|
While the agreement
incorporated in The
Missouri Compromise of 1820 maintained the balance of slave
and pro-slave states in the territories added to the Union in The
Louisiana Purchase, the issue over slavery's extension into new
territories came up again following the Mexican
War. In December 1845, the U.S. Congress voted to annex the
Texas Republic, and troops led by General Zachary
Taylor were sent to the
 Zachary
Taylor, Commander in Mexican War, 1845-1846, later President
of the United States. Image Source: Library
of Congress |
Rio
Grande to protect the Texas border with Mexico. After clashes
broke out between Mexican troops and Taylor's soldiers, Congress
approved on May 13, 1846 the request
of President James
K. Polk for a declaration of war against Mexico. Two years
of fighting culminated with the U.S. capture of Mexico City
in 1847. The War was formally concluded with the signing of
The Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, in which Mexico surrendered
over half its territory, comprising present-day Arizona, California,
New Mexico, Texas, and parts of Colorado, Nevada and Utah in
exchange for fifteen million dollars to pay for war-related
damage to Mexican property. |
|
|
Prior
to the signing of the Treaty, the issue of whether the new
territory obtained from Mexico would be slave or free was
raised by the Wilmot
Proviso, an amendment introduced by Pennsylvania Congressman
David
Wilmot to an appropriations bill that provided funds to
negotiate a settlement to end the War. The amendment stipulated
that slavery would be barred from all lands acquired from
Mexico as a result of the war. The Wilmot Proviso split both
Whigs and Democrats in the Congress along sectional lines.
Over the four years from 1846 to 1850, Wilmot would introduce
versions of his original proviso that often passed the House,
where Northerners were in the majority, but would fail in
the Senate, where the North and South still had an equal number
of seats. By 1850, 14 of 15 northern state legislatures had
instructed their state Congressional delegations to support
the Proviso, while growing numbers of Southerners asserted
that their states would secede if it ever was enacted.
|
 |
Bulletin
dated September 26, 1847 announcing news of capture of
Mexico City. Image Source: Library
of Congress |
|
The discovery
of gold in California also precipitated a confrontation when the
rapid increase in population led to California petitioning for admission
to the Union as a free state in 1849. President Zachary
Taylor supported admission of California as a free state, and
also believed that the New Mexico territory, when it applied, should
also enter as a free state. In the Senate, William
H. Seward of New York led the abolitionist cause; the South
was most prominently represented by Senator John
C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who had long advanced the position
that the states had the right to nullify federal laws, and Senator
Jefferson Davis of
Mississippi, later to become president of the Confederacy. The Southern
congressmen argued that the South should be given guarantees of
equal position in the territories and of stricter enforcement of
fugitive slave laws, which had been frequently ignored by both public
officials and citizens in free states.
Henry
Clay, who
had resigned from the Senate in 1842, returned in 1849 at the age
of 72, and again was the key source for compromise that averted
the dissolution of the Union. His package of measures, later known
as The Compromise
of 1850, proposed the admission of California as a free state;
the organization of New Mexico and Utah territories without mention
of slavery, with their status to be later decided by the territories
themselves when they were ready to seek admission as states; the
prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia; and
the strengthening of penalties on those violating the fugitive slave
laws. The deferral of the decision on the status of New Mexico and
Utah, later to be labeled as "popular sovereignty", was
initiated by Senator Stephen
A. Douglas of Illinois, who hoped that the package would maintain
not only the Union, but also the fragile coalition of Northern and
Southern Democrats which he sought to keep together for his unsuccessful
presidential campaign in 1852.
The debate over
the Clay legislative package inspired some of the most famous speeches
in the history of the Congress. John
C. Calhoun, who was too weak to deliver his 42-page speech
and would die at the end of the month, sat as Senator James
Murray Mason of Virginia read to the Senate the printed version
Calhoun had prepared. Calhoun's speech argued against further conciliation
and compromise, suggesting that if the North refused to recognize
the South's concerns over the preservation of slavery, it was time
to allow the Union to divide peacefully into two separate nations.Three
days later, Daniel Webster rose to support Clay in a ringing defense
of the Union.
