Compromise of 1850

Discussions on the compromise of 1850 in the US Senate

The compromise of 1850 (English Compromise of 1850 ) consisted of several laws with which the antagonism between the slave-holding southern states and the slave-free northern states of the USA should be softened, which was exacerbated by the massive territorial gains in the Mexican-American War (1846-48) would have.

1820 was the Missouri Compromise was agreed that in all the states of the north Compromise Line (36 ° 30 'latitude), with the exception of Missouri that slavery should be prohibited. However, by winning the war against Mexico and the Guadalupe Hidalgo peace treaty , the US made large land gains south of this line in 1848, shifting the balance in favor of the southern states.

President Taylor brought some firm convictions with him to the White House after his 1848 election victory , including the stance on the slave issue. Although even slaveholders and not ready for economic reasons to renounce, he rejected the institution from principle. Since the preservation of the Union was his top priority, he did not want to endanger it by prohibiting slavery in the southern states or by spreading it. In addition, expansion of slavery into the new territories was not economically feasible. Slavery, a cardinal issue of its time, touched all the political issues that Taylor dealt with as president. With regard to the admission of California and New Mexico to the United States, it was debated whether this should be done as a free or a slave state. The members of the southern states saw the accession of California, which had given itself an abolitionist constitution, and New Mexico irrevocably canceled the balance of 15 free and as many slave states in the Senate and weakened their home states. Due to demographic shifts , they were already in the minority in the House of Representatives, which is why they defended their interests ever more rigidly out of fear of further loss of power. In addition, they saw their way of life more and more threatened by the economic dynamism of the “old northwest” and the northeastern states as well as the strengthening of the abolitionists there. In return for their approval, they demanded that the president guarantee the future of the slave economy as a whole. So Calhoun called in January 1849 for a caucus of the members of the Congress from the southern states, which should develop an instrument to protect their interests. With slaves fleeing to the north, slavery also directly affected free states. The slave states have long called for a tightening of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, i.e. legislation against fleeing slaves. With the membership applications from New Mexico and California, threats from the slave states grew louder, even the fact that the president was a slave planter from Mississippi did nothing to change that. Even a marginal aspect of foreign policy such as filibuster expeditions became previously unknown explosive. More and more people from the south equipped such ventures, especially for Cuba , because they wanted to win slave-holding societies as new territories for the Union.

In the course of 1849 Taylor lost more and more support among the southern Whigs and approached the party wing of the New England and Central Atlantic states around Seward and Weed. This also happened because the alliance of Democrats and Free Soil Party in the “old northwest” increasingly threatened the assertiveness of his government, especially since he was the first president in history to have a majority neither in the Senate nor in the House of Representatives. When the Congress met again in December 1849 after a two-month break, the rift between the northern and southern states became evident. It was only after 63 ballots that the Speaker of the House of Representatives was elected and the danger of secession in the southern states became a catchphrase of the crisis. Taylor was so upset by the separatist threats from the south that he moved even closer to the abolitionist Whigs around Seward. At the end of January 1850, he pushed in Congress for the immediate admission of California and New Mexico to the Union, opposing the principle of “popular sovereignty” at the level of the federal territories and a western extension of the Missouri Compromise Line. According to historian James M. McPherson , one ulterior motive was to expose the threat of secession in the southern states as a bluff.

From January onwards, the Senate debated so fiercely over membership applications and a new Fugitive Slave Act that it scared the more experienced and moderate MPs. The North-South conflict within the parties went so far that they no longer functioned as a unit. Among the three great politicians of the time - Calhoun, Webster and Clay - it was above all the latter who shaped the debate as the majority leader in the Senate . Clay and Taylor would have been natural allies as leading Whigs in the White House and Congress, especially since both were slave owners who opposed the further spread of slavery. However, they showed no interest in working together. In the debate, Clay, known as the “great compromise finder”, was soon so strongly represented on the national stage that some suspected that the president was jealous of him. By January 29, Clay developed a compromise proposal with Webster. Webster belonged to the group of "Cotton Whigs" (German: "Cotton Whigs") who supported the slave owners in the south because the manufacturing industry in the north, such as the cotton mills in New England, depended on the large cotton plantations in the south . Their proposal took the form of several resolutions in the Senate and provided for California to be admitted as a free state, New Mexico and Utah as territories to be left to decide on slavery itself, and Texas to be financially compensated for the waiver of its territorial claims against New Mexico. Clay's compromise proposal also saw a ban on the slave trade in the District of Columbia and a new, more rigid Fugitive Slave Act to please the southern states . The last of Clay's legislative proposals was a proclamation on the free movement of slave trade between states. This compromise in the Senate would have broken the balance between free and slave states in favor of the north and given the south a more solid legal basis for slavery as an institution.

