Webster's Seventh of March Speech and the Secession Movement, 1850

by Herbert Darling Foster

During the session of Congress of 1849-1850, the peace of the Union was threatened by problems centering around slavery and the territory acquired as a result of the Mexican War: California's demand for admission with a constitution prohibiting slavery; the Wilmot Proviso excluding slavery from the rest of the Mexican acquisitions (Utah and New Mexico); the boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico; the abolition of slave trade in the District of Columbia; and an effective fugitive slave law to replace that of 1793.

The evidence for the steadily growing danger of secession until March, 1850, is no longer to be sought in Congressional speeches, but rather in the private letters of those men, Northern and Southern, who were the shrewdest political advisers of the South, and in the official acts of representative bodies of Southerners in local or state meetings, state legislatures, and the Nashville Convention. Even after the compromise was accepted in the South and the secessionists defeated in 1850-1851, the Southern states generally adopted the Georgia platform or its equivalent declaring that the Wilmot Proviso or the repeal of the fugitive-slave law would lead the South to "resist even (as a last resort) to a disruption of every tie which binds her to the Union". Southern disunion sentiment was not sporadic or a party matter; it was endemic.

The disunion sentiment in the North was not general; but Garrison, publicly proclaiming "I am an abolitionist and therefore for the dissolution of the Union", and his followers who pronounced "the Constitution a covenant with death and an agreement with hell", exercised a twofold effect far in excess of their numbers. In the North, abolitionists aroused bitter antagonism to slavery; in the South they strengthened the conviction of the lawfulness of slavery and the desirability of secession in preference to abolition. "The abolition question must soon divide us", a South Carolinian wrote his former principal in Vermont. "We are beginning to look upon it [disunion] as a relief from incessant insult. I have been myself surprised at the unusual prevalence and depth of this feeling." [3] "The abolition movement", as Houston has pointed out, "prevented any considerable abatement of feeling, and added volume to the current which was to sweep the State out of the Union in 1860." [4] South Carolina's ex-governor, Hammond, wrote Calhoun in December, 1849, "the conduct of the abolitionists in congress is daily giving it [disunion] powerful aid". "The sooner we can get rid of it [the union] the better." [5] The conclusion of both Blair of Kentucky and Winthrop [6] of Massachusetts, that "Calhoun and his instruments are really solicitous to break up the Union", was warranted by Calhoun's own statement.

Calhoun, desiring to save the Union if he could, but at all events to save the South, and convinced that there was "no time to lose", hoped "a decisive issue will be made with the North". In February, 1850, he wrote, "Disunion is the only alternative that is left us." [7] At last supported by some sort of action in thirteen Southern states, and in nine states by appointment of delegates to his Southern Convention, he declared in the Senate, March 4, "the South, is united against the Wilmot proviso, and has committed itself, by solemn resolutions, to resist should it be adopted". "The South will be forced to choose between abolition and secession." "The Southern States... cannot remain, as things now are, consistently with honor and safety, in the Union." [8]

That Beverley Tucker rightly judged that this speech of Calhoun expressed what was "in the mind of every man in the State" is confirmed by the approval of Hammond and other observers; by their judgment that "everyone was ripe for disunion and no one ready to make a speech in favor of the union"; by the testimony of the governor, that South Carolina "is ready and anxious for an immediate separation"; and by the concurrent testimony of even the few "Unionists" like Petigru and Lieber, who wrote Webster, "almost everyone is for southern separation", "disunion is the... predominant sentiment". "For arming the state $350,000 has been put at the disposal of the governor." "Had I convened the legislature two or three weeks before the regular meeting," adds the governor, "such was the excited state of the public mind at that time, I am convinced South Carolina would not now have been a member of the Union. The people are very far ahead of their leaders." Ample first-hand evidence of South Carolina's determination to secede in 1850 may be found in the Correspondence of Calhoun, in Claiborne's Quitman, in the acts of the assembly, in the newspapers, in the legislature's vote "to resist at any and all hazards", and in the choice of resistance-men to the Nashville Convention and the state convention. This has been so convincingly set forth in Ames's Calhoun and the Secession Movement of 1850, and in Hamer's Secession Movement in South Carolina, 1847-1852, that there is need of very few further illustrations. [9]

That South Carolina postponed secession for ten years was due to the Compromise. Alabama and Virginia adopted resolutions accepting the compromise in 1850-1851; and the Virginia legislature tactfully urged South Carolina to abandon secession. The 1851 elections in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi showed the South ready to accept the Compromise, the crucial test being in Mississippi, where the voters followed Webster's supporter, Foote. [10] That Petigru was right in maintaining that South, Carolina merely abandoned immediate and separate secession is shown by the almost unanimous vote of the South Carolina State Convention of 1852, [11] that the state was amply justified "in dissolving at once all political connection with her co-States", but refrained from this "manifest right of self-government from considerations of expediency only". [12]

In Mississippi, a preliminary convention, instigated by Calhoun, recommended the holding of a Southern convention at Nashville in June, 1850, to "adopt some mode of resistance". The "Resolutions" declared the Wilmot Proviso "such a breach of the federal compact as... will make it the duty... of the slave-holding states to treat the non-slave-holding states as enemies". The "Address" recommended "all the assailed states to provide in the last resort for their separate welfare by the formation of a compact and a Union". "The object of this [Nashville Convention] is to familiarize the public mind with the idea of dissolution", rightly judged the Richmond Whig and the Lynchburg Virginian.

Radical resistance men controlled the legislature and "cordially approved" the disunion resolution and address, chose delegates to the Nashville Convention, appropriated $20,000 for their expenses and $200,000 for "necessary measures for protecting the state.. . in the event of the passage of the Wilmot Proviso", etc. [13] These actions of Mississippi's legislature one day before Webster's 7th of March speech mark approximately the peak of the secession movement.

Governor Quitman, in response to public demand, called the legislature and proposed "to recommend the calling of a regular convention... with full power to annul the federal compact". "Having no hope of an effectual remedy... but in separation from the Northern States, my views of state action will look to secession." [14] The legislature supported Quitman's and Jefferson Davis's plans for resistance, censured Foote's support of the Compromise, and provided for a state convention of delegates. [15]

Even the Mississippi "Unionists" adopted the six standard points generally accepted in the South which would justify resistance. "And this is the Union party", was the significant comment of the New York Tribune. This Union Convention, however, believed that Quitman's message was treasonable and that there was ample evidence of a plot to dissolve the Union and form a Southern confederacy. Their programme was adopted by the State Convention the following year. [16] The radical Mississippians reiterated Calhoun's constitutional guarantees of sectional equality and non-interference with slavery, and declared for a Southern convention with power to recommend "secession from the Union and the formation of a Southern confederacy". [17]