404 The Compromise of 1850 [1850 the duty of Congress to admit them in accordance with the compact made with Texas. 2. That California be admitted into the Union. 3. That territorial governments, without the Wilmot Proviso, be established in Utah and New Mexico. 4. That the two last measures be combined in the same bill. 5. That all New Mexico be taken from the jurisdiction of Texas; that a pecuniary equivalent be given to Texas; and that a section for this purpose be incorporated in the bill to admit California. 6. That a more effectual law for the return of fugitive slaves be enacted. 7. That the slave-trade, but not slavery, be prohibited in the District of Columbia. Bills to carry out these provisions had been prepared and were presented with the report. While these measures were still under discussion President Taylor died; and Millard Fillmore was sworn into office as President. The old Cabinet at once resigned; and Webster, as Secretary of State, took the lead of the new. After the funeral of Taylor, debate on the Compromise Bills was resumed till July 31, when the Utah Bill passed. On August 9 a bill somewhat reducing the limits of New Mexico, and offering Texas $10,000,000 for surrendering her claim, was passed. On August 12 the California Bill passed; on the 15th the New Mexico Bill; and on the 26th the Fugitive Slave Bill. Action on the Bill to prohibit the Slave-trade in the District of Columbia, a distinctly Northern measure, was delayed in the Senate till the House should have acted on the measures already sent down to it. By September 12 all had passed the House; and on the 16th the District of Columbia Bill was allowed to go through the Senate. The House of course approved; the President signed each bill; and the Compromise of 1850, from which so much was expected, was accomplished. CHAPTER XIII STATE RIGHTS (1850-1860) WHEN the historian of the United States reaches the year 1850, he finds himself at a point at which it is convenient, at which it is indeed. necessary, that he should pause and "look before and after," in order that he may reckon the forces amidst which he stands and scan the whole stage of affairs. The "Compromise of 1850" settled nothing; but it was compounded of every element of the country's politics and may be made to yield upon analysis almost every ingredient of the historian's narrative. Its object was the settlement of all urgent questions. Texas had been admitted to the Union with disputed boundaries which needed to be definitely determined; territory had been acquired from Mexico, by conquest and purchase, for which it was requisite to provide a government; opinion in one section of the country was demanding that the slave-trade should be excluded from the District of Columbia, the seat of the national government, and slavery itself from the new territory; opinion in another section was demanding, with an air almost of passion, that the question of slavery in the Territories be left to those who should settle and make States of them, and that property in slaves should everywhere be adequately protected by effective laws for the apprehension and return of fugitive negroes. It was the question of the extension or restriction of slavery that made the adoption of a plan of organisation and government for the new Territory perplexing and difficult, and the determination of the boundary of Texas a matter of critical sectional interest; and yet the rapid growth and development of the country rendered it imperative that action should be taken definitely and at once. Something must be done, and done promptly, to quiet men's minds concerning disturbing questions of policy and to keep parties from going utterly to pieces. That was the object of the "Compromise of 1850." It consisted of a series of measures framed and introduced by a committee of which Henry Clay was chairman, and urged upon Congress with all the art, energy, and persuasiveness of which the aged Kentuckian was so great a master, even in those his last days. It was agreed 406 The Slavery question [1850 (1) that Texas should be paid ten million dollars to relinquish her claim upon a portion of New Mexico; (2) that California should be. admitted as a State under a constitution which prohibited slavery ; (3) that New Mexico and Utah should be organised as Territories without any regulation in respect of slavery, leaving it to the choice of their own settlers whether there should be property in slaves amongst them or not; (4) that the slave-trade should be excluded from the District of Columbia, but be interfered with nowhere else by Federal law; and (5) that the whole judicial and administrative machinery of the Federal government should be put at the disposal of the Southern slaveowners for the recovery of fugitive slaves found within the Free States. Every measure in the list touched the politics of the time at some vital point. Fourteen years earlier (1836) Texas had established herself as an independent State by secession from Mexico, which Santa Anna. had transformed from a republic into a military despotism; and in 1845 she had been admitted with all her vast domain into the United States. Her admission into the Union had led almost immediately to war with Mexico (1846); for her southern boundary line was in dispute. The Federal government supported her claim to the tract of land which lies between the Nueces and the Rio Grande rivers, and by occupying it with an armed force compelled Mexico to fight for its possession. In the war which ensued, the forces of the United States took possession not only of the little region in dispute but also of all the Pacific slope from Oregon to Texas, Mexico's Territories towards the north. It was this war, and the acquisition of a new and vast domain on the Pacific, which had brought Congress once more face to face with the question, What shall be done with regard to slavery in the new Territories? Shall its introduction be forbidden there, or permitted? And it was this question which had stirred parties and sections to the renewal of an old and bitter conflict, which threatened to disturb every ancient compromise and make peace and union infinitely difficult. It was a return to the question which politicians had hoped to have dismissed in the "Missouri Compromise" of 1820, when it had been agreed that Missouri should be admitted into the Union with a constitution which legalised slavery, but that thenceforth no other Slave State should be formed out of any territory of the United States which lay north of latitude 36° 30', the southern boundary of Missouri extended; but