CHAPTER 13. Sectional Debates

Objectives: o We will study the impact of the

Wilmot Proviso on the sectional controversy

o We will study the methods used to enact the Compromise of 1850, and its reception by the American people

o We will study the role of the major political parties in the widening sectional split

• (Mat 5:29) And if thy right eye

offend thee, pluck it out, and

cast it from thee: for it is

profitable for thee that one of

thy members should perish,

and not that thy whole body

should be cast into hell.

• James Polk tried to be a

president who transcended

sectional divisions.

• But his favor of territorial

expansion in the Southwest,

earned the anger and hatred of

the North and Westerners a like

• Who felt that Polk favored the

South in their expense.

Slavery and the Territories:

o While the Mexican War was still in progress in August of 1846, Polk asked Congress for $2 million for purchasing peace with Mexico.

o Representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, an antislavery Democrat introduced an amendment to the appropriation bill prohibiting slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico.

Slavery and the Territories:

o The so-called Wilmot Proviso passed

the House but failed the Senate.

o It would be debated and voted over

for years.

o Southern Militants contended that all

Americans had equal rights in the

new territories, including the right to

move their property, slaves there.

Slavery and the Territories:

o As the sectional debate

intensified, President Polk

supported a proposal to extend

the Missouri Compromise line

through the new territories to the

Pacific coast.

o Banning slavery north of the line

and permitting it south of the line.

Slavery and the Territories:

o Other politicians supported a plan

called popular sovereignty which

would allow people of each territory

acting through their legislature to

decide the status of slavery there.

o The debate over these various

proposals dragged for many months

and remained unresolved when Polk

left office.

Slavery and the Territories: o Polk in poor health, declined to run

again.

o The Democrats nominated Lewis

Cass and the Whigs nominated

General Zachary Taylor, Mexican War

Hero.

o Both parties tried to avoid the slavery

question.

Slavery and the Territories: o These candidates did not satisfy the

opponents of slavery and formed a new party called the Free-Soil Party, which drew from the existing liberty party, and the antislavery wings of the Whig and Democratic parties that endorsed the Wilmot Proviso.

o Its candidate was former president Martin Van Buren.

Slavery and the Territories: o Taylor won, but the Free-soilers elected

ten members to Congress.

o The emergence of the Free-Soil party

was an important political force like

the emergence of the Know Nothing

and Liberty Parties before, signaling

the inability for existing parties to

contain the political passions slavery

was creating.

The California Gold Rush: o In January 1848, traces of gold was

found in John Sutter’s sawmills at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

o Word traveled fast to the rest of the U.S. and much of the rest of the world.

o Almost immediately, hundreds of thousands of people from around the world came to California in a frantic search for gold.

o California non-Indian population increased nearly twenty fold.

The California Gold Rush: o Gold-rush migrants within the U.S.

were known as Forty-Niners, who abandoned farms, jobs, homes, families, and with many carrying what they can on their backs to rush to California.

o The overwhelming majority of the Forty-niners were men and the society they created was volatile with the absence of women, children, and families.

The California Gold Rush: o The gold rush also attracted

some of the first Chinese migrants to the western U.S.

o News of the discoveries created great excitement in China, especially in the poor areas where letters from Chinese already in CA and Americans visiting in China spread the word.

The California Gold Rush: o Many young, adventurous, mostly men

decided to go anyway even though it was difficult to get to CA believing that they could quickly become rich and then return to China.

o Emigration brokers loaned many migrants money for passage to CA which migrants would pay off out of their earnings there.

o The migration was entirely voluntary.

o The Chinese in California were free laborers, and merchants looking for gold, hoping to profit from other economic opportunities the gold boom was creating.

The California Gold Rush: o The gold rush created a serious labor

shortage in California as many male workers left their jobs and flocked to the gold fields.

o Chinese would often fill the void but it also led to the exploitation of Indians that was essentially slavery.

o White vigilantes called Indian Hunters were already hunting down and killing thousands of Indians before the gold rush contributing to the decline of the Indian population.

o A new state law also permitted the arrest of orphaned Indians and place them in “indenture” labor.

