it would be "not of two or three years' duration, but a war of interminable duration, during which some Philip or Alexander, some Caesar or Napoleon, would arise and cut the Gordian knot and solve the problem of the capacity of man for self-government, and crush the liberties of both the several portions of this common empire."

Happily, events have falsified most of these prophecies.

Then came the dying Calhoun, with a last speech in behalf of slavery and on the imaginary wrongs of the South. His last appearance in public life was pathetic. Broken with age and disease, enveloped in flannels, he was carried into the Capitol, where he tottered to the old Senate Hall and to a seat. He found himself too weak to even read his last warning to the North and appeal for his beloved institution. The speech was written, and was read in his presence by Senator Mason of Virginia. He referred to the disparity of numbers between the North and the South by which the "equilibrium between the two sections had been destroyed." He did not recognize the fact that slavery alone was the cause of this disparity. He professed to believe the final object of the North was "the abolition of slavery in the States." He contended that one of the "cords" of the Union embraced "plans for disseminating the Bible," and "for the support of doctrines and creeds."

He said:

"The first of these cords which snapped under its explosive force was that of the powerful Methodist Episcopal Church. The next cord that snapped was that of the Baptists, one of the largest and most respectable of the denominations. That of the Presbyterian is not entirely snapped, but some of its strands have given way. That of the Episcopal Church is the only one of the four great Protestant denominations which remains unbroken and entire."

He referred to the strong ties which held together the two great parties, and said:

"This powerful cord has fared no better than the spiritual. To this extent the union has already been destroyed by agitation."

He laid at the door of the North all the blame for the slavery agitation.

The admission of California as a free State was the immediate, exciting cause for Calhoun's speech.

Already, on October 13, 1849, after a session of forty days, a Convention in California had, with much unanimity, framed a Constitution which, one month later, was, with like unanimity, adopted by her free, gold-mining people. It prohibited slavery. It had been laid before Congress by President Taylor, who recommended the immediate admission under it of California as a State.

President Taylor had not overlooked the disunion movements. In his first and only message to Congress he expressed his affection for the Union, and warningly said:

"In my judgment its dissolution would be the greatest of calamities, and to avert that should be the study of every American. Upon its preservation must depend our own happiness, and that of countless generations to come. Whatever dangers may threaten it, I shall stand by it and maintain it in its integrity, to the full extent of the obligations imposed and the power conferred on me by the Constitution."

Recommending specially that territorial governments for New Mexico and Utah should be formed, leaving them to settle the question of slavery for themselves, President Taylor, in his Message, said further:

"I repeat the solemn warning of the first and most illustrious of my predecessors against furnishing any ground for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations."

Alluding to these passages, Calhoun, in his last speech, said:

"It (the Union) cannot, then, be saved by eulogies on it, however splendid or numerous. The cry of 'Union, Union, the glorious Union,' can no more prevent disunion than the cry of 'Health, Health, glorious Health,' on the part of the physician can save a patient from dying that is lying dangerously ill."

To the allusion of the President to Washington, Calhoun sneeringly said:

"There was nothing in his history to deter us from seceding from the Union should it fail to fulfil the objects for which it was instituted."

The prime objects for which the Union was formed, were, as he contended, the preservation, perpetuation, and extension of the institution of human slavery. In the antithesis of this speech he asked and answered:

"How can the Union be saved?

"To provide for the insertion of a provision in the Constitution, by an amendment which will restore to the South in substance the power she possessed of protecting herself before the equilibrium between the sections was destroyed by the action of this government."

The speech did not state what, exactly, this amendment was to be, but it transpired that it was to provide for the election of two Presidents, one from the free and one from the slave States, each to approve all acts of Congress before they became laws.

Of this device, Senator Benton said:

"No such double-headed government could work through even one session of Congress, any more than two animals could work together in the plough with their heads yoked in opposite directions."(69)

In the same month (March 31, 1850) the great political gladiator and pro-slavery agitator and originator and disseminator of disunion doctrines was dead;(70) but there were others to uphold and carry forward his work to its fatal ending.

