While the agreement incorporated in The Missouri Compromise of 1820maintained the balance of slave and proslave states in the territories added to the Union in The Louisiana Purchase, the issue over slavery's extension into
new territories came up again following the Mexican War. In December 1845, the U.S. Congress voted to annex the
Texas Republic, and troops led by General Zachary Taylor were sent to the
Zachary Taylor, Commander in Mexican
Rio Grande to protect the Texas border with Mexico. After clashes broke out between
Mexican troops and Taylor's soldiers, Congress approved on May 13, 1846 the request of
President James K. Polk for a declaration of war against Mexico. Two years of fighting
culminated with the U.S. capture of Mexico City in 1847. The War was formally concluded
with the signing of The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, in which
Mexico surrendered over half its territory, comprising present-day Arizona, California, New
Mexico, Texas, and parts of Colorado, Nevada and Utah in exchange for fifteen million
dollars to pay for war-related damage to Mexican property.
War, 1845-1846, later President of the
United States. Image Source:Library of
Congress
Prior to the signing of the Treaty, the issue of whether the new territory obtained
from Mexico would be slave or free was raised by the Wilmot Proviso, an
amendment introduced by Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot to an
appropriations bill that provided funds to negotiate a settlement to end the War.
The amendment stipulated that slavery would be barred from all lands acquired
from Mexico as a result of the war. The Wilmot Proviso split both Whigs and
Democrats in the Congress along sectional lines. Over the four years from 1846 to
1850, Wilmot would introduce versions of his original proviso that often passed
the House, where Northerners were in the majority, but would fail in the Senate,
where the North and South still had an equal number of seats. By 1850, 14 of 15
northern state legislatures had instructed their state Congressional delegations to
support the Proviso, while growing numbers of Southerners asserted that their
states would secede if it ever was enacted.
Bulletin dated September 26, 1847 announcing news
of capture of Mexico City. Image Source: Library of
Congress
The discovery of gold in California also precipitated a confrontation when the rapid increase in population led to
California petitioning for admission to the Union as a free state in 1849. President Zachary Taylor supported
admission of California as a free state, and also believed that the New Mexico territory, when it applied, should also
enter as a free state. In the Senate, William H. Seward of New York led the abolitionist cause; the South was most
prominently represented by Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who had long advanced the position that
the states had the right to nullify federal laws, and SenatorJefferson Davis of Mississippi, later to become president
of the Confederacy. The Southern congressmen argued that the South should be given guarantees of equal position
in the territories and of stricter enforcement of fugitive slave laws, which had been frequently ignored by both
public officials and citizens in free states.
Henry Clay, who had resigned from the Senate in 1842, returned in 1849 at the age of 72, and again was the key
source for compromise that averted the dissolution of the Union. His package of measures, later known as The
Compromise of 1850, proposed the admission of California as a free state; the organization of New Mexico and
Utah territories without mention of slavery, with their status to be later decided by the territories themselves when
they were ready to seek admission as states; the prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia; and the
strengthening of penalties on those violating the fugitive slave laws. The deferral of the decision on the status of
New Mexico and Utah, later to be labeled as "popular sovereignty", was initiated by SenatorStephen A. Douglas of
Illinois, who hoped that the package would maintain not only the Union, but also the fragile coalition of Northern
and Southern Democrats which he sought to keep together for his unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1852.
The debate over the Clay legislative package inspired some of the most famous speeches in the history of the
Congress. John C. Calhoun, who was too weak to deliver his 42-page speech and would die at the end of the
month, sat as Senator James Murray Mason of Virginia read to the Senate the printed version Calhoun had
prepared. Calhoun's speech argued against further conciliation and compromise, suggesting that if the North
refused to recognize the South's concerns over the preservation of slavery, it was time to allow the Union to divide
peacefully into two separate nations.Three days later, Daniel Webster rose to support Clay in a ringing defense of
the Union.
Mr. President, - I wish to speak to-day, not as a
Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an
American, and a member of the Senate of the United States.
It is fortunate that there is a Senate of the United States; a
body not yet moved from its propriety, not lost to a just sense
of its own dignity and its own high responsibilities, and a
body to which the country looks, with confidence, for wise,
moderate, patriotic, and healing counsels. It is not to be
denied that we live in the midst of strong agitations, and are
surrounded by very considerable dangers to our institutions
and government. The imprisoned winds are let loose. The
East, the North, and the stormy South combine to throw the
whole sea into commotion, to toss its billows to the skies, and
disclose its profoundest depths. I do not affect to regard
myself, Mr. President, as holding, or as fit to hold, the helm
in this combat with the political elements; but I have a duty
to perform, and I mean to perform it with fidelity, not without
a sense of existing dangers, but not without hope. I have a
part to act, not for my own security or safety, for I am
looking out for no fragment upon which to float away from
the wreck, if wreck there must be, but for the good of the
whole, and the preservation of all; and there is that which
will keep me to my duty during this struggle, whether the sun
and the stars shall appear, or shall not appear for many
days. I speak to-day for the preservation of the Union. "Hear
me for my cause." I speak to-day, out of a solicitous and
anxious heart for the restoration to the country of that quiet
and that harmony which make the blessings of this Union so
rich, and so dear to us all. These are the topics that I propose
to myself to discuss; these are the motives, and the sole
motives, that influence me in the wish to communicate my
opinions to the Senate and the country; and if I can do any
thing, however little, for the promotion of these ends, I shall
have accomplished all that I expect...
Excerpts from Senate Speech of Daniel Webster, March
7, 1850
Source: Department of History, Furman University
Clay's endorsement of the compromise helped gain the votes of Northern senators, several of whom had opposed
the provisions of Clay's package calling for more rigorous enforcement of the fugitive slave law. After further long
debates and an initial failure to pass the compromise incorporated in a single bill, Congress approved the measures
as separate bills in September 1850.
