Chapter 14

Manifest destiny gave a new strength to racial superiority “Anglo-Saxon Race” was the key to the history of nations. Blacks, Indians, Hispanics and Catholics were looked at as enemies to this movement

The bronze Statue of Freedom by Thomas Crawford is the crowning feature of the Dome of the United States Capitol. The statue is a classical female figure with long, flowing hair wearing a helmet with a crest composed of an eagle’s head and feathers. The helmet is encircled by nine stars.

The original and final designs for Thomas Crawford’sStatue of Freedom

The plaster model of the statue, which had been in storage for 25 years, was reassembled and restored in the basement rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building, where it was returned to public display in January 1993. In late 2008 the model was relocated to the new Capitol Visitor Center, where it is now a focal point of Emancipation Hall.

Exploring the West

The speed and success of this expansion were a source of deep national pride that created appetites for further expansion. Many Americans looked eagerly westward to the vast unsettled reaches of the Louisiana Purchase to Texas, Santé Fe to trade with Mexico and two the far east

Not until the 1820’s were American companies able to challenge British dominance of the trans-Mississippi fir trade. In 1824 William Henry Ashley of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company

Fur Trading Forts 1800’s

Government Sponsored Exploration

Major Stephen Long mapped the Great Plains in the years 1819-1820 was pat of a show of force meant to frighten British fur trappers out of the West

The federal government sold the western public lands at expense of Indian removal by making long term commitment to commentate the Indian people.

Expansion and Indian Policy

Encroachment on Indian Territory was not long in coming. The territory was crossed by the Santa Fe Trail established in 1821, in the 1840, the northern part was crossed by the heavily traveled Overland's to California, Oregon and the Mormon community in Utah.

The Politics of Expansion

What a prodigious growth this English race, especially the American branch of it, is having! How soon will it subdue and occupy al l the wild parts of this continent and of the islands adjacent. No prophecy, however seemingly extravagant, as to future achievements in this way [is] likely to equal the reality.

American Progress.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlszTacqsSc

The Trans-Mississippi West, 1830s – 1840s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xlzJ6q3iIs

The Whigs celebrated Clay's vision of the "American System" that promoted rapid economic and industrial growth in the United States. Whigs demanded government support for a more modern, market-oriented economy, in which skill, expertise and bank credit would count for more than physical strength or land ownership. Whigs sought to promote faster industrialization through high tariffs, a business-oriented money supply based on a national bank and a vigorous program of government funded "internal improvements," especially expansion of the road and canal systems. To modernize the inner America, the Whigs helped create public schools, private colleges, charities, and cultural institutions. Many were pietistic Protestant reformers who called for public schools to teach moral values and proposed prohibition to end the liquor problem.

The Democrats harkened to the Jeffersonian ideal of an egalitarian agricultural society, advising that traditional farm life bred republican simplicity, while modernization threatened to create a politically powerful caste of rich aristocrats who threatened to subvert democracy. In general the Democrats enacted their policies at the national level, while the Whigs succeeded in passing modernization projects in most states.

The Overland Trail

The Midwest who had been hard hit by the Panic of 1837 and was a reason for moving but economic motives do not tell the whole story. Many men were motivated by as sense of adventure by a desire to experience the unknown or using a common nineteenth.

By 1860 nearly 300,000 men, women and children had braved disease, starvation, the Rocky Mountains and Indian attacks to travel overland to Oregon and California.

Oregon Territory

Land based groups scoured the region for beaver skins as well. In this first ”frontier of inclusion” there were frequent contacts, many of them integrated both Indians and Europeans.

The Midwest farmers who would make up the majority of Oregon's permanent settlers, carried on the wave of enthusiasm known as “Oregon fever and “Oregon fever” and lured by free land and patriotism. By 1845, Oregon boasted 5,000 American settlers, most of them living in the Willamette Valley and laying claim to lands to which they had as yet no legal right, because neither Britain not the United states had concluded land treaties with Oregon’s Indian peoples.

President James K. Polk coined the slogan “fifty-four of fight”. Suggesting that the United States would go to war if it didn't get control of all the territory south of 54’50 or fight. In June 1846, Britain and the United States concluded a treaty but leaving the island of Vancouver in British hands. The British then quietly wound up their declining fur trade in the region. In 1849 the Hudson Bay Company closed Fort Vancouver and moved its operation to Victoria.