This legislative package was debated in Congress until April without finding a majority. For the north, the Fugitive Slave Act in particular was unreasonable, which obliged its citizens to support authorities in the pursuit of slaves who had fled. On February 23, MPs Stephens, Toombs and Thomas Lanier Clingman met the president and demanded that slavery be cleared in all federal territories in return for an abolitionist state of California. They hinted at a secession of the southern states if no compromise of this kind can be found. This kindled Taylor's anger. He accused them of threatening rebellion and announced that he would fight any separatist movement with military force. Two days later, Henry S. Foote proposed the formation of a Senate committee that should find a majority acceptable compromise. It was finally set up on April 18, chaired by Clay, and consisted of six members each from the northern and southern states. On March 4, the terminally ill Calhoun made his last appearance in the Senate, where he took an extreme position. He threatened secession of the southern states if Congress did not open all territories to slavery and called for an amendment to the United States Constitution that guaranteed the southern states equal participation in power. More radical than him was the group of the “fire eater” (German: “Eisenfresser”), who considered North and South to be irreconcilable and called for secession. But with this position you were still in the minority. Three days later, Webster appeared, who called for unity and, in the spirit of the Cotton Whigs, campaigned for an alliance between the affluent bourgeoisie of the north and the planter aristocracy of the south. A decisive signal was his approval of the new Fugitive Slave Act. Webster's views were recognized nationwide and partly helped to prepare the coming compromise, even if they hardly moved anything in the Senate at first.

Vice President Fillmore was largely ignored in this debate by Taylor, who relied on Seward as a key adviser and ally in Congress. The fact that the president cooperated so closely with an opponent of slavery led many southerners to see Taylor as a traitor to their social class . Seward was firmly against the compromise, declaring in the Senate on March 13th that slavery was a "backward, unjust and dying institution" that violated God's law of equality for all people. When the President lost his composure after this speech and had a counter-declaration printed in the Republic , Seward's opponents hoped that he had lost his influence in the White House. A week later, however, they were on friendly terms again. The fact that in early June he instructed his son Richard to buy a new plantation with 85 slaves shows that Taylor, despite the protracted debate, was not afraid of slavery as an institution . The debate remained so heated that a day before the Senate Compromise Committee was set up, a shootout between Foote and Benton could only be prevented with great difficulty in the Senate Chamber.

On May 8, the Senate Committee presented its results, which closely resembled Clays' original compromise proposal. Taylor was resolutely against what he mockingly called the “Omnibus Bill” (German: “Law for All”), refused to negotiate with Congress and would have blocked it with a veto if it were passed . This was unlikely for the time being, as only a third of the Congress was behind the “Omnibus Bill”. Taylor and most of the Northern Whigs feared that the opening of New Mexico and Utah as federal territories would become ineligible for slavery in the north. The President rejected the Fugitive Slave Act proposed by the Senate Committee, the monitoring of which was to be a federal matter in the future, as a too far-reaching concession to the slave states. He also called for the two-state plan to include California and New Mexico as federal states in the Union without concessions to the south. By early summer, Clay and Taylor had almost become rivals. Eisenhower places the responsibility for this disturbed relationship mainly with Clay, who always viewed Taylor as a political newcomer and found it so difficult to submit to him. In contrast, Bauer cites the reasons for the break between the two primarily in the person of Taylor. The president had found it difficult to properly recognize the merits of others, which is why he was offended by Clay's great influence in Congress. In order to prove that he did not need Clay, he had set himself apart from him. This was compounded by a specific incident in April 1850, when Clay lost in thought and did not greet Taylor when they met on the street. The President found this a personal insult. At that time Taylor was trying, possibly with the support of Clayton, Meredith, Preston and especially Seward, to forge a new coalition of abolitionist Northern Whigs and Union-loyal Southern Whigs, which is very similar to the establishment of the Republicans as a party of moderate anti- slavery by former Whigs a few years later.

After the results of the Senate Committee were announced, the debate in Congress focused on this compromise proposal and the calls for secession fell silent. When Clay attacked Taylor's two-state plan on May 21, their rift was final. The White House responded with a scathing criticism of Clay in the Republic and the dismissal of chief editor Bullitt when he refused to print the text. Gradually a majority in favor of the compromise solution emerged and on July 1, Fillmore warned the president that he would vote for it in the Senate. This was not the only sign of the deterioration of the Taylor administration, as the exhausted Clayton had written his resignation as Secretary of State two weeks earlier. In the first few days of July some delegations from Southern Whigs visited Taylor and tried unsuccessfully to dissuade him from the two-state plan. He pointed out quite pragmatically that he could not risk the votes of the 84 Northern Whigs for the faction of the 29 Southern Whigs in Congress. Meanwhile, Taylor's most loyal Senate supporter, John Bell , began a day-long speech in the Capitol on July 3 in defense of the two-state plan that went on after Taylor was dying. After Taylor's death, the way to a compromise solution was free, as his successor Fillmore supported her. In September the five laws that formed the compromise of 1850 were passed, which provided only a temporary solution and did not prevent the civil war in the following decade.