Despite the brief period of optimism following the enactment of the compromise, the issue of the status of slavery
in the territories soon re-emerged when Congress came to consider in 1854 the long-deferred admission of the
Kansas territory to the Union. Under the Missouri Compromise, the territory's location would provide for its
admission as a free state, but this was vigorously opposed by Southerners. Stephen Douglas, chairman of the
Senate Committee on Territories who had advanced the concept of "popular sovereignty" in the Compromise of
1850, drafted legislation that again contained the provision that the question of slavery should be left to the
decision of the territorial settlers themselves, and also split the single Kansas territory into the two proposed states
of Kansas and Nebraska. The assumption was that the Kansas settlers would choose to enter as a slave state and
those in Nebraska as a free state. The measure repealed the provisions of the Missouri Compromise which would
have prohibited slavery in both territories. After a three-month debate, the Congress approved the Douglas bill as
the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.
The Act, however, led to the violent period that came to be known as "Bleeding Kansas" as pro and anti-slavery
forces attempted to increase the number of settlers and potential voters within the territory sharing their
respective positions. The New England Emigrant Aid Company, backed by prominent abolitionists, sought to raise
capital to encourage 20,000 settlers to move to Kansas by securing reduced railway and steamboat fares and by
organizing them into parties that would establish new communities. Pro-slavery proponents, many who crossed the
border from Missouri to cast illegal ballots in Kansas, succeeded in electing a pro-slavery majority to the territorial
legislature in 1855. Contending that the election was invalid, anti-slavery forces established their own competing
legislature. The tensions between extremists on each side led to violent clashes. In May 1856, proslavery men
entered the newly-established town of Lawrence, burned the Free State Hotel and damaged homes and stores. In
retaliation, the abolitionist John Brown led a group of men, which included four of Brown's sons, that dragged five
pro-slavery men from their homes and hacked them to death. Eventually, the clashes would result in the killing of
some 55 people. In 1859, the violence had subsided, and Kansas adopted a constititution prohibiting slavery, but
its admission to the Union as a free state was blocked by Southerners in the Congress. After the Southern states
had left the Union, Kansas entered the Union in 1861.
The Dred Scott Decision
The confrontations over slavery illustrated by the violence in Kansas were exacerbated as a result of the Supreme
Court's decision announced on March 6, 1857 in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford, 19 How. 393. Scott was a slave
who had been taken by his master from the slave state of Missouri to the free state of Illinois and to Wisconsin
Territory, where slavery was forbidden by theMissouri Compromise of 1820. After returning to Missouri, he sued,
aided by abolitionist lawyers, for his freedom on the grounds that by residing in a free state and in a free territory
he had been released from bondage.
Delivering the opinion of the Court, Chief JusticeRoger B. Taney held that a slave's status
was fixed by the laws of the state in which he lived, and that Scott, as a slave, could not be a
citizen and therefore could not sue in the federal courts. The opinion went on, however, to state
that since slaves were only property, their status could only be regulated by state law, and that it
was beyond the Constitutional authority of the Congress to exclude them from any territory.
Even though The Missouri Compromise already had been repealed by the KansasNebraska Act of 1854, the Court continued to express the view that the Missouri
Compromise was "not warranted by the Constitution, and [was] therefore void." This decision,
which prohibited Congress from enforcing the regional compromises that had kept the fragile
truce between North and South, greatly angered antislavery elements.
Photograph of Dred Scott Image
Source: National Park Service
The decision was delivered just two days after the inauguration as president ofJames Buchanan, a Democrat from
Pennsylvania, who had carefully attempted to satisfy both North and South in the composition of his Cabinet. The
furore also frustrated his hopes that the Court's decision would be widely accepted as a final resolution of the
question of slavery in the territories; in his Inaugural Address, he confidently asserted that the issue was "happily,
a matter of but little practical importance" since the Supreme Court was about to decide it "speedily and finally"
and that "[t]o their decision, in common with all good citizens, I shall cheerfully submit, whatever this may be...".
The whole Territorial question being thus settled upon the principle of popular sovereignty--a principle as ancient as free government
itself--everything of a practical nature has been decided. No other question remains for adjustment, because all agree that under the
Constitution slavery in the States is beyond the reach of any human power except that of the respective States themselves wherein it
exists. May we not, then, hope that the long agitation on this subject is approaching its end, and that the geographical parties to which it
has given birth, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, will speedily become extinct? Most happy will it be for the country when
the public mind shall be diverted from this question to others of more pressing and practical importance.
Excerpt from Inaugural Address of President James Buchanan, March 4, 1857
Source: The Avalon Project, Yale Law School
Following the decision, Buchanan requested that Congress admit Kansas as a slave state, but this provoked
opposition from northern Democrats as well as from the new and growing Republican Party. When Republicans won
a plurality in the House in 1858, every significant bill they passed was rejected as a result of the southern voting
strength in the Senate or a Presidential veto. As the nation faced the critical election of 1860, the Congress
essentially had reached a stalemate.
Resources
The African-American Mosaic, Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History &
Culture >>Library of Congress
From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection >>Library of Congress
The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition >>Yale Center for International and
Area Studies, Yale University
Africans in America >> PBS.org
John Brown's Holy War >> PBS.org
Slavery and Abolition, Social Movemnets and Culture, American Studies Program, Washington State University
The Dred Scott Case >>Washngton University Libraries
The Dred Scott Decision >>National Park Service
Educational Tools
Teacher's Guide: Africans in America >>PBS.org
Teaching With Documents Lesson Plan: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo >>National Archives & Records
Administration