Mr.
President, - I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusetts
man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and a member
of the Senate of the United States. It is fortunate that
there is a Senate of the United States; a body not yet moved
from its propriety, not lost to a just sense of its own
dignity and its own high responsibilities, and a body to
which the country looks, with confidence, for wise, moderate,
patriotic, and healing counsels. It is not to be denied
that we live in the midst of strong agitations, and are
surrounded by very considerable dangers to our institutions
and government. The imprisoned winds are let loose. The
East, the North, and the stormy South combine to throw the
whole sea into commotion, to toss its billows to the skies,
and disclose its profoundest depths. I do not affect to
regard myself, Mr. President, as holding, or as fit to hold,
the helm in this combat with the political elements; but
I have a duty to perform, and I mean to perform it with
fidelity, not without a sense of existing dangers, but not
without hope. I have a part to act, not for my own security
or safety, for I am looking out for no fragment upon which
to float away from the wreck, if wreck there must be, but
for the good of the whole, and the preservation of all;
and there is that which will keep me to my duty during this
struggle, whether the sun and the stars shall appear, or
shall not appear for many days. I speak to-day for the preservation
of the Union. "Hear me for my cause." I speak
to-day, out of a solicitous and anxious heart for the restoration
to the country of that quiet and that harmony which make
the blessings of this Union so rich, and so dear to us all.
These are the topics that I propose to myself to discuss;
these are the motives, and the sole motives, that influence
me in the wish to communicate my opinions to the Senate
and the country; and if I can do any thing, however little,
for the promotion of these ends, I shall have accomplished
all that I expect...
Excerpts
from Senate
Speech of Daniel Webster, March
7, 1850
Source:
Department of History,
Furman University
|
Clay's endorsement
of the compromise helped gain the votes of Northern senators, several
of whom had opposed the provisions of Clay's package calling for
more rigorous enforcement of the fugitive slave law. After further
long debates and an initial failure to pass the compromise incorporated
in a single bill, Congress approved the measures as separate bills
in September 1850.
Despite the
brief period of optimism following the enactment of the compromise,
the issue of the status of slavery in the territories soon re-emerged
when Congress came to consider in 1854 the long-deferred admission
of the Kansas territory to the Union. Under the Missouri
Compromise, the territory's location would provide for its admission
as a free state, but this was vigorously opposed by Southerners.
Stephen Douglas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories
who had advanced the concept of "popular sovereignty"
in the Compromise of 1850, drafted legislation that again contained
the provision that the question of slavery should be left to the
decision of the territorial settlers themselves, and also split
the single Kansas territory into the two proposed states of Kansas
and Nebraska. The assumption was that the Kansas settlers would
choose to enter as a slave state and those in Nebraska as a free
state. The measure repealed the provisions of the Missouri Compromise
which would have prohibited slavery in both territories. After a
three-month debate, the Congress approved the Douglas bill as the
Kansas-Nebraska
Act of 1854.
The Act, however,
led to the violent period that came to be known as "Bleeding
Kansas" as pro and anti-slavery forces attempted to increase
the number of settlers and potential voters within the territory
sharing their respective positions. The New
England Emigrant Aid Company, backed by prominent abolitionists,
sought to raise capital to encourage 20,000 settlers to move to
Kansas by securing reduced railway and steamboat fares and by organizing
them into parties that would establish new communities. Pro-slavery
proponents, many who crossed the border from Missouri to cast illegal
ballots in Kansas, succeeded in electing a pro-slavery majority
to the territorial legislature in 1855. Contending that the election
was invalid, anti-slavery forces established their own competing
legislature. The tensions between extremists on each side led to
violent clashes. In May 1856, proslavery men entered the newly-established
town of Lawrence, burned the Free State Hotel and damaged homes
and stores. In retaliation, the abolitionist John
Brown led a group of men, which included four of Brown's sons,
that dragged five pro-slavery men from their homes and hacked them
to death. Eventually, the clashes would result in the killing of
some 55 people. In 1859, the violence had subsided, and Kansas adopted
a constititution prohibiting slavery, but its admission to the Union
as a free state was blocked by Southerners in the Congress. After
the Southern states had left the Union, Kansas entered the Union
in 1861.
