The Heritage of The South / A History of the Introduction of Slavery; Its Establishment From Colonial Times and Final Effect Upon the Politics of the United States

by Jubal Anderson Early

Along with these bills another was passed for enforcing the provision of the Constitution in regard to the return of fugitive slaves, as the former one could not be executed because most of the free states had prohibited their officers from acting under it. These measures as a whole were not acceptable to the extreme men of either section, but the more moderate portion of the two leading political parties hoped that they would put an end to the agitation and restore peace and concord to the country. Such appeared to be their first effect, and both of the great political parties, into which the country had been divided, without reference to sections for many years—Democrat and Whig—in their platforms of principles adopted in the canvass for President in 1852, gave their adhesion to the "Compromise Measures of 1850" as a final settlement of the questions embraced by them.

In 1848, a portion of the "free-soilers" had run Martin Van Buren, a former President and a defeated candidate for the Democratic nomination, as their candidate for the Presidency, but the party did not have cohesiveness enough to give him its whole vote, and in 1852 the "free-soil" party had no candidate, the members of it voting with the parties to which they had previously been attached according to their predilections, though there was still much muttering by the leaders.

The abolition party proper, however, had a candidate for form's sake.

In 1848, Wisconsin had been added to the Union as a free state, and there were now in the Union sixteen free states and fifteen slave states, giving to the free states the preponderance in the Senate, as they had long had in the lower House. Neither Utah nor New Mexico was fitted at all for slave labor, and there was no territory out of which it was likely that another slave state could be formed, except by the sub-division of Texas, while there was a prospect for the formation of several more free states, at no distant day, out of the territory west of the Mississippi and north of 36° 30´ and on the Pacific coast, the territories of Minnesota and Oregon having already been organized.

By what was called the Compromise of 1850, the South had gained nothing whatever, except the abstract principle inserted in the Utah and New Mexico bills, of non-interference by Congress with the question of slavery and the submission of the decision of the question to the people of the territories when they came to frame their state governments, while the North had gained the rich and growing state of California. The bill for the restoration of fugitive slaves was in accordance with an express stipulation in the Constitution, without which it would never have been adopted. Yet the execution of this law was resisted from the very beginning and very soon most of the free states passed laws, called "personal liberty bills" which virtually nullified the act of Congress. Several collisions ensued between the United States officers in their efforts to execute the law and mobs in the free states who resisted its execution, and even members on the floor of Congress denounced the law and counselled resistance to it. This served to prevent that harmonious feeling which had been expected from the adoption of the measures of adjustment, and the new fugitive slave act became soon a dead letter from the danger, difficulty and expense attending its execution. Not only was the guaranty contained in the Constitution, and the act of Congress to enforce it, thus rendered nugatory, but for many years slaves had been enticed by agents from the North to make their escape and aid had been furnished them while doing so, under a system which obtained the designation of "The underground railroad." This was not confined to citizens merely but was participated in by state officers who were sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, and instead of compelling their citizens and officers to comply with the Constitution and law, many of the free states passed laws to make it a felony for the owner to arrest his slave or for any one to assist him.

At the session of Congress for 1853-54 in the introduction of a bill for the establishment of governments for the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, both north of 36° 30´, a proposition was made by Mr. Douglas, a senator from Illinois, to incorporate a provision in regard to slavery similar to that contained in the Utah and New Mexico bills. When the measure was offered by a Northern man, it was supported by nearly all of the Southern representatives as correct in principle, though it met with the opposition of a few Southern representatives and statesmen, who deprecated it as tending to arouse again the excitement which had partially subsided.

The question was not one of any great practical importance, as the climate and soil of Kansas and Nebraska furnished a more formidable barrier to the introduction of slaves than any legal enactment. The proposition to repeal the enactment as to the line of 36° 30´ violated no compromise, as has been shown, and it violated no right of any of the Northern states or people, but merely asserted a principle deducible from the Constitution and right in itself; though in this case it was an abstract one.

The measure was passed with the assistance of some of the Northern Democrats, and it had the effect so much dreaded by the conservative men who opposed it, of reviving with new intensity the fires of the former agitation and of giving new life to the languishing free-soil or Republican party. Though they had never acceded to or complied with the compromise in regard to Missouri or that of 1850, or even those of the Constitution itself, the leaders of the free-soil party raised a tremendous clamor about the violation of plighted faith, and soon the agitation spread over the whole North with ten fold force.