The California Gold Rush: o The gold rush contributed to the

growth of California.

o There was substantial gold in the

hills of Sierra Nevada and many

people got rich from it.

o But only a tiny fraction of the forty-

niners found gold or managed to

stake a claim to land.

o Some returned home disappointed.

The California Gold Rush: o But many stayed and swelled both the

agriculture and urban population of the territory.

o By the 1850s, California’s population which was diverse became even more so.

o The gold rush had attracted not just White Americans, but also Europeans, Chinese, South Americans, Mexicans, free blacks, and slaves who accompanied southern migrants.

The California Gold Rush:

o Conflicts resulted that led to the

vital need for a stable

government.

o The gold rush became another

factor putting pressure on the U.S.

to resolve the status not only of

California but all the territories

and slavery within them as well.

Rising Sectional Tensions: o Zachary Taylor believed that statehood could

become the solution to the issue of slavery in the territories where the state’s own governments would be able to settle the slavery question.

o At Taylor’s urging California quickly adopted a constitution that prohibited slavery and in December 1849, Taylor asked Congress to admit as a free state.

o Taylor also proposed that New Mexico also be granted statehood when its ready and be permitted to decide for itself what it wanted to do about slavery like California.

Rising Sectional Tensions: o Congress however stalled for several

reasons.

o Antislavery forces wanted to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia that caused deep resentment of Southerners.

o Another was the emergence of personal liberty laws in northern states that barred courts and police officers from helping to return runaway slaves back to their owners.

Rising Sectional Tensions: o In response Southerners demanded a

stringent law that would require

northern states to return fugitive

slaves to their owners.

o But the biggest obstacle to the

president’s program was the White

South’s fear that two new free states

would be added to the northern

majority.

Rising Sectional Tensions: o The number of free and slave states

were equal in 1849, fifteen each.

o But the admission of California would upset the balance.

o And New Mexico, Oregon, and Utah would upset it further leaving the South in a minority in the Senate as it was in the House.

o Tensions simmered as moderate southern leaders were talking secession from the Union.

Compromise of 1850: o With this crisis, moderates and

unionists spent the winter of 1849-

1850 trying to frame a great

compromise.

o The aging Henry Clay was the catalyst

and combined several separate

proposals to a single piece of

legislation and presented it to the

Senate on January 29, 1850.

Compromise of 1850: o Among the bill’s provisions was the

admission of California as a free state.

o The formation of territorial governments in the rest of the lands acquired from Mexico without restrictions on slavery.

o The abolition of the slave trade but not slavery itself in the District of Columbia.

o And a new and more effective fugitive slave law.

Compromise of 1850: o A seven month debate occurred in two

phases that revealed the changing face of American politics in the 1850s.

o The first phase of the debate, the dominant voices in Congress were those of old men, national leaders who still remembered Jefferson, Adams and other founders.

o Clay age 73 appealed to nationalism for the compromise.

Compromise of 1850: o John C. Calhoun, sixty-eight years old

and dying insisted that the North grant the South equal rights in the territories.

o That it agree to observe the laws concerning fugitive slaves, that it ceased attacking slavery and create a dual presidency, one for the north and the other for the south.

o He believed that this could save the Union and address the sectional ties.

Compromise of 1850: o Daniel Webster 68 years old and the great

orators of his time delivered an eloquent speech in the Senate trying to rally support of moderates to support Clay’s compromise.

o After six months of intense debate, Clay’s proposal was defeated.

o Calhoun died even before the vote.

o Clay ill and tired left Washington to spend the summer resting in the mountains.

o Webster accepted a new appointment as secretary of state and no longer part of the Senate debate.

Compromise of 1850: o A new generation of leaders emerged.

o William H. Seward opposed the Compromise strongly because the ideas of the Union was less important to him than the issue of eliminating slavery.

o Another was Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, forty-two years old, representing the new cotton South, thought that slavery was less one of principles and ideals than one of economic self interest.

Compromise of 1850: o Most important of all three was

Stephen A. Douglas, a thirty-seven year old Democratic senator from Illinois.

o He was a open spokesman for the economic needs of his section and especially for the construction of railroads.

o His career was devoted not to any broad national goals but sectional gain and personal self-promotion.