Calhoun was early accounted a sincere and honest man, a patriot of moderate views, and at one time was much esteemed North as well as South. It is believed than an unfortunate quarrel with President Jackson dashed his hopes of reaching the Presidency, and so embittered him that he became the champion, first of nullification, then of disunion.

There is not room here to speak in detail of the other champions of the great debate on the Clay resolutions.

On the 18th of April these resolutions, and others of like import, were referred to a committee of thirteen, with Clay as its chairman. This was Clay's last triumph, and he accepted it with the greatest joy, though then in ill health and fast approaching the grave.(71)

Of his joy, Benton, in a speech at the time, said:

"We all remember that night. He seemed to ache with pleasure. It was too great for continence. It burst forth. In the fullness of his joy and the overflow of his heart he entered upon the series of congratulations."(72)

The sincere old hero was doomed to much disappointment; he did not live, however, to see his views on slavery contained in the Compromise measures (1) overthrown by an act of Congress four years later, (2) by a decision of the Supreme Court seven years later, and then (3) made an issue on which the South seceded from the Union and precipitated a war, in which for ferocity, duration, and bloodshed, his prophecies fell far short. On the 8th of May this memorable committee reported its recommendations somewhat different from his resolutions.

Its report favored:

1. The postponement of the subject of the admission of new States formed out of Texas until they present themselves, when Congress should faithfully execute the compact with Texas by admitting them.

2. The admission forthwith of California with the boundaries she claimed.

3. The establishment of territorial government, without the Wilmot Proviso, for New Mexico and Utah; embracing all territory acquired from Mexico not included in California.

4. The last two measures to be combined in one bill.

5. The establishment of the boundary of Texas by the exclusion of all New Mexico, with the grant of a pecuniary equivalent to Texas; also to be a part of a bill including the last two measures.

6. A more effectual fugitive-slave law.

7. To prohibit the slave trade, not slavery, in the District of Columbia.

Bills to carry out these recommendations were also reported.

A discussion ensued in both branches of Congress, which continued for five months; and daily Clay met and presided in caucus over what he called the Union men of the Senate, including Whigs and Democrats.

These measures were supported by Clay, Webster, Cass, Douglas, and
Foote; opposed by Seward, Chase, Hale, Davis of Massachusetts, and
Dayton, anti-slavery men; also by Benton, an independent Democrat,
a slaveholder in Missouri and the District of Columbia,(73) and by
Jefferson Davis, and others of the Calhoun Southern type.

President Taylor opposed the Clay plan. He denominated the blending on incongruous subjects as an "Omnibus Bill." He favored dealing with each subject on its own merits. He regarded the Texas and New Mexico boundary dispute as a question between the United States and New Mexico, not between Texas and New Mexico.(74) He favored the admission of California with her free State Constitution. Even earlier, he announced that he would approve a bill containing the Wilmot Proviso. He indignantly responded to Stephens' and Toombs' demands in the interests of slavery, coupled with threatened disunion, by giving them to understand he would, if necessary, take the field himself to enforce the laws, and if the gentlemen were taken in rebellion he would hang them as he had deserters and spies in Mexico.(75)

Taylor died (July 8, 1850) pending the great discussion, chagrined and mortified over the unsettled condition of his country. His last words were: "I have always done my duty; I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me."