With the compromise of 1850, California was newly admitted to the Union as a slave-free state. This gave the free states a predominance of 32:30 votes in the Senate . Texas waived areas east of the Rio Grande in exchange for monetary compensation . From these and other areas ceded by Mexico, the New Mexico Territory was formed, which included the current states of New Mexico and Arizona . In this territory it was determined that the population could decide for themselves whether the states should remain slave-free. In the District of Columbia , where slavery was allowed, the slave trade was banned. In addition, a slave flight law was passed, which obliged the US marshals to arrest slaves who had fled to the north in order to hand them over to their owners.

The compromise made the Wilmot Proviso obsolete, which would have forbidden the extension of slavery to territories acquired by Mexico, but which never became law due to the blockade of southern senators. The tensions between the states, calmed down by the compromise, grew again through the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 until they ultimately led to civil war .

literature

• Michael F. Holt: Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850 Univ. Prof. Kentucky 2005 ISBN 978-0813191362 .
• Department of American Studies: The Compromise of 1850 Wildside Press 2009 ISBN 978-1434450661 .
• K. Jack Bauer: Zachary Taylor: Soldier, planter, statesman of the old Southwest. Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge 1985, ISBN 0-8071-1237-2 , pp. 289-313 (= XV. The President faces Disunion ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ K. Jack Bauer: Zachary Taylor: Soldier, planter, statesman of the old Southwest. P. 289.
2. ^ Jörg Nagler: Zachary Taylor (1849-1850): The apolitical president. In: Christof Mauch (ed.): The American Presidents: 44 historical portraits from George Washington to Barack Obama. 6th, continued and updated edition. Pp. 153–157, here: p. 156.
3. ↑ K. Jack Bauer: Zachary Taylor: Soldier, planter, statesman of the old Southwest. P. 296.
4. ↑ K. Jack Bauer: Zachary Taylor: Soldier, planter, statesman of the old Southwest. P. 295f.
5. ^ John SD Eisenhower: Zachary Taylor. Pp. 99, 101f., 106.
   James M. McPherson: Dying for Freedom: The History of the American Civil War. Anaconda, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-86647-267-9 , pp. 59f. (English: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York 1988. Translated by Christa Seibicke).
6. ↑ K. Jack Bauer: Zachary Taylor: Soldier, planter, statesman of the old Southwest. Pp. 296-298, 300.
   John SD Eisenhower: Zachary Taylor. 121.
   James M. McPherson: Dying for Freedom: The Story of the American Civil War. Anaconda, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-86647-267-9 , p. 61f. (English: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York 1988. Translated by Christa Seibicke).
7. ↑ K. Jack Bauer: Zachary Taylor: Soldier, planter, statesman of the old Southwest. Pp. 297, 301f.
   John SD Eisenhower: Zachary Taylor. Pp. 121-124.
8. ↑ James M. McPherson: Dying for Freedom: The Story of the American Civil War. Anaconda, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-86647-267-9 , p. 61f. (English: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York 1988. Translated by Christa Seibicke).
9. ↑ K. Jack Bauer: Zachary Taylor: Soldier, planter, statesman of the old Southwest. Pp. 303-307.
   John SD Eisenhower: Zachary Taylor. Pp. 124-127.
   Jörg Nagler: Zachary Taylor (1849-1850): The apolitical president. In: Christof Mauch (ed.): The American Presidents: 44 historical portraits from George Washington to Barack Obama. 6th, continued and updated edition. Pp. 153–157, here: pp. 156f.
10. ↑ James M. McPherson: Dying for Freedom: The Story of the American Civil War. Anaconda, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-86647-267-9 , p. 60 (English: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York 1988. Translated by Christa Seibicke).
11. ↑ James M. McPherson: Dying for Freedom: The Story of the American Civil War. Anaconda, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-86647-267-9 , p. 66 (English: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York 1988. Translated by Christa Seibicke).
12. ↑ K. Jack Bauer: Zachary Taylor: Soldier, planter, statesman of the old Southwest. P. 306.
    John SD Eisenhower: Zachary Taylor. P. 128f.
13. ↑ James M. McPherson: Dying for Freedom: The Story of the American Civil War. Anaconda, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-86647-267-9 , p. 66f. (English: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York 1988. Translated by Christa Seibicke).
14. ^ John SD Eisenhower: Zachary Taylor. P. 127f.
15. ↑ K. Jack Bauer: Zachary Taylor: Soldier, planter, statesman of the old Southwest. P. 307f.
16. ↑ K. Jack Bauer: Zachary Taylor: Soldier, planter, statesman of the old Southwest. Pp. 309-311.
17. ↑ K. Jack Bauer: Zachary Taylor: Soldier, planter, statesman of the old Southwest. Pp. 309-312.
18. ^ John SD Eisenhower: Zachary Taylor. P. 139f.