Compromise of 1850: o One major powerful figure that

opposed the compromise, President

Zachary Taylor who was adamant that

only after California and possibly New

Mexico, were admitted as states could

other measures be discussed died of a

stomach illness.

o He was succeeded by Millard Fillmore

who supported compromise.

Compromise of 1850: o Douglas also broke up Clay’s compromise

bill and introduced it as a series of separate measures to be voted one by one.

o This allowed representatives of different sections the flexibility to support those elements of the compromise they liked and oppose those they did not.

o Douglas gained the support with complicated backroom deals that included the sale of government bonds and railroad construction.

Compromise of 1850: o The Compromise finally passed and in

mid-September, Congress had enacted and the president had signed all the components of the compromise.

o The Compromise of 1850 was not a product of widespread agreement on common national ideals.

o It was rather, a victory of bargaining and self-interest.

o Still it was thought that this was a compromise that would settle the sectional strife over slavery.

THE CRISIS OF THE 1850s o The Uneasy Truce: Both major parties

endorsed the Compromise of 1850.

o In 1852, both nominated presidential candidates unidentified with sectional passions.

o Democrats chose the obscure New Hampshire politician Franklin Pierce.

o The Whigs nominated military hero General Winfield Scott, a man of unknown political views.

THE CRISIS OF THE 1850s o However, the sectional question was a

divisive influence in the election anyway and the Whigs suffered from this division.

o They suffered massive defection of antislavery members angered by the party’s evasiveness on the issue.

o Many of them flocked to the Free-Soil Party, whose antislavery presidential candidate John P. Hale repudiated the Compromise of 1850.

THE CRISIS OF THE 1850s o The division of the Whigs brought victory to the

Democrats Pierce who attempted to maintain national unity by avoiding the issue of slavery.

o Northern opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act intensified quickly after 1850 when southerners began appearing in the northern states to pursue people they claimed were fugitives.

o Mobs formed in some northern cities to prevent enforcement of the law, several northern states also passed their own laws barring the deportation of fugitive slaves.

Fugitive Slave Laws • Seventh-day Adventist Christians at this

time joined in opposing the fugitive slave laws.

• Joseph Bates organized a anti-slavery society in his hometown.

• W.K. Kellogg, father of the inventor of cereal, housed runaway slaves in his home.

• Seventh-day Adventist pioneers such as Anson Byington participated in housing fugitive slaves, thus breaking Federal law.

Fugitive Slave Laws • “The fugitive law was calculated to crush out of

man every noble, generous feeling of sympathy that should arise in his heart for the oppressed and suffering slave. It was in direct opposition to the teaching of Christ. When the laws of men conflict with the Word and law of God, we are to obey the latter, whatever the consequences may be…. The law of our land requiring us to deliver a slave to his master, we are not to obey; and we must abide the consequences of violating this law. The slave is not the property of any man. God is his rightful master, and man has no right to take God's workmanship into his hands, and claim him as his own.” Ellen White

THE CRISIS OF THE 1850s o White southerners watched with growing anger

and alarm as the one element of the Compromise of 1850 that they had considered a victory seemed to become meaningless as a result of northern defiance.

o One of the ways Franklin Pierce hoped to dampen sectional controversy was through his support of a movement in the Democratic Party known as “Young America.”

o Its adherents saw the expansion of American democracy throughout the world as a way to divert attention from the controversies over slavery.

THE CRISIS OF THE 1850s o In 1848, Europe was seeped in liberal and

nationalist revolutions and there was hope in the U.S. for Europe to have a republican model based on the U.S. government.

o There was a dream as well of expanding American commerce and acquiring new territories in the Western Hemisphere.

o Pierce wanted to purchase Cuba.

o In 1854, a group of his envoys sent Pierce a private document from Ostend, Belgium making the case to seize Cuba by force.

THE CRISIS OF THE 1850s

o This was known as the Ostend

Manifesto.

o It was leaked to the public and

enraged antislavery

Northerners who charged the

administration from conspiring

to bring a new slave state into

the Union.

THE CRISIS OF THE 1850s o The Kingdom of Hawaii agreed to join

the U.S. in 1854 but the treaty died in the Senate because it contained a clause prohibiting slavery in the islands.

o A powerful movement to annex Canada had support of many Canadians eager for access to American markets failed at least in part because of slavery.