here was new territory to which that old compromise of a generation ago, it was said, did not apply. The question was as old, almost, as the Constitution itself. It had been touched first and most definitely by the notable Ordinance of 1787-a law as old as the Constitution which had decreed, once for all, that slavery should not enter the North-west Territory, the vast dominion made over by Virginia and her sister States to the Confederation which had fought the war for independence. But it was a matter which statutes could 1850] Condition of the South 407 not quiet or conclude. So long as there was new territory to be filled with settlers, and formed into States with institutions and laws of their own, there must continue to be strife and controversy regarding what should be done in respect of slavery; for the slave-owners insisted that they should be insured by law against the risks of change, that they should be made safe against being left in a minority in a country where everything was changing and no one could surely foresee majorities either for or against any institution whatever. Such a contest could not be closed till movements of population and opinion had themselves come to an end. Although no man could certainly foretell, even in 1850, what would be the outcome of the contest between the advocates and the opponents of the extension of slavery into the new Territories, and thus also into the new States which should be formed from them, it was very much plainer then what this was likely to be than it had been in 1821 or in 1787. Southern statesmen did not deceive themselves. They saw as clearly as anyone could see that the great movement of population into the new lands in the West was not only a natural and inevitable economic movement of men seeking to better their fortunes in new homes, but also a game of power, and a game at which they were likely, if not sure, to lose. There was no mistaking the signs of the times or the magnitude of the forces engaged. It was a contest between sections which every year became more and more widely contrasted in life and purpose. It was slavery, of course, which made the South unlike the rest of the country, unlike the rest of the world. The contrast was to her advantage in some respects, though to her deep disadvantage in many others. She had men of leisure because she had slaves; and nowhere else in the country was there a ruling class like hers. Where men are masters they are likely to be statesmen, to have an outlook upon affairs and an instinct and habit of leadership. Privilege and undisputed social eminence beget in them a pride, which is not wholly private, a pride which makes of them a planning and governing order. It was this advantage, of always knowing her leaders, and of keeping them always thus in a school of privilege and authority, that had given the South from the first her marked pre-eminence in affairs. Her statesmen had led the nation in the era of the Revolution. The Union seemed largely of her making. Madison's had been the planning mind in its construction; Washington's mastery had established it; Jefferson had made it democratic in practice as in theory. For thirty-two out of the first forty years of the existence of the Union Virginian statesmen had occupied the presidential office, and had guided as well as presided over affairs. The coming-in of Jackson in 1829 had marked a revolutionary change in the politics of the country. The older generation and the older methods of counsel and action were thrust aside; ruling groups of 408 Condition of the South [1850 statesmen thenceforth counted for less, and popular conventions for more. Delegations of local politicians were substituted for Congressional committees; the influence of unknown men displaced the authority of responsible leaders. But, even after that notable break-up, the South kept her place of authority in party counsels, in cabinets, and even in the choice and policy of Presidents. Men drawn from her school of privilege were as prominent as ever, and ruled conventions as they had ruled groups of consulting statesmen. Their initiative was not daunted or discouraged. No one could deny that the South had all along played a part in the control of parties which was altogether out of proportion to her importance in wealth or population. But every year relaxed her hold upon affairs and more definitely and obviously threatened her mastery with destruction. The country was growing away from her. It had grown away from her in the years which preceded the coming-in of Jackson and the rough Western democracy which despised tradition; but the fact had not been upon the surface in those days. In 1850 it was plain to see. During the twenty years which had passed, the country had grown at an infinitely quickened pace, and in ways which could escape no man's observation, while the South had almost stood still. Her order of life was fixed and unchangeable. She could not expect manufacturers to make their home with her; she could not induce immigrants to settle on her untilled lands. Diversification of industry was for her, it seemed, out of the question. She had begun to perceive this twenty years ago, and had been deeply moved by the discovery. She could not forget the controversies which had raged about the tariff legislation of 1828 and 1832, or rid herself of the painful impression of what had been done. and said and threatened when South Carolina made her attempt at "nullification." Time had but made the issues of that conflict more distressingly plain and significant. The South could not compete with the North in the establishment of manufactures because she could not command or maintain the sort of labour necessary for their successful development; nor could she compete with the North in the establishment of agricultural communities and the building of new States in the West, if her people were to be forbidden to take their slaves with them into the national Territories. Her statesmen had felt a great enthusiasm for national expansion at the first, had favoured moderate tariffs and the diversification of industry, had spoken like men of a race, not like men of a section, until they saw at last how the very organisation of the communities they loved best and most passionately seemed to shut them out from sharing in the great change and growth which were to command the future. Then, as was but natural, they began to draw back and to doubt as to the course they had taken. To put tariff-charges on imports in order that manufacturers might get higher prices for their goods in the markets of the |