He was a great soldier and patriot, and his character hardly justified the whole of the common appellation, "Rough and Ready." He was perhaps always ready, but not rough; on the contrary, he was a man of peace and order. On his election to the Presidency he desired some plan to be adopted for California by which "to substitute the rule of law and order there for the bowie knife and revolver."(76)

In August, 1850, the great debate ceased, and voting in the Senate commenced. The plan of the "thirteen" underwent changes, their bills being segregated, substitutes were offered for them, and many amendments were made to the several bills. Davis of Mississippi insisted upon the extension of the Missouri Compromise line—36° 30´—to the Pacific Ocean. This brought out Mr. Clay's best sentiments. He said:

"Coming as I do from a slave State, it is my solemn, deliberate, and well matured determination that no power, no earthly power, shall compel me to vote for the positive introduction of slavery, either south or north of that line. Sir, while you reproach, and justly, too, our British ancestors for the introduction of this institution upon the continent of America, I am, for one, unwilling that the posterity of the present inhabitants of California and New Mexico shall reproach us for doing just what we reproach Great Britain for doing for us."

The Wilmot Proviso made its appearance for the last time when Seward offered it as an amendment. It failed in the Senate by a vote of 23 to 33.

Finally, when the bill for the admission of California was ready for a vote, Turney of Tennessee moved to limit the southern boundary of the State to 36° 30´, so as to allow slavery in all territory south of that line. This failed, 24 to 32, the South voting almost unitedly for the amendment.

Mr. Benton was a prominent exception. To him the friends of freedom owed much for support, by speech and vote. While he opposed Clay's plan, he voted with the free State party on all questions of slavery, save on the Wilmot Proviso, which he deemed unnecessary to the exclusion of slavery from territory where the laws of Mexico, still in force, excluded it.

The California bill passed, August 13th, 34 to 18. Clay is not recorded as voting. He may have been absent or paired. Webster had become Secretary of State, and Winthrop succeeded him in the Senate. To emphasize the opposition, ten Senators immediately had read at the Secretary's desk a protest, with a view to its being spread on the Journal. This was refused, after a most spirited debate, as being against precedent.(77) The protest was a long complaint against making the Territory of California a State without its being first organized, territorially, and an opportunity given to the South to make it a slave State, and for admitting it as a free State, thus destroying the equilibrium of the States; the protestors declaring that if such course were persisted in, it would lead to a dissolution of the Union. A bill establishing New Mexico with its present boundaries, also Utah, was passed in August, leaving both to become States with or without slavery. A fugitive- slave act was likewise passed at the same time in the Senate. The whole of the bills covered by the compromise having in some form passed the Senate, went to the House, where, after some animated discussion, they all passed, in September following, and were approved by President Fillmore.

It remains to speak briefly of the Fugitive-Slave Act. It was odious to the North in the extreme. United States Commissioners were provided for to act instead of state magistrates, on whom jurisdiction was attempted to be conferred by the Act of 1793. Ex-parte testimony was made sufficient to determine the identity of the negro claimed, and the affidavit of an agent or attorney was made sufficient. The alleged fugitive was not permitted, under any circumstances, to testify. He was denied the right to trial by jury. The cases were to be heard in a summary manner. The claimant was authorized to use all necessary force to remove the fugitive adjudged a slave. All process of any court or judge was forbidden to molest the claimant, his agent or attorney, in carrying away the adjudged slave. United States marshals and their deputies were authorized to summon bystanders as a posse comitatus; and all good citizens were commanded, by the act, to aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution of the law; all under heavy penalty for failing to do so. The officers were liable, in a civil suit, for the value of the negro if he escaped. Heavy fine or imprisonment was to be imposed for hindering or preventing the arrest, or for rescuing or attempting to rescue, or for harboring or concealing the fugitive, and, if any person was found guilty of causing his escape, a further fine of $1000 by way of civil damages to the owner. In case the commissioner adjudged the negro was the claimant's slave, his fee was fixed at $10, and if he discharged the negro, it was only $5. The claimant had a right, in case of apprehended danger, to require the officer arresting the fugitive to remove him to the State from whence he fled, with authority to employ as many persons to aid him as he might deem necessary, the expense to be paid out of the United States Treasury. This act became a law September 18, 1850. The law contained so many odious provisions against all principles of natural justice and judicial precedents that it could not be executed in many places in the North. The consciences of civilized men revolted against it, and the Abolitionists did not fail to magnify its injustice; on the other hand, the pro-slavery agitators saw in its imperfect execution new and additional grounds for complaint against the North.

