Early one cold morning in January 1847, Mrs. Crosswait woke to the sound of pistol shots.  Without a word she rushed to her sleeping children, while her husband ran downstairs to bolt the door.  The Crosswaits knew instantly the danger they were facing.  Kidnappers had come to snatch them from their Michigan home and drag them back to Kentucky—and slavery.

The family had fled north after learning, to their horror, that the man who held them in slavery planned to sell them away from each other.  They ended up in Marshall, Michigan.  Home to a strong community of Quakers, Marshall welcomed them warmly.

Now, clutching her children, Mrs. Crosswait peeked fearfully from an upper window as three strangers fired bullet after bullet into their front door and demanded that the family surrender.  She heard her husband pushing furniture against the door.  Then over the din came the voice of a neighbor, urging people to aid the family.  Soon, friends came running.  Shouting threats at the intruders, the townspeople intimidated them into leaving, thereby saving the family.
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The Crosswaits’ struggle with kidnappers was not unique.  Although many people escaped from slavery and headed north into free territory, they were not safe.  Southerners believed that Article 4, Section 2, of the Constitution gave them the right to retrieve an enslaved person who fled across state lines.  Some Northerners, however, held strong beliefs to the contrary and acted on those beliefs by sheltering runaways and helping them escape.

The Mexican War only heightened these opposing viewpoints and led to increasingly divisive sectional tensions.  The war opened vast new lands to American settlers.  This territorial expansion once again raised the divisive issue of whether slavery should be allowed to spread westward.  As part of the debate over the new western territories, Southerners also demanded new laws to help them retrieve African Americans who escaped to free territory.

President Polk Sees Trouble Ahead

James K.  Polk, a Southern Democrat and a slaveholder, believed any argument about slavery in the new territories acquired from Mexico was “an abstract question.” No one would take enslaved African Americans to the Southwest, Polk thought, because the dry climate would not support the kinds of farming that made slavery profitable.

As an angry debate broke out in Congress, however, Polk realized that the issue of slavery in the territories was not something he could brush aside.  His diary reflected his fear that the question “cannot fail to destroy the Democratic Party, if it does not ultimately threaten the Union itself.”

GOVERNMENT
The Wilmot Proviso

In August 1846, Representative David Wilmot, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, proposed an addition to a war appropriations bill.  His amendment, known as the Wilmot Proviso, proposed that in any territory the United States gained from Mexico “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist.”

Wilmot was one of a group of Northern Democrats who believed the president was “pro-Southern.” Polk had supported a new tariff that helped the South at the expense of Northern manufacturers.  He had then compromised with the British on Oregon, a territory where slavery was likely to be banned, but had gone to war against Mexico for land that Southerners would occupy.

Wilmot’s proposal outraged Southerners.  They believed that any antislavery decision about the territories would threaten slavery everywhere.  Despite fierce Southern opposition, a coalition of Northern Democrats and Whigs passed the Wilmot Proviso in the House of Representatives.  The Senate, however, refused to vote on it.

During the debate, Senator John C.  Calhoun of South Carolina, although weak from tuberculosis, prepared a series of resolutions to counter the Wilmot Proviso.  The Calhoun Resolutions never came to a vote—moderates in the Senate were unwilling to consider them—but they demonstrated the growing anger of many Southerners.

In the resolutions, Calhoun argued that the states owned the territories of the United States in common, and that Congress had no right to ban slavery in the territories.  Calhoun warned somberly that “political revolution, anarchy, [and] civil war” would surely erupt if the North failed to heed Southern concerns.

Popular Sovereignty

The Wilmot Proviso had stirred passions on both sides in Congress.  The issue of slavery’s expansion had divided the country along sectional lines, North against South.  Many moderates began searching for a solution that would spare Congress from having to wrestle with the issue of slavery in the territories.

Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan proposed one solution.  Cass suggested that the citizens of each new territory should be allowed to decide for themselves if they wanted to permit slavery or not.  This idea came to be called popular sovereignty.

Popular sovereignty appealed strongly to many members of Congress because it removed the slavery issue from national politics.  It also appeared democratic since the settlers themselves would make the decision.  Abolitionists argued that it still denied African Americans their right not to be enslaved, but many Northerners, especially in the Midwest, supported the idea because they believed Northern settlers would occupy most of the new territory and would ban slavery from their states.

The Free-Soil Party Emerges

With the 1848 election approaching, the Whigs chose Zachary Taylor, hero of the war with Mexico, to run for president.  The Whig Party in the North was split.  Many Northern Whigs, known as Conscience Whigs, opposed slavery.  They also opposed Taylor because they believed he wanted to expand slavery westward.  Other Northern Whigs supported Taylor and voted with the Southern Whigs to nominate him.  These Northern Whigs were known as Cotton Whigs because many of them were linked to Northern cloth manufacturers who needed Southern cotton.

The decision to nominate Taylor convinced many Conscience Whigs to quit the party.  They then joined with antislavery Democrats from New York who were frustrated that their party had nominated Lewis Cass instead of Martin Van Buren.  These two groups joined with members of the abolitionist Liberty Party to form the Free-Soil Party, which opposed slavery in the “free soil” of western territories.

Although some Free Soilers condemned slavery as immoral, most simply wanted to preserve the western territories for white farmers.  They felt that allowing slavery to expand would make it difficult for free men to find work.  The Free-Soil Party’s slogan summed up their views: “Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men.”