Hudson Bay Company’s director Dr. John McLoughlin had been ordered by the British government to recruit new settlers to the Oregon from America. McLoughlin disobeyed and recruited Americans into Oregon.

Pierre-Jean De Smet (30 January 1801 – 23 May 1873), also known as Pieter-Jan De Smet, was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest and member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), active in missionary work among the Native Americans of the Midwestern United States in the mid-19th century.

His extensive travels as a missionary were said to total 180,000 miles. He was known as the "Friend of Sitting Bull", because he persuaded the Sioux war chief to participate in negotiations with the United States government for the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie

The Whitman massacre (also known as the Walla Walla massacre and the Whitman Incident) was the murder of Oregon missionaries Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa, along with eleven others, on November 29, 1847. They were killed by Cayuse and Umatilla Native Americans who accused him of having poisoned 200 Cayuse in his medical care.[1] The incident began the Cayuse War. It took place in present-day southeastern Washington state, near the town of Walla Walla, and was one of the most notorious episodes in the U.S. settlement of the Pacific Northwest. The event was the climax of several years of complex interaction between the Whitmans, who had led the first wagon train along the Oregon Trail, and the local Native Americans

The Santa Fe Trade

Bent Fort on the Arkansas River in what is now eastern Colorado, which did a brisk trade in beaver skills and buffalo robes.

Mexican Texas

The most colorful figures were mestizo vaqueros which were known for horsemanship. Americanization of the cowboy.

Americans in Texas

Connecticut born former went out to colonize the Mexican region. In 1820 Moses Austin received a large land grant. He died and his son Steven Austin continued the plan. Led by Stephen Austin American settlers demanded greater autonomy in Mexico. The Tejano the Mexican elite joined them.

1. known as the Father of Texas, led the second and ultimately successful colonization of the region by bringing 300 families from the United States.

2.Also, Austin organized small, informal armed groups to protect the colonists, which evolved into the Texas Rangers.

3.When Austin was eleven years old, his family sent him to be educated at Bacon Academy in Colchester, Connecticut and then at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, from which he graduated in 1810. After graduating, Austin began studying to be a lawyer; at age twenty-one he served in the legislature of the Missouri Territory. As a member of the territorial legislature, he was "influential in obtaining a charter for the struggling Bank of St. Louis."

4. Austin was the first Secretary of State of the new Republic of Texas

5.Austin is remembered in Texas history for his many efforts on behalf of Texas before, during, and immediately after Texas' Revolution with Mexico. His contributions to Texas included: long and perilous pilgrimages to Mexico on behalf of Texas; his unwillingness to counsel his people to take up arms against the Mexican government as long as any hope for peace remained; his firm and decided voice, speaking words of encouragement and hope during the darkest days of the revolution; and his laborious travels in the United States to obtain needed support for his struggling countrymen.

The Austin settlement of 1821 was followed by 26 additional settlements along the Sabine and Colorado Rivers. These large settlements were highly organized farming enterprises whose principal crop was cotton grown by African American salve labor. By the early 1830’s Americans in Texas ignoring the border between Mexican Texas and the United States were sending an estimated $500,000 worth of goods mostly cotton yearly to New Orleans.

Stephan Austin promised Mexico before he made the Texas colonies that he would 1) tune settlements into being catholic 2) no slavery 3) settlers would be Mexican: All three he ignored.

As the Mexican government restricted American immigration outlawed slavery, levied customs duties and taxes and planned other measures Americans seethed and talked of rebellion. Bolster their causes were as many as 20,000 additional Americans many of them openly expansionist who flooded into Teas after 1830. These most recent settlers did not intend to become Mexican citizens. Instead they planned to take over Texas

Mexico had abolished slavery yet American settlers brought in slaves. Mexico’s ruler General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna sent an army in 1835 to impose central control, “to give liberty to our slaves and make slaves of ourselves.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UHtbbbNzZU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAMZQlAQAyQ

