Events
1846
Wilmot Proviso attempts to ban slavery in the West
1848
Mexican War ends
Zachary Taylor elected presidentFree-Soil Party forms
1849
California and Utah request admittance to the Union
1850
Compromise of 1850
Congress passes Fugitive Slave ActTaylor dies; Millard Fillmore becomes president
1852
Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom’s
Cabin
Franklin Pierce elected president
1853
Gadsden Purchase negotiated
1854
Ostend Manifesto exposed
1855
William Walker invades Nicaragua
Key People
-
Zachary Taylor
12th
U.S. president; avoided slavery issue; died sixteen months into
term
-
Millard Fillmore
13th
U.S. president; stepped in for deceased Taylor
-
Franklin Pierce
14th
U.S. president; proslavery Democrat from New England; pursued expansionist
policy in Latin America and the West
-
Lewis Cass
Democratic
presidential candidate in 1848;
proposed popular sovereignty as means of determining free/slave
status of western states
-
Henry Clay
Kentucky
statesman who engineered Compromise of 1850
-
Stephen Douglas
Senator from Illinois; aided passage of the Compromise
of 1850
-
Harriet Tubman
Runaway
slave from Maryland and active abolitionist; key figure in the Underground
Railroad
The Wilmot Proviso
At the end of the Mexican War, many new lands
west of Texas were yielded to the United States, and the debate
over the westward expansion of slavery was rekindled. Southern politicians
and slave owners demanded that slavery be allowed in the West because
they feared that a closed door would spell doom for their economy
and way of life. Whig Northerners, however, believed that slavery should
be banned from the new territories. Pennsylvanian congressman David
Wilmot proposed such a ban in 1846,
even before the conclusion of the war. Southerners were outraged
over this Wilmot Proviso and blocked it before it could
reach the Senate.
Sectional Loyalty Over Party Loyalty
The Wilmot Proviso justified Southerners’ fears that the
North had designs against slavery. They worried that if politicians
in the North prevented slavery from expanding westward, then it
was only a matter of time before they began attacking it in the
South as well. As a result, Southerners in both parties flatly rejected
the proviso. Such bipartisan support was unprecedented and demonstrated
just how serious the South really felt about the issue.
The large land concessions made to the U.S. in the 1848Treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo only exacerbated tensions. Debates in
Congress grew so heated that fistfights even broke out between Northerners and
Southerners on the floor of the House of Representatives. In fact,
sectional division became so pronounced that many historians label
the Mexican War and the Wilmot Proviso the first battles of the
Civil War.
The Election of 1848
Even though the Wilmot Proviso failed, the expansion of
slavery remained the most pressing issue in the election of 1848.
The Whigs nominated Mexican War hero General Zachary Taylor,
a popular but politically inexperienced candidate who said nothing
about the issue in hopes of avoiding controversy.
The Democrats, meanwhile, nominated Lewis Cass.
Also hoping to sidestep the issue of slavery, Cass proposed allowing
the citizens of each western territory to decide for themselves
whether or not to be free or slave. Cass hoped that a platform based
on such popular sovereignty would win him votes in
both the North and South.
The election of 1848 also
marked the birth of the Free-Soil Party, a hodgepodge collection
of Northern abolitionists, former Liberty Party voters, and disgruntled
Democrats and Whigs. The Free-Soilers nominated former president Martin
Van Buren, who hoped to split the Democrats. He succeeded
and diverted enough votes from Cass to throw the election in Taylor’s
favor. (Taylor, however, died after only sixteen months
in office and was replaced by Millard Fillmore.)
