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Page 4
The history of the sudden development of the anti-slavery struggle in
1847 and the following years, is largely given in the speeches which
have been selected to illustrate it. The admission of Texas to the Union
in 1845, and the war with Mexico which followed it, resulted in the
acquisition of a vast amount of new territory by the United States.
From the first suggestion of such an acquisition, the Wilmot proviso
(so-called from David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, who introduced it in
Congress), that slavery should be prohibited in the new territory, was
persistently offered as an amendment to every bill appropriating money
for the purchase of territory from Mexico. It was passed by the House
of Representatives, but was balked in the Senate; and the purchase
was finally made without any proviso. When the territory came to be
organized, the old question came up again: the Wilmot proviso was
offered as an amendment. As the territory was now in the possession of
the United States, and as it had been acquired in a war whose support
had been much more cordial at the South than at the North, the attempt
to add the Wilmot proviso to the territorial organization raised the
Southern opposition to an intensity which it had not known before.
Fuel was added to the flame by the application of California, whose
population had been enormously increased by the discovery of gold within
her limits, for admission as a free State. If New Mexico should do the
same, as was probable, the Wilmot proviso would be practically in force
throughout the best portion of the Mexican acquisition. The two sections
were now so strong and so determined that compromise of any kind was
far more difficult than in 1820; and it was not easy to reconcile or
compromise the southern demand that slavery should be permitted, and
the northern demand that slavery should be forbidden, to enter the new
territories.
In the meantime, the Presidential election of 1848 had come and gone. It
had been marked by the appearance of a new party, the Free Soilers, an
event which was at first extremely embarrassing to the managers of
both the Democratic and Whig parties. On the one hand, the northern and
southern sections of the Whig party had always been very loosely joined
together, and the slender tie was endangered by the least admission
of the slavery issue. On the other hand, while the Democratic national
organization had always been more perfect, its northern section had
always been much more inclined to active anti-slavery work than the
northern Whigs. Its organ, the Democratic Review, habitually spoke of
the slaves as "our black brethren"; and a long catalogue could be
made of leaders like Chase, Hale, Wilmot, Bryant, and Leggett, whose
democracy was broad enough to include the negro. To both parties,
therefore, the situation was extremely hazardous. The Whigs had less
to fear, but were able to resist less pressure. The Democrats were more
united, but were called upon to meet a greater danger. In the end,
the Whigs did nothing; their two sections drew further apart; and the
Presidential election of 1852 only made it evident that the national
Whig party was no longer in existence. The Democratic managers
evolved, as a solution of their problem, the new doctrine of "popular
sovereignty," which Calhoun re-baptized "squatter sovereignty." They
asserted as the true Democratic doctrine, that the question of slavery
or freedom was to be left for decision of the people of the territory
itself. To the mass of northern Democrats, this doctrine was taking
enough to cover over the essential nature of the struggle; the more
democratic leaders of the northern Democracy were driven off into the
Free-Soil party; and Douglas, the champion of "popular sovereignty,"
became the leading Democrat of the North.
Clay had re-entered the Senate in 1849, for the purpose of compromising
the sectional difficulties as he had compromised those of 1820 and of
1833. His speech, as given, will show something of his motives; his
success resulted in the "compromise of 1850." By its terms, California
was admitted as a free State; the slave trade, but not slavery, was
prohibited in the District of Columbia; a more stringent fugitive slave
law was enacted; Texas was paid $10,000,000 for certain claims to the
Territory of New Mexico; and the Territories of Utah and New Mexico,
covering the Mexican acquisition outside of California, were organized
without mentioning slavery. The last-named feature was carefully
designed to please all important factions. It could be represented to
the Webster Whigs that slavery was excluded from the Territories named
by the operation of natural laws; to the Clay Whigs that slavery had
already been excluded by Mexican law which survived the cession; to the
northern Democrats, that the compromise was a formal endorsement of the
great principle of popular sovereignty; and to the southern Democrats
that it was a repudiation of the Wilmot proviso. In the end, the essence
of the success went to the last-named party, for the legislatures of the
two territories established slavery, and no bill to veto their action
could pass both Houses of Congress until after 1861.
The Supreme Court had already decided that Congress had exclusive power
to enforce the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution, though the
fugitive slave law of 1793 had given a concurrent authority of execution
to State officers. The law of 1850, carrying the Supreme Court's
decision further, gave the execution of the law to United States
officers, and refused the accused a hearing. Its execution at the North
was therefore the occasion of a profound excitement and horror. Cases
of inhuman cruelty, and of false accusation to which no defence was
permitted, were multiplied until a practical nullification of the law,
in the form of "personal liberty laws," securing a hearing for the
accused before State magistrates, was forced by public opinion upon the
legislature of the exposed northern States. Before the excitement
had come to a head, the Whig convention of 1852 met and endorsed the
compromise of 1850 "in all its parts." Overwhelmed in the election which
followed, the Whig party was popularly said to have "died of an attempt
to swallow the fugitive-slave law"; it would have been more correct to
have said that the southern section of the party had deserted in a body
and gone over to the Democratic party. National politics were thus left
in an entirely anomalous condition. The Democratic party was omnipotent
at the South, though it was afterward opposed feebly by the American
(or "Know Nothing ") organization, and was generally successful at
the North, though it was still met by the Northern Whigs with vigorous
opposition. Such a state of affairs was not calculated to satisfy
thinking men; and this period seems to have been one in which very
few thinking men of any party were at all satisfied with their party
positions.
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