Several months previously, Texians had driven all Mexican troops out of Mexican Texas. About 100 Texians were then garrisoned at the Alamo. The Texian force grew slightly with the arrival of reinforcements led by eventual Alamo co-commanders James Bowie and William B. Travis. On February 23, approximately 1,500 Mexicans marched into San Antonio de Béxar as the first step in a campaign to retake Texas. For the next 10 days the two armies engaged in several skirmishes with minimal casualties. Aware that his garrison could not withstand an attack by such a large force, Travis wrote multiple letters pleading for more men and supplies, but fewer than 100 reinforcements arrived there. In the early morning hours of March 6, the Mexican Army advanced on the Alamo. After repulsing two attacks, the Texians were unable to fend off a third attack. As Mexican soldiers scaled the walls, most of the Texian soldiers withdrew into interior buildings. Defenders unable to reach these points were slain by the Mexican cavalry as they attempted to escape. Between five and seven Texians may have surrendered; if so, they were quickly executed. Most eyewitness accounts reported between 182 and 257 Texians dead, while most historians of the Alamo agree that around 600 Mexicans were killed or wounded. Several noncombatants were sent to Gonzales to spread word of the Texian defeat. The news sparked both a strong rush to join the Texian army and a panic, known as "The Runaway Scrape", in which the Texian army, most settlers, and the new Republic of Texas government fled from the advancing Mexican Army.

Within Mexico, the battle has often been overshadowed by events from the Mexican–American War of 1846–48. In 19th-century Texas, the Alamo complex gradually became known as a battle site rather than a former mission. The Texas Legislature purchased the land and buildings in the early part of the 20th century and designated the Alamo chapel as an official Texas State Shrine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU-Rj7k3U8U

On March 13, 1836 Santa Anna’s army stormed the Alamo a mission compound in San Antonio killing its 187 American and Tejano defenders. “ Remember the Alamo” became the Texans rallying cry. In April forces under Sam Houston a former governor of Tennessee routed Santa army at the Battle of San Jancito.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpIHk7myFE4

A flag carried at the Battle of San Jacinto

Remember the Alamo Battle of San Jacinto River: On April 21, 1836 at the San Jacinto River in eastern Texas, Santa Anna though he has Sam Houston trapped. Against the judgment of Houston his men suggested to attack Santa Anna. The Texans completely surprised their opponents and won an overwhelming victory. On May 14, 1836 Santa Anna signed a treaty granted the independence of the Republic of Texas.

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The Republic of Texas

1844 Election: James Polk vs. Henry Clay both From Tennessee

In April 1844 a letter by John Calhoun whom Tyler had appointed secretary state was leaked to the press. It linked the idea of absorbing Texas directly to the goal of strengthening slavery in the United Sates. Some southern leaders hoped that Texas could by divided into several states thus further enhancing the south power. Henry Clay and John Tyler met at Clays Kentucky plantation. They agreed to issue letters rejecting immediate annexation on the ground that I might provoke war with Mexico. Clay and Van Buren were reacting to the slavery issue in the traditional manner by tying to keep it out of national politics

Whig Party lead by Henry Clay took the noncommittal position of annexing Texas. The Democrats nominated their first “dark horse” candidate James K Polk of Tennessee. Polk called for the occupation of Oregon ad the re annexation of Teas at the earliest practicable period. 54 40 or fight..

A rare photograph of wagons on theirway to Oregon during the 1840s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXjsZc1my1o

Mexican-American War

James Polk was going to create a war like atmosphere with is war like stance with 54’ 40’ or fight and the annexation of Texas. Polk wins the election through manifest destiny. He created a not strong deck of cards picture with his campaign

http://youtu.be/-RUqBVKgXZw

In April American soldiers under Zachary Taylor moved into the region between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande land claimed by both countries on the disputed border between Texas and Mexico. Conflicts and pressure was constant. News papers provoked war.

Shots were fired but unclear who provoked the initial attacks. Lincoln question whether the Mexicans had actually inflicted causalities on American soil as Polk claimed. He introduced a resolution asking the president to specify the precise spots. Polk never did. Lincoln question now can Polk also invade Canada.

Henry David Thoreau was jailed in Massachusetts in1846 for refusing to pay taxes. “Civil Disobediance” was written.

Causes of the Mexican-American War

More than 60,000 volunteers enlisted and did most of the fighting. In June 1846 a band of American insurrectionist proclaimed California freed from Mexican control and named Captain John C. Fremont head of a small scientific expedition in the Wests. A month later the US Navy sailed into Monterey and San Francisco harbors to raise the American flag.

In the spring of 1846 there was a controversy over Oregon and tensions with Mexico grew more serious. America supported Texas claim of the land North of the Rio Grande. Polk sent General Zachary Taylor to Texas and by October force of 3,500 American were on the Nueces with order to defend Texas in the event of a Mexican invasion. If Mexico declared war Polk stated that his admirals would take over California ports. Thomas Larkin was the California counsel

While the immediate cause of the war was the U.S. annexation of Texas (Dec., 1845), other factors had disturbed peaceful relations between the two republics. In the United States there was agitation for the settlement of long-standing claims arising from injuries and property losses sustained by U.S. citizens in the various Mexican revolutions.

