Compromise of 1850

The Compromise of 1850 was a group of measures agreed to by northern and southern interests in Congress that imposed limits on the expansion of slavery, but protected it where it already existed. After the Mexican-Ameri-can War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States gained the territory north of the Rio Grande and south of the 49th parallel. The acquisition of new land rekindled the flames of animosity between northerners and southerners over the extension of slavery into the West. This controversy was really a continuation of the problems first addressed by the Missouri Compromise in 1820, which had temporarily settled the issue of which states within the Louisiana Purchase would be free and which slave. This new territory, however, was not part of Louisiana and thus did not fall under the 1820 agreement. Tensions over slavery had worsened since the Missouri controversy, as abolitionists launched their impassioned antislavery campaigns and new fugitive slave laws were passed that angered northerners.

In 1842 the U. S. Supreme Court had ruled that officials in free states were not required to enforce fugitive slave laws—enforcement of a law that involves more than one state should be a federal responsibility. With this ruling in mind, southerners pushed for the creation of a national fugitive slave law. Usually the southern slaveholder position relied on the rhetoric of states’ rights, but in this instance their economic interest in seeing runaway slaves returned outweighed their devotion to state sovereignty. At the same time, abolitionists were campaigning to end the slave trade in Washington, D. C., seeing this practice as especially offensive when committed in the capital of a democratic nation. Tensions were also rising on the border between Texas and New Mexico. Texas claimed almost half of what is now the state of New Mexico. The terms of Texas’s annexation to the United States permitted the territory to be divided into as many as five new states. Because Texas was a slave state, the acquisition of the new territory in New Mexico could mean the creation of yet another slave state. Concern over balancing the number of free and slave states made the problems between Texas and New Mexico a troubling development.

These three controversies—all connected to slavery and its future—angered southerners and northerners more than any problem since the Missouri controversy. Some southern states began to decry northern aggression and call for secession. Animosity was so great in Congress that representatives could not agree on a new Speaker of the House, and debates became shrill to the point of violence. Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, the promoter of compromise in 1820, once again proposed a solution to save the Union, introducing eight proposals in the Senate in January 1850. The first six proposals were grouped in pairs, one favorable to the north, one to the south. In the first pair of proposals, California would be admitted as a free state while allowing the Mexico cession to be established without any restrictions on slavery. In the second, the border conflict between Texas and New Mexico would be resolved in New Mexico’s favor, while Texas would be compensated for its loss by helping the state pay off bonds it had issued when it was a republic (a plan that benefited the mostly southern bondholders). In the third set of proposals, the slave trade would be abolished in the nation’s capital, but slavery would remain legal there unless neighbor states Maryland and Virginia approved its abolition. The final two proposals eventually proved to be the most thorny and contradictory: Congress would have no jurisdiction over the interstate slave trade, while the last element of the proposal supported the creation of a national fugitive slave law.

Debate over Clay’s compromise was prolonged and fierce. Senate leaders John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, and William H. Seward gave powerful speeches on the proposals. At the heart of their remarks was the basic conflict between states’ rights and the preservation of the Union. Calhoun argued that the Constitution protected slavery and that states’ rights were sacrosanct. Webster called for compromise, appealing to the idea of an American identity larger than any single state interest. In his desire to compromise, Webster accepted the national fugitive slave law. Seward rejected this compromise position. For him, slavery and compromise were both wrong. He appealed to the concept of a higher moral law, one that valued the liberty of all over the privileges of a few.

In the end, after exhaustive arguments, the compromise package that passed in the Senate resembled Clay’s initial proposals closely. He had decided to group all the proposals in one bill, hoping the whole compromise would pass because senators and congressmen would vote for the parts of which they approved. The opposite happened: legislators mostly voted against the package because they opposed certain proposals within it. After months of hard work fashioning a solution, Clay was discouraged. Retreating to Newport for his health, he charged Senator Stephen A. Douglas with the task of defending the compromise. Douglas decided to shift tactics, separating the elements of the compromise into different bills and building coalitions to support each one. In July 1850 President Zachary Taylor died suddenly. Taylor had opposed the compromise, but the new president, Millard Fillmore, approved of it. Fillmore’s support, combined with Douglas’s division of the proposals, led to the successive passage of the compromise measures in August and September of 1850.

Most legislators were pleased and relieved by the result, hoping the Compromise of 1850 would at last heal the divisions between North and South, but diehard partisans on both sides viewed the compromise as a betrayal. The results of the compromise were different than predicted: California and the western territories voted in favor of the South throughout the 1850s, and slavery would actually be legalized in New Mexico and Utah. But by far the most incendiary feature of the compromise was the passage of a national fugitive slave law, which allowed federal commissioners to issue warrants for fugitive slaves. Once runaways were captured, slaveholders came before the commissioner to prove ownership. The standards of proof were minimal, and fugitives were barred from testifying. These slave-catching endeavors were paid for with federal money, and federal marshals were required to assist in the retrieval of runaways. Northerners who harbored fugitives or refused to help find them could be heavily fined or even imprisoned.

Abolitionists condemned the law for violating civil liberties and accused southern slaveholders of immorality and hypocrisy. After decades of promoting states’ rights, southerners were relying on the power of the federal government to return their property. This self-serving shift, and the blatant abuses of the slave-catchers, angered some northerners who had never before considered themselves abolitionists. Most did not consider blacks as equals, but they were shocked by the violation of liberties they witnessed as the fugitive slave law was enforced. Some northern states passed personal-liberty laws in the mid-1850s and refused to help southerners recapture their slaves. Thus, the divisions between North and South actually increased as a result of the Compromise of 1850. The violent incidents and political hostility steadily increased over the next 10 years, leading eventually to southern secession and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.

Further reading: Holman Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of1850 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1964); Edwin Charles Rozwenc, The Compromise of 1850 (Boston: Heath, 1957); Mark J. Steg-maier, Texas, New Mexico, and the Compromise of 1850: Boundary Dispute and Sectional Crisis (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1996).

—Eleanor H. McConnell