Washington bank held more than $400,000 of
these securities, entertained legislators and supplied
lobbyists with large amounts of cash.
In the Senate and then in the House, tangled
combinations pushed through the separate mea-
sures, one by one. California became the thirty-first
state. The rest of the Mexican cession was divided
into two territories, New Mexico and Utah, each to
be admitted to the Union when qualified, “with or
without slavery as [its] constitution may prescribe.”
Texas received $10 million to pay off its debt in
return for accepting a narrower western boundary.
The slave trade in the District of Columbia was abol-
ished as of January 1, 1851. The Fugitive Slave Act
of 1793 was amended to provide for the appoint-
ment of federal commissioners with authority to
issue warrants, summon posses, and compel citizens
under pain of fine or imprisonment to assist in the
capture of fugitives. Commissioners who decided
that an accused person was a runaway received a
larger fee than if they declared the person legally
free. The accused could not testify in their own
defense. They were to be returned to the South
without jury trial merely on the submission of an
affidavit by their “owner.”
Only four senators and twenty-eight representa-
tives voted for all these bills. The two sides did not
meet somewhere in the middle as is the case with
most compromises. Each bill passed because those
who preferred it outnumbered those opposed. In
general, the Democrats gave more support to the
Compromise of 1850than the Whigs, but party
lines never held firmly. In the Senate, for example,
seventeen Democrats and fifteen Whigs voted to
admit California as a free state. A large number of
congressmen absented themselves when parts of the
settlement unpopular in their home districts came to
a vote; twenty-one senators and thirty-six representa-
tives failed to commit themselves on the new fugitive
slave bill. Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi voted
for the fugitive slave measure and the bill creating
Utah Territory, remained silent on the New Mexico
bill, and opposed the other measures. Senator
Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, an abolitionist, supported
only the admission of California and the abolition of
the slave trade.
In this piecemeal fashion the Union was pre-
served. The credit belongs mostly to Clay, whose
original conceptualization of the compromise enabled
lesser minds to understand what they must do.
Everywhere sober and conservative citizens
sighed with relief. Mass meetings throughout the
country “ratified” the result. Hundreds of news-
papers gave the compromise editorial approval. In
Washington patriotic harmony reigned. “You would
suppose that nobody had ever thought of dis-
union,” Webster wrote. “All say they always meant
to stand by the Union to the last.” When Congress
met again in December it seemed that party dis-
cord had been buried forever. “I have determined
never to make another speech on the slavery ques-
tion,” Senator Douglas told his colleagues. “Let us
cease agitating, stop the debate, and drop the sub-
ject.” If this were done, he predicted, the compro-
mise would be accepted as a “final settlement.”
With this bit of wishful thinking the year 1850
passed into history.Clay,Speech to the U.S. Senateat
http://www.myhistorylab.comWebster,Speech to the U.S. Senateat
http://www.myhistorylab.comThe Fugitive Slave Act (1850)at
http://www.myhistorylab.comReadtheDocumentReadtheDocumentReadtheDocumentThe Compromise of 1850 315In this contemporary engraving, a slave flees through the cane fields.