The
Dred Scott Decision
The confrontations
over slavery illustrated by the violence in Kansas were exacerbated
as a result of the Supreme Court's decision announced on March 6,
1857 in the case of Dred
Scott v. Sanford, 19 How. 393. Scott was a slave who had been
taken by his master from the slave state of Missouri to the free
state of Illinois and to Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was
forbidden by the Missouri
Compromise of 1820. After returning to Missouri, he sued, aided
by abolitionist lawyers, for his freedom on the grounds that by
residing in a free state and in a free territory he had been released
from bondage.
Photograph
of Dred Scott Image Source: National
Park Service
 |
Delivering
the opinion of the Court, Chief Justice Roger
B. Taney held that a slave's status was fixed by the laws
of the state in which he lived, and that Scott, as a slave,
could not be a citizen and therefore could not sue in the
federal courts. The opinion went on, however, to state that
since slaves were only property, their status could only be
regulated by state law, and that it was beyond the Constitutional
authority of the Congress to exclude them from any territory.
Even though The
Missouri Compromise already had been repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska
Act of 1854, the Court continued to express the view that
the Missouri Compromise was "not warranted by the Constitution,
and [was] therefore void." This decision, which prohibited
Congress from enforcing the regional compromises that had
kept the fragile truce between North and South, greatly angered
antislavery elements.
|
The decision
was delivered just two days after the inauguration as president
of James
Buchanan, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, who had carefully attempted
to satisfy both North and South in the composition of his Cabinet.
The furore also frustrated his hopes that the Court's decision would
be widely accepted as a final resolution of the question of slavery
in the territories; in his Inaugural
Address, he confidently asserted that the issue was "happily,
a matter of but little practical importance" since the Supreme Court
was about to decide it "speedily and finally" and that "[t]o
their decision, in common with all good citizens, I shall cheerfully
submit, whatever this may be...".
The whole Territorial question
being thus settled upon the principle of popular sovereignty--a
principle as ancient as free government itself--everything
of a practical nature has been decided. No other question
remains for adjustment, because all agree that under the
Constitution slavery in the States is beyond the reach of
any human power except that of the respective States themselves
wherein it exists. May we not, then, hope that the long
agitation on this subject is approaching its end, and that
the geographical parties to which it has given birth, so
much dreaded by the Father of his Country, will speedily
become extinct? Most happy will it be for the country when
the public mind shall be diverted from this question to
others of more pressing and practical importance.
Excerpt
from Inaugural Address of President James Buchanan, March
4, 1857
Source:
The Avalon Project,
Yale Law School
|
Following the
decision, Buchanan requested that Congress admit Kansas as a slave
state, but this provoked opposition from northern Democrats as well
as from the new and growing Republican Party. When Republicans won
a plurality in the House in 1858, every significant bill they passed
was rejected as a result of the southern voting strength in the
Senate or a Presidential veto. As the nation faced the critical
election of 1860, the Congress essentially had reached a stalemate.
Resources
The
African-American Mosaic, Library of Congress Resource Guide for
the Study of Black History & Culture
>>Library of Congress
From
Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection
>>Library of Congress
The
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition
>> Yale Center
for International and Area Studies, Yale
University
Africans
in America >> PBS.org
John
Brown's Holy War >> PBS.org
Slavery
and Abolition, Social
Movemnets and Culture, American Studies Program, Washington State
University
The
Dred Scott Case >>Washngton
University Libraries
The
Dred Scott Decision >>National
Park Service
Educational
Tools
Teacher's
Guide: Africans in America >>PBS.org
Teaching
With Documents Lesson Plan: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo >>
National
Archives & Records Administration
Next>
Election of 1860
Return
to Home Page
|
.jpg)
