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Chapter VIII - Fillmore Takes Office, States Take Sides
Fillmore Takes Office, States Take Sides 1850 - 1854
An optimistic outlook still prevailed when Millard Fillmore took office, succeeding Taylor who suddenly died of a coronary thrombosis in July of 1850. Fillmore confidently proclaimed in December that the Compromise of 1850 would be "a final settlement." Hindsight, however, undeniably exposes this "settlement" as an evasion of the issue rather than a solution. Unresolved conflicts over territory and slavery would simmer until Stephen A Douglas, a Democrat senator from Illinois, heated the issue to a boil once again.
In 1854 Douglas introduced a bill establishing the Kansas and Nebraska territories. Douglas was primarily motivated by the possibility of building a midwestern transcontinental Railroad between the territories and his home state of Illinois. However, in order to build such a railroad, the territory it ran through had to be officially recognized. Southern politicians proposed similar railroads that would run through the southwest territories into California. Because Douglas needed Southern support, he promised to make generous concessions regarding slavery in the new territories. Accordingly, the bill left "all questions of slavery in the territories . . . to the people residing therein," touching off violent and bloody struggles between proslavery and abolitionist forces.
One of Douglas' contemporaries noted that this reversion to popular sovereignty "raised one hell of a storm." The proposed Kansas-Nebraska territory lay north of the 36° 30’ line of the Missouri Compromise. Under Douglas' plan, this territory was technically open to slavery if the people so chose, a possibility which violated the Missouri Compromise. Southerners wildly celebrated, while abolitionists grimly hung Douglas in effigy. The United States' two-party system, the glue which held together the federal government, was about to dissolve.
The riot-provoking Kansas-Nebraska Act destroyed the Whig Party and created others. The Democratic Party survived; but in the 1854 elections the Democrats lost sixty-six of the ninety-one congressional seats which they had won in 1852. A new party, the Republican Party, evolved, claiming that Douglas' legislation was a "gross violation of a sacred pledge" (the Missouri Compromise) and a "criminal betrayal of precious rights" that would make free territory a "dreary region of despotism." For the first time, a sectional party based on a sectional issue had gained significant power in the political system. At the same time, Whigs and Democrats in both the North and South lost their support. Intense sectional differences between regions were now polarized.
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