The Slavery Debate
Although Taylor’s silence on the issue quieted the debate
for about a year, the issue was revived when California and Utah applied
for statehood. California’s population had boomed after the 1849gold rush had
attracted thousands of prospectors, while barren Utah had blossomed
due to the ingenuity of several thousand Mormons. The question arose
whether these states should be admitted as free states or slave
states. The future of slavery in Washington, D.C., was likewise
in question.
A great debate ensued in Congress over the future of these
three regions as Southerners attempted to defend their
economic system while Northerners decried the evils of slavery.
In Congress, the dying John C. Calhoun argued that
the South still had every right to nullify unconstitutional laws
and, if necessary, to secede from the Union it created. Daniel
Webster and Henry Clay, on the other hand, championed the
Union and compromise. Webster in particular pointed out
that discussion over the expansion of slavery in the West was moot
because western lands were unsuitable for growing cotton.
The Compromise of 1850
In the end, the North and South agreed to compromise.
Although Clay was instrumental in getting both sides to agree, he
and Calhoun were too elderly and infirm to negotiate concessions
and draft the necessary legislation. This task fell to a younger
generation of politicians, especially the “Little Giant” Stephen
Douglas, so named for his short stature and big mouth. A
Democratic senator from Illinois, Douglas was responsible for pushing
the finished piece of legislature through Congress.
The Compromise of 1850,
as it was called, was a bundle of legislation that everyone
could agree on. First, congressmen agreed that California would
be admitted to the Union as a free state (Utah was not admitted
because the Mormons refused to give up the practice of polygamy).
The fate of slavery in the other territories, though, would be determined
by popular sovereignty. Next, the slave trade (though
not slavery itself) was banned in Washington, D.C. Additionally, Texas had to
give up some of its land to form the New Mexican territory in exchange
for a cancellation of debts owed to the federal government. Finally,
Congress agreed to pass a newer and tougher Fugitive Slave
Act to enforce the return of escaped slaves to
the South.
A Northern Victory in 1850
Though both sides agreed to it, the Compromise of 1850 clearly favored
the North over the South. California’s admission as a free state
not only set a precedent in the West against the expansion of slavery,
but also ended the sectional balance in the Senate, with sixteen
free states to fifteen slave states. Ever since the Missouri Compromise,
this balance had always been considered essential to prevent the
North from banning slavery. The South also conceded to end the slave
trade in Washington, D.C., in exchange for debt relief for Texans
and a tougher Fugitive Slave Law. Southerners were willing to make
so many concessions because, like Northerners, they truly believed
the Compromise of 1850 would
end the debate over slavery. As it turned out, of course, they were
wrong.
The Fugitive Slave Law
Ironically, the 1850Fugitive
Slave Act only fanned the abolitionist flame rather than
put it out. Even though many white Americans in the North felt little
love for blacks, they detested the idea of sending escaped slaves
back to the South. In fact, armed mobs in the North freed captured
slaves on several occasions, especially in New England, and violence
against slave catchers increased despite the federal government’s
protests. On one occasion, it took several hundred troops and a
naval ship to escort a single captured slave through the streets
of Boston and back to the South. The Fugitive Slave Act thus allowed
the abolitionists to transform their movement from a radical one
to one that most Americans supported.
