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Chapter VIII - Taylor Elected,
A Great Compromise Effected Taylor Elected, A Great Compromise Effected 1848 - 1850
Finally, the Whig Party discovered the most successful way to win the 1848 election - evasion of the slavery issue altogether. The Whigs selected as their candidate Mexican War hero Zachary Taylor, a slave holder from Louisiana who was supposedly "above politics." In fact, Taylor once nonchalantly commented that he didn't "care a fig about the office." In Taylor the Southern Whigs got a slave holder, and Northern Whigs were placated by his refusal to take a stand on the Wilmot Proviso. "0ld Rough and Ready" won the election and managed to avoid the slavery issue for a short while.
In 1848, the discovery of gold in California shattered any hopes of finally resolving the menacing question of slavery in the territories. More than eighty thousand optimistic, gold-seeking Americans flocked to California, forcing Taylor and Congress to confront head-on the possibility of statehood for the huge territory. If California entered the Union as a free state, the delicate balance between free and slave states which had prevailed since 1820 would be disastrously threatened.
Once again politicians scrambled to douse the fiery controversy between pro- and antislavery factions. Early in 1850 the "Great Compromiser," seventy-three-year-old Henry Clay, attempted to pacify both the North and South with a series of compromise measures. His Omnibus Compromise Bill contained five major provisions: immediate admission of California as a free state; organization of the remainder of the Southwest Territory without restrictions on slavery; denial of Texas' claim to the Rio Grande boundary and federal assumption of the Texas national debt for compensation; abolition of slave trade in the Washington territory and passage of a more effective fugitive slave law.
On February 5, Clay, Calhoun and Daniel Webster initiated the Great Debate. "Haggard in appearance and faltering in his speech," the elderly Senator Clay defended his compromise claiming that if the sectional bickering did not swiftly end, a "furious, bloody, implacable, exterminating" civil war would occur. Calhoun, afflicted with tuberculosis, dramatically left his deathbed to sit in the Senate Chamber and denounce Clay's plan as simply unworkable, The South, he asserted, needed protection of its property rights, a strong fugitive slave law, and some type of political guarantee of "an equilibrium between the sections."
Finally, in March of 1850 the brilliant orator, Daniel Webster, expressed long-remembered sentiments. "I wish to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, not as a Northern man, but as an American . . . . I speak today for the preservation of the Union." He decisively added that the "extent of slavery" had already been determined by the Northwest, by the Missouri Compromise and by the "laws of nature." Then he earnestly pleaded with both sides to stop threatening disunion, urging them instead to "enjoy the fresh air of liberty and union." Many listeners considered Webster's stirring speech a "supreme gesture of conciliation," while other antislavery leaders added to his argument by pointing out that a higher law than the Constitution demanded the abolition of slavery. Devoted abolitionists, however, coldly referred to him as the new Benedict Arnold.
In spite of the name-calling, the anger, and even the more reasonable objections to the Compromise of 1850, it passed. Jubilation and riotous celebration were the order of the day in Washington, D.C. It seemed that the word had been passed that it was the "duty of every patriot to get howling drunk." Wild crowds wobbled about, some tipsily shouting, "The Union is saved!" As one historian recorded, "Before next morning, many a citizen had proved his patriotism and several senators were reported stricken with a variety of implausible maladies - headaches, heat prostration, or overindulgence in fruit." The next day all seemed well again - except for those poor souls, that is, who had not been moderate in celebration.
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