The 1848 Election

Candidates from three parties campaigned for the presidency in 1848.  Democrat Lewis Cass of Michigan supported popular sovereignty, although this support was not mentioned in the South.  His promise to veto the Wilmot Proviso, should Congress pass it, however, was often reported.  Former president Martin Van Buren led the Free-Soil Party, which took a strong position against slavery in the territories and backed the Wilmot Proviso.  General Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate, avoided the whole issue.

On Election Day, support for the Free-Soilers split the Whig vote in Ohio, giving the state to Cass.  More importantly, it also split the Democratic vote in New York, giving the state to Taylor.  When the votes were counted, Taylor had won the election.

Evaluating
How did the war with Mexico affect the slavery debate?
 

The Search for Compromise

Within a year of President Taylor’s inauguration, the issue of slavery once again took center stage.  The discovery of gold in California had quickly led to that territory’s application for statehood.  The decision had to be made about whether California would enter the Union as a free state or a slave state.

The Forty-Niners Head to California

The 1848 discovery of gold brought thousands to California.  By the end of 1849, more than 80,000 “Forty-Niners” had arrived to look for gold.  Mining towns sprang up overnight, and the frenzy for gold led to chaos and violence.  Needing a strong government to maintain order, Californians began to organize for statehood.

Before leaving office, President Polk had urged Congress to create territorial governments for California and New Mexico.  Congress, bitterly divided along sectional lines, had not been able to agree on whether to allow slavery in these territories.

Although Zachary Taylor was from the South and a slaveholder, he did not think slavery’s survival depended on its expansion westward.  He believed that the way to avoid a fight in Congress was to have the people in California make their own decisions about slavery.  California now had enough people to skip the territorial stage and come directly into the Union as a state.

With Taylor’s encouragement, California applied in December 1849 for admission to the Union as a free state.  Thus, the Gold Rush had forced the nation once again to confront the divisive issue of slavery.

The Great Debate Begins

If California entered the Union as a free state, the slaveholding states would become a minority in the Senate.  Southerners dreaded losing power in national politics, fearing it would lead to limits on slavery and states’ rights.  A few Southern politicians began to talk openly of secession—of taking their states out of the Union.

Clay’s Proposal
In early 1850, one of the most senior and influential leaders in the Senate, Henry Clay of Kentucky, tried to find a compromise that would enable California to join the Union.  Clay, nicknamed “The Great Compromiser” because of his role in promoting the Missouri Compromise in 1820 and solving the nullification crisis in 1833, proposed eight resolutions to solve the crisis.

Clay grouped the resolutions in pairs, offering concessions to both sides.  The first pair allowed California to come in as a free state but organized the rest of the Mexican cession without any restrictions on slavery.  The second pair settled the border between New Mexico and Texas in favor of New Mexico but compensated Texas by having the federal government take on its debts.  This would win Southern votes for the compromise because many Southerners held Texas bonds.

Clay’s third pair of resolutions outlawed the slave trade in the District of Columbia but did not outlaw slavery itself.  The final two resolutions were concessions to the South.  Congress would be prohibited from interfering with the domestic slave trade and would pass a new fugitive slave act to help Southerners recover enslaved African Americans who had fled north.  These concessions were necessary to assure the South that after California joined the Union, the North would not use its control of the Senate to abolish slavery.

Clay’s proposal triggered a massive debate.  Any such compromise would need the approval of Senator Calhoun, the great defender of the South’s rights.  Calhoun was too ill to address the Senate.  He composed a speech in reply to Clay’s proposal and then sat, hollow-eyed and shrouded in flannel blankets, as another senator read it aloud.

Calhoun’s Response
Calhoun’s address was brutally frank.  It asserted flatly that Northern agitation against slavery threatened to destroy the South.  He did not think Clay’s compromise would save the Union.  The South needed an acceptance of its rights, the return of fugitive slaves, and a guarantee of balance between the sections.  If the Southern states could not live in safety within the Union, Calhoun darkly predicted, secession was the only honorable solution.

Three days later, Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts rose to respond to Calhoun’s talk of secession.  Calling on the Senate to put national unity above sectional loyalties, Webster voiced his support for Clay’s plan, claiming that it was the only hope for preserving the Union.  Although he sought conciliation, Senator Webster did not back away from speaking bluntly—and with chilling foresight:

“I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American. ...  I speak today for the preservation of the Union.  Hear me for my cause. ...  There can be no such thing as a peaceable secession.  Peaceable secession is an utter impossibility. ...  I see as plainly as I see the sun in heaven what that disruption itself must produce; I see that it must produce war, and such a war as I will not describe....”

In the end, Congress did not pass Clay’s bill, in part because President Taylor opposed it.  Then, unexpectedly, Taylor died in office that summer.  Vice President Millard Fillmore succeeded him, and he quickly threw his support behind the compromise.

By the end of summer, Calhoun was dead, Webster had accepted the position of secretary of state, and Clay was exhausted, leaving leadership of the Senate to younger men.  Thirty-seven-year-old Stephen A.  Douglas of Illinois divided the large compromise initiative into several smaller bills.  This allowed his colleagues from different sections to abstain or vote against whatever parts they disliked while supporting the rest.  By fall, Congress had passed all the parts of the original proposal as Clay had envisioned it, and President Fillmore had signed them into law.

For a short time, the Compromise of 1850 eased the tensions over slavery.  In the next few years, however, the hope of a permanent solution through compromise would begin to fade.

Summarize:
How did the Gold Rush affect the issue of slavery?