Topic 5.4 Compromise of 1850

The Wilmot Proviso

• anti-slavery democrat

• introduced amendment prohibiting “slavery nor involuntary servitude” in “any part of said territory”

• passed in house, but defeated in the Senate, where Southerners held the balance

President Polk

Supported proposal to extend the Missouri Compromise Line through the new territories to the Pacific Coast, banning slavery north of the line and permitting it south

Popular Sovereignty

• Plan that would allow the people of each territory to decide the status of slavery in that territory

• In reality, it allowed Congress to escape the responsibility of deciding the question of slavery in the newly acquired territories themselves

Election of 1448

• Debates over slavery in the territories dragged on for months

• Whigs were victorious in the election with their candidate Zachery Taylor

Free-Soil Party

• Former President ran on the newly-formed third-party ticket

• Lost, but received 10% of the votes

• 10 free-soilers were elected to Congress, signaling the growing issue of slavery and the coming collapse of the second party system in the 1850s

Gold Rush

• Precipitated the need for territorial government

• federal government,however, was at this point deciding the question of slavery in territories

• President Taylor suggested an uncomplicated answer: admit CA as a state

• Thus letting californians themselves decide on slavery

• This way, the way the nation could avoid the divisive effects of sectional debate

October 1849

• Californians drew up a state constitution that outlawed slavery

• Not for humanitarian reasons, but instead for fear of slave-owning capitol monopolizing the discovery of gold

Henry Clay

Attempted to solve the growing sectional crisis of slave state

Compromise of 1850

• The admission of California as a free state

• The abolition of the slave trade- but not slavery itself - in Washington, DC

• The formation of territorial governments in the rest of the lands acquired from Mexico w/o restrictions on slavery

• New and more effective and strictly enforced fugitive slave law

mid- September 1850

• all components were passed

• CA became the 31st state

• sectional conflict appeared to fade amid booming prosperity and growth