Transcript Compromise of 1850 - Loyola Blakefield

THE UNION IN PERIL:
CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR
CHAPTER 15
Section 1
Growing Tensions Between North and South
What was the controversy in the territories about?
Why was the Compromise of 1850 adopted?
Time line of Slavery
• 1787
3/5ths Compromise
• 1820
Missouri Compromise. Slavery in the
Territories, balance of power
Texas is admitted as a Slave state
• 1845
• 1848
• 1849
• 1850
End of the war with Mexico, new
territories gained, slave or free.
California applies for statehood, state
constitution prohibits slavery
Compromise of 1850
The South in the
mid-1800’s is
increasingly…
• Single Crop Plantation
Economy (Cotton)
• Rural
• Segregated
– black v. white
– rich planters v. poor
whites
• Fearful of Northern
interference & slave
revolts
The North in the
mid-1800’s is
increasingly…
• Industrial economy
• Urban
• Socially and
Culturally Diverse
– Immigration from
Europe
• More and more
abolitionists
• More opposition to
spread of slavery
Map: Major American Cities in 1830 and 1860
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Map: Cotton Production in the South
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Slavery in Territories
• Wilmot Proviso (Northerners)
– Written by Congressmen David
Wilmot of Pennsylvania
– Proposed to close new lands from
Mexican war to slavery
• California, Utah Territory and New
Mexico Territory
• Southern Position
– Slaves were property
– Congress had no rights to take
away property without due
process of the law
• Passed by the House, rejected
by the Senate.
Debate over Slavery in the territories leads
to… SECTIONALISM!!! (AGAIN!!!)
Wilmot Proviso = “neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude shall ever exist” in the
territory seized from Mexico during the war.
WHY? More slave states would upset the balance of
power established in the Missouri Compromise.
PROBLEM: Gold Rush means that California is ready to
become a state, due to population boom. California
petitions to be a FREE state, despite being below the
36º30’ Missouri Compromise Line
Congressional Scales, 1850
Congressional Scales, 1850
The question of how a war with Mexico
might unbalance the nation politically
weighed heavily on people's minds as
the nation entered the 1850s. In this
cartoon, lithographer Nathaniel Currier-who later would found the famous
graphic art company Currier and Ives-illustrates the problem. Trying to balance
the Wilmot Proviso against Southern
Rights, the president seeks to keep
congressional representatives from the
North and the South in balance as well.
(Library of Congress)
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NEW POLITICAL PARTIES
• Know-Nothing Party (Nativism): formed in
1849, favors native-born people over
immigrants, anti-Catholic, and originally a
secret-society.
• Free-Soil Party (Anti-slavery): formed in
1848 to oppose extension of slavery into the
territories.
Statehood for California
• Gold Rush
– Population explosion
• Skipped requirements to become a
territory
• State Constitution
– Outlawed slavery
– Outrage of Southerners
• Location of California
• How should California enter
the union?
– Free or slave
– Balance of power
The Senate Debates - 1849
• Pres. Zachary Taylor backs California’s admission as a
free state and he backs the idea of popular sovereignty
= the people of each territory should vote whether to be
free or slave.
• Some Southern states, fearing a shift in the balance
between N and S, threaten secession = formally
withdrawing from the Union.
• Senators Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John
Calhoun work out the Compromise of 1850, and save
the Union from splitting into sections.
Compromise of 1850
CONCESSIONS TO
NORTH
• California admitted as
free
• Slave trade, but not
slavery, abolished in
D.C.
CONCESSIONS TO SOUTH
• New Mexico and Utah
Territories to be
determined by popular
sovereignty (= a vote by
the people of the territory,
NOT Congress)
• Texas paid $10 million as
compensation for New
Mexico
• Stronger Fugitive Slave
Act
COMPROMISE OF 1850
Calhoun and Webster debate the Compromise.
Calhoun rejects it, Webster argues for it.
• Senator John Calhoun= advocate of state’s rights. Slaveholders
have no need to get permission to take their property into the new
territories.
• Senator Daniel Webster= the Union must be preserved, even if
some Southerners and some abolitionists remain unsatisfied.
Senate FAILS to adopt the compromise. Clay retires.
• Stephen A. Douglas (Illinois) renews efforts to pass the
Compromise in sections, which works.
• Calhoun’s death helps the bill to pass, also.
Map: The Compromise of 1850
16
FREE
VS.
16
SLAVE
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