5.4 The Compromise of 1850

Compromise of 1850, Ostend Manifesto, Walker Expedition, Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, Gadsden Purchase, Free-Soil Movement, Free-Soil Party, popular sovereignty, Lewis Cass, William Cass, Zachary Taylor, barnburners, Henry Clay

Ostend Manifesto (1854)

• secret agreement drafted by President Pierce’s diplomats to purchase Cuba from Spain

• would have benefited southern expansionists

• exposed and shut down by antislavery members of Congress

Walker Expedition (1853-1860)

expansionist scheme to create Central American proslavery empire, not supported by U.S. government, William Walker executed 1860

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850)

agreement between the U.S. and Great Britain that neither of them would take exclusive control of a canal route through Central America

Gadsden Purchase

President Pierce successfully purchased southern sections of present-day New Mexico and Arizona for $10 million from Mexico

positions on slavery expansion

• Free-Soil Movement - wanted to keep all African Americans (free and enslaved) out of the Mexican Cession, formed the Free Soil Party

• southern positions - pro-slavery, more rich = more extreme

• popular sovereignty - moderate solution proposed by Lewis Cass where settlers in an area would vote to determine the status of slavery of the area they settled in

Free-Soil Party

• opposed the expansion of slavery

• advocated public land grants to small farmers and internal improvements

• made of those opposing expansion, conscience (antislavery) Whigs and barnburners (antislavery Democrats)

election of 1848

• Democrats: Lewis Cass and popular sovereignty

• Whigs: General Zachary Taylor, never been in politics, no position on slavery

• Free-Soil Party: Martin Van Buren, opposed expansion

Compromise of 1850

proposed by Henry Clay

• admitted California as a free state

• divided the remaining Mexican Cession into Utah and New Mexico, popular sovereignty

• gained Texas and New Mexico disputed land in exchange for paying off Texas’s $10 million debt

• banned slave trade in DC except in cases of pre-existing ownership

• adopted New Fugitive Slave Law and its rigorous enforcement

passage of Compromise of 1850

President Taylor dies and is succeeded by vice president Millard Fillmore, a strong supporter of compromise, who signed the bills into law