What, then, was intended to be a settlement of the slavery agitation proved to be really a most violent reopening of it.

Webster, like Clay, did not survive to witness the next great discussion in Congress on the slavery question, which resulted in overturning much that was supposed to have been settled; nor did they live to hear thundered from the supreme judicial tribunal of the Union the appalling doctrines of the Dred Scott decision. Webster died October 24, 1852. Benton lived to condemn the great tribunal for this decision in most vehement terms. He died April 10, 1858. But few of the leading participants of the 1850 debates lived to witness the final overthrow of slavery. Lewis Cass, however, who, though a Democrat, generally followed and supported Clay in his plan of compromise, not only lived to witness the birth of the new doctrine of "Squatter Sovereignty" (and to support it), but to hear that slavery was, according to our Supreme Court, almost national; then to see disunion in the live tree; then war; then slaves proclaimed free as a war measure; then disunion overthrown on the battle-field; then restoration of a more perfect Union, wherein slavery and involuntary servitude was forbidden by the Constitution.(78)

In the succeeding Presidential election (1852) the two great parties endorsed the late action of Congress in relation to the Territories and slavery.

The Whig platform declared the acquiescence of the party in all its acts: "The act known as the Fugitive Slave Law included. . . . as a settlement in principle and substance of the dangerous and exciting questions which they embrace. . . . We will maintain them and insist on their strict enforcement."

On this platform General Winfield Scott was nominated for the
Presidency.

The Democratic platform of the same year, having first denied that Congress had power under the Constitution to interfere with slavery in the States, declared also that the party would "abide by and adhere to a faithful execution of the acts known as the Compromise measures settled by the last Congress,—the act for reclaiming fugitives from service or labor included."

Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, a subordinate officer (Brigadier- General) under Scott in Mexico, of no special renown, but a polite and respectable gentleman, was nominated and elected on this platform by a decided vote; Scott carrying only Massachusetts, Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The "Free-Soil" party nominated John P. Hale of New Hampshire on a platform repudiating the Compromise measures, declaring against the aggressions of the slave power and for:

"No more slave States, no slave territory, no nationalized slavery, and no national legislation for the extradition of slaves. That slavery is a sin against God, and a crime against man, which no human enactment or usage can make right; and that Christianity, humanity, and patriotism alike demand its abolition.

"That the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is repugnant to the Constitution, to the principles of the common law," etc.

The Whig party, with this election, disappeared; its great leaders were dead, and it could not vie with the Democratic party in pro- slavery principles. There was no longer room for two such parties. The American people were already divided and dividing on the living issue of freedom or slavery. Slavery, like all wrong, was ever aggressive, and demanded new constitutional expositions in its interest by Congress and the courts, and it tolerated no more temporizing or compromises. Its advocates tried for a time to unite in the Democratic party.

(66) Thirty Years' View, vol. ii., pp. 733-6.

(67) Jackson died June 8, 1845, past seventy-eight years of age.

(68) Thirty Years' View, ii., p. 782.

(69) Thirty Years' View, vol. ii., p. 747.

(70) His remains were entombed in St. Philip's churchyard, Charleston, S. C. In 1865, on that city's occupancy by the Union forces, friends seized and secreted them from fancied desecration by the conquerors.—Draper's Civil War in Am., vol. i., p. 565.

(71) Born April 12, 1777, died June 29, 1852.

(72) Thirty Years' View, vol. ii., p. 764.

(73) Thirty Years' View, vol. ii., p. 759.

(74) Ibid., p. 765.

(75) Hist. of the U. S. (Rhodes), vol. i., pp. 134 (190).

(76) Hist. Pac. States, H. H. Bancroft, vol. xviii., p. 262.

(77) Thirty Years' View, vol. ii., p. 770.

(78) Cass died March 17, 1866, eighty-two years of age.