Another major factor was the American ambition, publicly stated by President Polk, of acquiring California, upon which it was believed France and Great Britain were casting covetous eyes. Despite the rupture of diplomatic relations between Mexico and the United States that followed congressional consent to the admission of Texas into the Union, President Polk sent John Slidell to Mexico to negotiate a settlement. Slidell was authorized to purchase California and New Mexico, part of which was claimed by Texas, and to offer the U.S. government's assumption of liability for the claims of U.S. citizens in return for boundary adjustments.

When Mexico declined to negotiate, the United States prepared to take by force what it could not achieve by diplomacy. The war was heartily supported by the outright imperialists and by those who wished slave-holding territory extended. The settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute (June, 1846), which took place shortly after the official outbreak of hostilities, seemed to indicate British acquiescence, for it granted the United States a free hand.

Thomas Oliver Larkin (September 16, 1802 - October 27, 1858) was an early American businessman in Alta California, and was appointed to be the United States' first and only consul to Mexican Alta California. After the Mexican-American War ended in 1848, Larkin moved to San Francisco, and was a signer of the original California Constitution

Mr. Polk’s War

Map 13.2 The Mexican War, 1846 - 1848

The plaza in San Antonio not long after theUnited States annexed Texas in 1845.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k3Q5qwkTQk

Mexico ceded Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah to the United States/ In exchange the United States Paid Mexico $15 Million in exchange. The Gadsden Purchas was bought from Mexico in 1853 and Alaska was acquired from Russia in 1867

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

With the defeat of its army and the fall of the capital, Mexico entered into negotiations to end the war. The treaty called for the United States to pay $15 million to Mexico and pay off the claims of American citizens against Mexico up to $3.25 million. It gave the United States the Rio Grande boundary for Texas, and gave the U.S. ownership of California, and a large area comprising New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. Mexicans in those annexed areas had the choice of relocating to within Mexico's new boundaries or of receiving American citizenship with full civil rights. Over 90% chose the latter.The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty by a vote of 38–14. The opponents of this treaty were led by the Whigs, who had opposed the war and rejected Manifest Destiny in general, and rejected this expansion in particular

A map of the United States from 1848

The Press and Popular War Enthusiasm

War News from Mexico

The Penny Press around 10 years old now followed wars as a major source of news. The Penny Press made heroes of Generals Taylor and Scott which further their political careers.

Shows the increase in American newspapers from 1775-1835

Over 400,000 New Yorkers celebrate America’s victory’s over Mexico at Veracruz and Buena Vista

California Exploration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDkqvqqjMAA

a Spanish-speaking, mostly Roman Catholic people, or of Latin American descent, regardless of race, born in California from the first Spanish colonies established by the Portolá expedition in 1769 to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, in which Mexico ceded California to the United States. Descendants of Californios are also sometimes referred to as Californios. The much larger population of indigenous peoples of California were not Californios because they were not native Spanish-speakers. Neither were the significant numbers of non-Spanish-speaking California-born

children of resident foreigners.

Sutter's Mill

Although there were many gold rushes in world history, the California gold rush was a unique event. Unlike other places, the gold in California was both plentiful and easy to get--at least at first. The result would be profound changes in California, America, and the entire world.

Gold was first discovered in California by James Marshall in early 1848. Later that year, gold seekers from the west coast converged on the American River--50 miles or so from Sacramento--where Marshall first saw the shiny metal. Within a matter of months, word spread eastward and by 1849 thousands were en route to California. Some traveled overland on the already established Oregon-California Trail. Others traveled by ship around the tip of South America. Still others took shortcuts across Panama and Mexico. Regardless of the route, it was an intensely difficult journey.

The gold-seekers were dubbed "49ers" because most left home in 1849. Importantly, 49ers were not uniquely American. Quite the contrary, the California gold rush was a world event, attracting gold-seekers from Mexico, China, Germany, France, Turkey--nearly every country in the world.

Although gold was easy to find at first, it quickly became an difficult enterprise that yielded less and less. Those who did find gold often spent it all on the basic necessities of life. The biggest moneymakers were entrepreneurs who supplied the gold miners with much-needed supplies and services.

