Compromise of 1850 Notes (AMSCO 5.4)
The Compromise of 1850
Manifest Destiny and Expansion
U.S. just acquired Mexican Cession (New Mexico and California).
Intensified the debate about the spread of slavery.
Abolitionists and White people eager to settle Western lands without the competition of slave labor opposed expansion.
Slaveowners and people who felt they benefited from slavery wanted the continued growth of slavery.
Most Americans still hoped for compromise that could keep the Union together.
Southern Expansion
Many Southerners resented the Missouri Compromise because it barred slavery from the Louisiana Purchase lands.
They were also dissatisfied with the territorial gains from the Mexican War because they were not large enough.
Manifest Destiny to the South
Many slaveowners hoped to acquire new territories, especially in areas of Latin America where they thought plantations worked by enslaved people were economically feasible.
The most tempting was Cuba
Ostend Manifesto
President Polk offered to purchase Cuba from Spain for $100 million, but Spain refused to sell.
Several Southern adventurers led small expeditions to Cuba in an effort to take the island by force, but were easily defeated.
Elected to the presidency in 1852, Franklin Pierce (democrat) adopted pro-Southern policies and dispatched three American diplomats to Ostend, Belgium, where they secretly negotiated to buy Cuba from Spain.
The agreement that the diplomats drew up, called the Ostend Manifesto, was leaked to the press in the United States.
Antislavery members of Congress reacted angrily and forced President Pierce to drop the scheme.
Walker Expedition
Southern adventurer William Walker had tried unsuccessfully to take Baja California from Mexico in 1853.
Leading a force mostly of Southerners, he seized power in Nicaragua in 1855.
His scheme to develop a proslavery Central American empire collapsed when a coalition of Central American countries invaded his country and defeated him.
Walker was executed by Honduran authorities in 1860.
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850)
American AND Great Britain ambition included building a canal through Central America
Would provide a shortcut to allow ships traveling from the Northern Atlantic to the Northern Pacific to avoid sailing around South America
Great Britain and the United States agreed to the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 - neither nation would attempt to take exclusive control of any future canal route in Central America.
A new treaty signed in 1901 (the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty) gave the United States a free hand to build a canal without British participation.
Gadsden Purchase
Pierce failed to acquire Cuba but succeeded purchasing a small strip of land from Mexico in 1853 for million.
The land was semidesert, it lay on the best route for a railroad through the region.
Known as the Gadsden Purchase, it forms the southern sections of present-day New Mexico and Arizona.
Conflict Over Status of Territories
The issue of slavery in the territories gained in the Mexican War became the focus of sectional differences in the late 1840s.
The Wilmot Proviso, which excluded slavery from the new territories, would have upset the Compromise of 1820 and the delicate balance of 15 free and 15 slave states.
However, the proviso's defeat only increased sectional feelings.
Three Conflicting Positions on Slavery Expansion
Most people held one of three positions on whether to allow slavery in the Western territories.
Free-Soil Movement
Northern Democrats and Whigs supported the Wilmot Proviso and the position that all African Americans-slave and free-should be excluded from the Mexican Cession.
While abolitionists advocated eliminating slavery everywhere, many Northerners who opposed the westward expansion of slavery did not oppose slavery in the South.
They sought to keep the West a land of opportunity for Whites only. This meant keeping out both enslaved and free African Americans.
In 1848, Northerners who opposed allowing slavery in the territories organized the Free-Soil Party, which adopted the slogan "free soil, free labor, and free men."
In addition to its chief objective-preventing the extension of slavery, the new party advocated free public land grants to small farmers and internal improvements such as roads and harbors.
Opposed expansion of slavery from economic reasons but MORAL ones
Southern Positions
Southern plantation owners viewed attempts to restrict the expansion of slavery as violations of their constitutional right to take their property wherever they wished.
They saw the Free-Soilers and the abolitionists as intent on the destruction of slavery.
Some Southerners held more moderate views.
They would agree to extend the Missouri Compromise line westward to the Pacific Ocean and permit territories north of that line to be free of slavery.
Popular Sovereignty
A Democratic senator from Michigan, Lewis Cass, proposed that the slavery matter be determined by a vote of the people who settled in the territory.
Won considerable support from moderates across the country
Cass's approach to the problem was known as popular sovereignty.
The Election of 1848
Democrats, nominated Senator Cass, platform pledged to popular sovereignty.
Whigs nominated General Zachary Taylor, who had never been involved in politics and took no position on slavery in the territories.
Free-Soil Party, opposed expansion, nominated former president Martin Van Buren.
Consisted of Conscience Whigs (who opposed slavery) and antislavery Democrats (ridiculed as “barnburners" because their defection threatened to destroy the Democratic Party).
Taylor narrowly defeated Cass
Compromises to Preserve the Union
The Gold Rush of 1849 and the influx of about 100,000 settlers into California created the need for law and order in the West.
In 1849, Californians drafted a constitution for their new state which banned slavery.
Even though President Taylor was a Southern slaveholder himself, he supported the immediate admission of both California and New Mexico as free states.
At this time, however, the Mexican population of the New Mexico territory had little interest in applying for statehood.
Taylor's plan sparked talk of secession among the "fire-eaters" (radicals) in the South.
Some Southern extremists even met in Nashville in 1850 to discuss secession.
Henry Clay's Compromise Proposal
Admit California to the Union as a free state.
Divide the remainder of the Mexican Cession into two territories-Utah and New Mexico--and allow the settlers in these territories to decide the slavery issue by majority vote, or popular sovereignty.
$10 million to settle a boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico.
Ban the slave trade in the District of Columbia but permit Whites to own enslaved people there as before.
Adopt a new Fugitive Slave Law and enforce it rigorously.
Most controversial
Senate Debate
Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun, delivered their last great speeches.
Webster argued for compromise in order to save the Union, alienating the Massachusetts abolitionists who formed the base of his support.
Calhoun argued against compromise and insisted that the South be given equal rights in the acquired territory.
Northern opposition came from younger antislavery lawmakers, such as Senator William H. Seward of New York, who argued that a higher law than the Constitution existed.
Opponents managed to prevail until the sudden death in 1850 of President Taylor, who had also opposed Clay's plan.
Succeeding him was a strong supporter of compromise, Vice President Millard Fillmore.
Stephen A. Douglas, a young Democratic senator from Illinois, took apart the compromise to pass each part separately.
President Fillmore signed the bills into law.