Five bills made up the Compromise of 1850:
2. Provisions for new territories of New Mexico and Utah, without stipulating slave or free status, but allowing the possibility of slavery in those territories under the principle of "popular sovereignty";
3. Adjustment of the border between Texas and New Mexico (settling a boundary dispute by creating a financial settlement for Texas in exchange for the disputed land);
4. Elimination of the slave trade (but not slavery)(1) in the District of Columbia, but notably, no interference in interstate slave trade in the states, which was left as a states’ rights issue (the bill stipulated that Congress had no jurisdiction over the matter);
5. Stronger Fugitive Slave Act which allowed judicial ruling on fugitive slave cases based on the testimony of an alleged owner but not allowing the testimony of the accused.
The compromise was crafted primarily by Henry Clay of Kentucky with help from Stephen Douglass of Illinois and Secretary of State Daniel Webster of Massachusetts. Clay was known for congressional compromise and he authored the main provisions. After months of contentious debate, the compromise could not be pushed through. The younger Douglas came up with the strategy of breaking the compromise apart into five separate bills, each of which passed by narrow margins. Due to the division of Congress over the slavery issue, it took eight months of debate to get the legislation through.
The issue driving the compromise was the ongoing effort to maintain a balance of power between free and slave states. Prior to California, there were 15 of each, with Florida and Texas being the last slave states added in 1845 and Iowa and Wisconsin being the last free states added in 1846 and 1848. The compromise included key provisions supporting the institution of slavery which placated the southern concern about the addition of a new free state. (Initially, California was required to include a pro-slavery representative in their congressional delegation.)
The overall effect of the compromise actually clarified some of the political loyalties and could be said to have simplified the question, whereby Garrison renewed his focus on the basic moral question. "The issue, he insisted, was the manner in which the covenant with slavery tainted the Union and corrupted the very idea of liberty. "I am for union ... but not for SLAVERY and UNION ... this is the issue we make before the country and the world." (Mayer quoting Garrison). Mayer further comments, "To the degree that the abolitionists convinced people to regard the controversy not as a struggle over the status of new states but, in Theodore Parker's phrase, as "a great contest between the Idea of Freedom and the Idea of Slavery," they turned the debate from its cryptic preoccupation with technicalities into a more searching inquiry about civic morality." (Meyer, 398)
Another chapter in this story represents the muddling of the underlying moral issue of freedom - that of the transition of Daniel Webster in his support of the compromise. Webster had risen to prominence as a constitutional lawyer, member of congress, Secretary of State, and leader of the Whig Party which emphasized Unionism and the Constitution and included strong antislavery elements. In his support of the compromise, however, and in particular in a lengthy speech before Congress in March of 1850, Webster defended, on constitutional grounds of protecting property, the fugitive slave provision for the capture and return of suspected runaway slaves, and on the territorial expansion issue, he sidestepped the moral question by suggesting that it would unnecessary to prohibit slavery in the western and norther expansion because the geography and climate would likely not support the practice. Webster had been among the most prominent U.S. political leaders for decades and ran for president several times. But his role in the compromise and the sense in which he lost his way on the moral questions of slavery seems to have damaged his further political ambitions, rather than furthered them, as certainly was his intention. Characteristically, Garrison was relentless in his criticism, as in fact Webster's speech was widely denounced throughout the north. "With his propagandist skill the editor (WLG) instantly replaced (South Carolina Senator John) Calhoun, who died on March 31, with Webster as the abolitionists' antihero. In Garrison's entire journalistic career, he said, no speech had "so powerfully shocked the moral sense, or so grievously insulted the intelligence of the people," and by devoting so much attention to it, he made Webster personify the moral deficiency of the compromise and the dough-faced complicity required for its success." (Meyer, 400-01)
The 1850 Compromise held off the looming national conflict temporarily, but it signaled to the antislavery movement the unwillingness of Congress to take any definitive action against slavery. Meanwhile, for supporters of slavery, efforts to maintain power and increase the reach of slavery into any prospective national expansion were frustrated (including a notion of claiming Cuba or even Nicaragua). In fact, two more free states, Minnesota and Oregon, were added by 1859.
Given the entrenchment of slavery in the southern states and with the national expansion of free states, the conflict continued to build. Political power was required to maintain the long term interests of the slave holders. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 stipulated that the future status of these territories could be determined by popular sovereignty (vote). This brought into these territories some of the more extreme and determined elements of slavery and antislavery interests, resulting in widespread armed conflict for several years, particularly in Kansas.
To be continued.
Note (1) "Congress would declare it "inexpedient" to abolish slavery in the District (Washington, D.C.) unless (or until) the state of Maryland and the voters of the District should agree to it and plans were made to compensate the owners." (Meyer, 395)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mayer, H. (1998). All On Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Slave States and Free States. (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia: https://www.wikipedia.org/
The Compromise of 1850. (n.d.). Retrieved from U.S. History: http://www.ushistory.org/us/