The legacy of the gold rush is substantial. First, gold brought people from around the world--people who stayed to form the multi-cultural nucleus of California that exists to this day. Secondly, the gold rush pulled America westward, ensuring that California and the rest of the west would become a part of the United States. Lastly, the gold rush awakened America to the idea of high risk entrepreneurialism, a concept that our capitalistic society continues to nurture.

Gold in California

In the early days of 1848 and 1849, it was not uncommon for a miner to dig $2000 of gold a day. But the average miner might have been lucky to find $10 per day.As time went on the easy gold was all found. Although some made it rich, most of the others were lucky if they made enough to eat. After 1852 most of the surface gold was mined, panning for gold was no longer profitable.

This picture shows a 49er with his mule and supplies. Thousands of miners died on the journey or in the diggings. Many died from disease, or from accidents such as drowning in a river.

A watercolor of a scene on a ranch nearMonterey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG_KO-UnXBU

To return home sooner, he was reassigned by the ship's owners to a different ship, the Alert. Of the return trip around Cape Horn in the middle of the Antarctic winter, Dana gives the classic account. He describes terrifying storms and incredible beauty, giving vivid descriptions of icebergs, which he calls incomparable. The most incredible part perhaps is the weeks and weeks it took to negotiate passage against winds and storms -- all the while having to race up and down the ice-covered rigging to furl and unfurl sails. At one point he has an infected tooth, and his face swells up so that he is unable to work for several days, despite the need for all hands. After the Horn has been rounded he describes the scurvy that afflicts members of the crew. In White-Jacket, Herman Melville wrote, "But if you want the best idea of Cape Horn, get my friend Dana's unmatchable Two Years Before the Mast. But you can read, and so you must have read it. His chapters describing Cape Horn must have been written with an icicle."[7]On September 22, 1836, Dana arrived back in Massachusetts.[8]He thereupon enrolled at what is now Harvard Law School, then called the Dane Law School. He graduated from there in 1837 and was admitted to the bar in 1840.[9] He went on to specialize in maritime law. In the October 1839 issue of a magazine, he took a local judge, one of his own instructors in law school, to task for letting off a ship's captain and mate with a slap on the wrist for murdering the ship's cook, beating him to death for not "laying hold" of a piece of equipment. The judge had sentenced the captain to ninety days in jail and the mate to thirty days.[10][11]In 1841 Dana published The Seaman's Friend, which became a standard reference on the legal rights and responsibilities of sailors, He defended many common seamen in court.During his voyages he had kept a diary, and in 1840 (coinciding with his admission to the bar) he published a memoir, Two Years Before the Mast. The term, "before the mast" refers to sailors' quarters, which were located in the forecastle (the ship's bow), officers' quarters being near the stern. His writing evidences his later sympathy for the oppressed. With the California Gold Rush later in the decade, Two Years Before the Mast would become highly sought after as one of the few sources of information on California.

A contemporary depiction of mining operations

Sacramento, California was a location for Gold Mining

Minorities in Gold Rush

The Chinese miners were welcomed in California in the beginning. However, the white gold miners began to resent the Chinese miners, feeling that they were discovering gold that the white miners deserved. In 1852, a special foreign miner's tax aimed at the Chinese was passed by the California legislature (see 1852 section on Foreign Miner's Tax from Asian American Experience in the U.S. for more information). This tax required a payment of three dollars each month at a time when Chinese miners were making approximately six dollars a month. Tax collectors could legally take and sell the property of those miners who refused or could not pay the tax. Fake tax collectors made money by taking advantage of people who couldn't speak English well, and some tax collectors, both false and real, stabbed or shot miners who couldn't or wouldn't pay the tax. During the 1860's, many Chinese were expelled from the mine fields and were forced to find other types of jobs.

Californios referred to themselves as gente de razon (people capable of reason). For the common good Indians were required to continue to work for the new landholders.

California Mining Camps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PmWp7Y3buU

Mining Cities, Yreka, Shasta, Sacramento, Coloma, San Francisco

Poker Flat, Angels Camp, Whiskey Bar, Placerville and Mariposa were different examples of Mining Camps

In San Francisco there were more reliable ways of making money. Supply the miners with goods and services. Huntington Bank, Stanford Family and Wells Fargo Companies made their market in the early stages of San Francisco

The majority of women in the early mining caps were prostitutes. Some grew rich or married respectably but most died young from venereal disease, violence or drugs.

