Textbook
Senator Henry Clay's so-called "omnibus" proposal in late January 1850 to find a national accommodation over a variety of sectional issues plaguing the nation ultimately did lead to a compromise of sorts in September of that year. The compromise failed to settle any major arguments but did allow for a series of legislative agreements, including the admission of California as a free state and the passage of a tougher federal fugitive slave law that temporarily quieted the national debate over slavery. (By Matthew Pinsker)
Note Cards
Compromise of 1850 (Boyer, 1995)
Clay's proposed compromise included several parts: (1) The admission of California as a free state. (2) The organization of land acquired from Mexico (except California) into territories on the basis of popular sovereignty." Thus the settlers might decide for themselves whether or not they wanted slavery in their territory. (3) A payment of $10 million to Texas by the United States, if Texas abandoned all claims to New Mexico east of the Rio Grande. (4) The abolition of the slave trade -- that is, of buying and selling of slaves, but not of slavery itself in the District of Columbia. (5) A more effective fugitive slave law, one that would compel state and local law enforcement officials to aid federal officials in the capture and return of runaway slaves.
Paul Boyer, Todd & Curti’s: The American Nation (Austin: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1995), 396.
Compromise of 1850 (McPherson, 2001)
Textbook
Whatever the ambiguities and ironies of the Compromise, it did avert a grave crisis in 1850 – or at least postponed it. Most Americans – even those who disliked the Compromise – breathed a sigh of relief. Moderates in both parties and in both sections took their cue from President Fillmore, who announced that the Compromise was “a final and irrevocable settlement” of sectional differences. Acceptance of the compromise was more hearty in the South than in the North. Most Southerners, especially Whigs, regarded it as a Southern victory. “We of the South had a new lease for slave property,” wrote a North Carolina Whig. “It was more secure than it had been for the last quarter of a century.”
These sentiments blunted the fire-eaters’ drive to keep disunionism alive. In four lower-South-states – South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi – Unionist coalitions of Whigs and moderate Democrats defeated efforts by Southern Rights Democrats to win control of the state governments and to call secession conventions. The Georgia Unionists in December 1850 adopted resolutions that furnished a platform for the South during the next decade. It was a platform of conditional Unionist. Although Georgia did “not wholly approve” of the Compromise, she would “abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this sectional controversy.”
These sentiments blunted the fire-eaters’ drive to keep disunionism alive. In four lower-South-states – South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi – Unionist coalitions of Whigs and moderate Democrats defeated efforts by Southern Rights Democrats to win control of the state governments and to call secession conventions. The Georgia Unionists in December 1850 adopted resolutions that furnished a platform for the South during the next decade. It was a platform of conditional Unionist. Although Georgia did “not wholly approve” of the Compromise, she would “abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this sectional controversy.”
James M. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001), 75.
Compromise 1850 (Cayton, 2002)
Textbook
In 1793, a federal law gave muscle to the provision by authorizing slave owners to enter other states to recapture their slave property. Proclaiming the 173 law a license to kidnap free blacks, northern states in the 1830s began passing "personal liberty laws" that provided fugitives with some protection.
James L. Roark, et al., eds., The American Promise: A History of the United States, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), 457.
Compromise 1850 (Divine, 2007)
Textbook
Clay's compromise plan, proposed in February 1850, took several months to get through Congress. One obstacle was President Taylor's firm resistance to the proposal; another was the difficulty of getting congressmen to vote for it in the form of a single package or "omnibus bill." Few politicians from either section were willing to go on record as supporting the key concessions to the other section. The logjam was broken in July by two crucial developments: President Taylor died and was succeeded by Millard Fillmore, who favored the compromise; and a decision was made to abandon the omnibus strategy in favor of a series of measures that could be voted on separately.
Robert A. Divine, et al., The American Story, 3rd ed., vol. 1 (New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2007), 355.
Compromise 1850 (Dorf, 2003)
Textbook
Finally, Senator Stephen Douglas proposed a plan to unify the North and South. His idea was to divide Clay's plan into a series of bills. Members of Congress could vote for the bills they approved and not vote for the bills they opposed. The new laws, known as the Compromise of 1850, were passed by Congress. Many people thought that the compromise would settle the issue of slavery. It did prevent a war-- but only for ten years.
Linda Dorf, et al., eds., American History (Parsippany, NJ: Globe Fearon, Pearson Learning Group, 2003), 384.
Compromise 1850 (King, 1986)
Textbook
John C. Calhoun warned that agitation over slavery and the North's actoion would snap "the cords which bind these states together…nothing will be left to hold the states together except force." He would rather see the South secede from the Union, and prayed that the separation would be peaceful.
David C. King, et al., United States History: Presidential Edition (Menlo Park CA: Addison–Wesley Publishing Company, 1986), 266.
Compromise 1850 (Nash, 1998)
Textbook
The Compromise of 1850, however, only delayed more serious sectional conflict. It added two new ingredients to American politics. The first hinted at the realignment of parties along sectional lines. Political leaders as different as Calhoun, Webster, Van Buren and New York senator William Seward all flirted with or committed themselves to new parties. Second, although repudiated by most ordiinary citizen, ideas like secessionism, disunion, and a "higher law" than the Contistution entered more and more political discussion. Some people wondered whether the question of slavery in the territories could be compromised awat the next time it arose.
Gary B. Nash, et al., eds., The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society, 4th ed. (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1998), 467.
Compromise 1850 (Todd, 1986)
Textbook
Clay's proposed compromise included several parts: (1) The admission of California as a free state. (2) The organization of land acquired from Mexico (except California) into territories on the basis of "popular sovereignty." Thus the settlers might decide for themselves whether or not they wanted slavery in their territory. (3) A payment of $10 million to Texas by the United States, if Texas abandoned all claims to New Mexico east of the Rio Grande. (4) The abolition of the slave trade -- that is, of buying and selling of slaves, but not of slavery itself in the District of Columbia. (5) A more effective fugitive slave law, one that would compel state and local law enforcement officials to aid federal officials in the capture and return of runaway slaves.
Lewis Paul Todd and Merle Curti, Triumph of the American Nation (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), 396.
People
Documents
Bibliography
Chicago Style Entry | Link |
---|---|
Freehling, William W. The Road to Disunion. Vol. 1, Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. | View Record |
Gienapp, William E. "The Whig Party, the Compromise of 1850, and the Nomination of Winfield Scott." Presidential Studies Quarterly 14, no. 3 (1984): 399-415. | View Record |
Hodder, Frank Heywood. "The Authorship of the Compromise of 1850." The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 22, no. 4 (1936): 525-536. | View Record |
Holt, Michael F. The Political Crisis of the 1850s. New York: W W Norton & Company, 1983. | View Record |
Holt, Michael F. The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. | View Record |
Huston, James L. "Southerners Against Secession: The Arguments of the Constitutional Unionists in 1850-51." Civil War History 46, no. 4 (2000): 281-299. | View Record |
Lee, R. Alton. "Slavery and the Oregon Territorial Issue: Prelude to the Compromise of 1850." Pacific Northwest Quarterly 64, no. 3 (1973): 112-119. | View Record |
Parks, Joseph H. “John Bell and the Compromise of 1850.” Journal of Southern History 9 (August 1943): 328-356. | View Record |
Smith, Earl. "William Cooper Nell on the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850." Journal of Negro History 66 (1981): 37-40. | View Record |
Stegmaier, Mark J. “Zachary Taylor Versus The South.” Civil War History 33, no. 3 (1987): 219-241. | View Record |
Varon, Elizabeth R. Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. | View Record |