Politics of Manifest Destiny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQQJDR_rX30

Emerson stated that taking Mexico’s territories was like taking arsenic.

The Free Soil Movement

The Free Soil Party was a short-lived political party in the United States active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. Founded in Buffalo, New York, it was a third party and a single-issue party that largely appealed to and drew its greatest strength from New York State. The party leadership consisted of former anti-slavery members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. Its main purpose was opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised a morally and economically superior system to slavery. They opposed slavery in the new territories (agreeing with the Wilmot Proviso) and sometimes worked to remove existing laws that discriminated against freed African Americans in states such as Ohio.The party membership was largely absorbed by the Republican Party in 1854

Free-soilers were willing to allow slavery to continue in the existing slave states because of the need for a Union not because they did not approve of slavery/ They were unwilling to allow he extension of slavery to new and unorganized territory. If the South were successful in extending slavery northern farmers who moved west would have a disadvantage with large planters using slave labor. Free soiler insisted that northern values of freedom and individualism would be destroyed if the slave based southern labor system were allowed to spread

Frederick Basiat was a firm believer of the free market system

Senator Charles Sumner of South Carolina is beating Massachusetts Senator Preston Brooks on the Senate floor over slavery.

Election of 1848

The United States presidential election of 1848 was the 16th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1848. It was won by Zachary Taylor of the Whig Party, who ran against former President Martin Van Buren of the Free Soil Party and Lewis Cass of the Democratic Party. Incumbent President James K. Polk, having achieved all of his major objectives in one term and suffering from declining health, kept his promise not to seek re-election. The contest was the first presidential election that took place on the same day in every state.[1]

The Whigs in 1846-47 had focused all their energies on condemning Polk's war policies. They had to reverse course quickly. In February 1848 Polk surprised everyone with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War and gave the United States vast new territories (including what are now the states of California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico). The Whigs in the Senate voted 2-1 to approve the treaty. Then, in the summer, the Whigs nominated the hero of the war, Zachary Taylor.[2] While he did promise no more future wars, he did not condemn the Mexican-American War or criticize Polk, and the Whigs had to follow his lead. They shifted their attention to the new issue of whether slavery could be banned from the new territories.

The choice of Taylor was made almost out of desperation; he was not clearly committed to Whig principles, but he was popular for leading the war effort. The Democrats had a record of victory, peace, prosperity, and the acquisition of both Oregon and the Southwest. It appeared almost certain that they would win unless the Whigs picked Taylor. His victory made him one of only two Whigs to be elected president before the party ceased to exist in the 1850s; the other was William Henry Harrison, who had also been a general and war hero, but died a month after assuming office

Threat of Secession

Drafting a constitution that prohibited slavery, California applied for admission as a free state in 1850. At that time, there were thirty states in the Union, equally split between slave and free states. Hence, Taylor's proposed solution of allowing the residents in the Mexican Cession to decide the issue of slavery in new state constitutions would have added two or three free states to the Union, upsetting the delicate North-South balance in the Senate.

With much at stake and tensions mounting, the stage was set for either a clash or a compromise. Many southern Democrats responded to Taylor's position by calling for a secession convention. A firm believer in national supremacy, Taylor told a group of southern leaders that he would hang anyone who tried to disrupt the Union by force or by conspiracy. In this atmosphere, wiser heads worked feverishly to come up with some compromise that would allow the controversy to pass. The debate that ensued over the proposed solutions was one of the most prolonged, significant, and contentious episodes in American history. Political luminaries of the time, such as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and William H. Seward contributed weighty arguments and opinions to the discussion that captivated the country from January to September of 1850.

Clay, Webster, and others hoped that a strong fugitive slave law and the organization of territorial, rather than state, governments for New Mexico and Utah without any congressional prohibition of slavery would enable Southerners to accept California's admission as a free state. The compromise idea appealed to some southerners, especially those most offended by talk of secession in 1850, because it would put the federal government on record as the legal protector of slavery in the South. Calhoun, up to his death on March 31, 1850, opposed Clay; Jefferson Davis took over Calhoun's southern leadership in opposition to Clay's compromise proposals. Taylor also firmly opposed Clay's compromise. When Taylor died unexpectedly on July 9, the forces for compromise stepped up their efforts to push through the great Compromise of 1850 in

September. Taylor's successor, Millard Fillmore, signed the bill into law.