Failure of compromise

Compromise(s) of 1850

For nearly 30 years since the Missouri Compromise, the United States Senate maintained an unwritten parity of free and slave states, a tenuous balance that essentially enabled slaveowners to block antislavery legislation in Congress. After California was admitted as a free state on September 9, 1850, the country had 16 free states and 15 slave states; over the next decade, Kansas, Minnesota and Oregon all entered the union as free states.

Early in the debates over what eventually became the Compromise of 1850, it became apparent that there was insufficient support to pass an omnibus bill containing all of the relevant provisions. Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, soon to become one of the most prominent politicians of the 1850s, eventually steered various compromises, such as the admission of California as a free state and the passage of the new Fugitive Slave Act, through Congress. While these parliamentary maneuvers prevailed in the immediate term, it was readily apparent that none of the primary elements of the Compromise(s) of 1850 enjoyed widespread support, portending future controversies and conflict.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Stephen Douglas again shepherded a compromise bill through Congress, averting an immediate crisis but unintentionally increasing the likelihood of future conflict. Seeking in the short term to enhance Chicago’s emerging status as a major railroad hub, and longer term his own national reputation and prospective bid for the presidency, Douglas further upended the (in)famous 36’ 30” line from the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise(s) of 1850 by extending the principle of popular sovereignty into the Kansas and Nebraska territories, areas that then included what would later become parts of eastern Colorado, most of North and South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana, theoretically allowing the expansion of slavery into territory along the Canadian border. In the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates during the Illinois senate campaign in 1858, Douglas contrasted his views with Lincoln’s, claiming that Lincoln wanted equality within domestic law and institutions whereas Douglas promoted an explicit racial hierarchy with white people, or Anglo-Americans, occupying the top of the pyramid.

Stephen Douglas, Chicago, July 9, 1858

…I regard the great principle of popular sovereignty as having been vindicated and made triumphant in this land as a permanent rule of public policy in the organization of Territories and the admission of new States.

Thus you see, my fellow-citizens, that the issues between Mr. Lincoln and myself, as respective candidates for the United States Senate, as made up, are direct, unequivocal, and irreconcilable. He goes for uniformity in our domestic institutions, for a war of sections, until one or the other shall be subdued. I go for the great principle of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill,–the right of the people to decide for themselves….

Dred Scott

Clashes over slavery also often involved disputes about the legal status of free African Americans. In one of the most infamous judicial decisions in American history, the Supreme Court, with the majority opinion being written by Chief Justice Roger Taney of Maryland, ruled that a formerly enslaved person who had lived as a free person for over 10 years in states that had outlawed slavery could be forcibly returned to their previous enslavement. Taney went even further in his opinion, asserting that the Missouri Compromise and any related attempts to prohibit the expansion of slavery into new territories was illegal; he even went so far as to argue that African Americans could never become American citizens and warned northerners and anyone opposed to slavery that they would bear the responsibility for civil war if they openly resisted the Court’s decision.

Roger B. Taney, Scott v. Sanford, March 6, 1857

It remains, then, for the honest and patriotic citizens of the North who would avoid this calamity of disunion, and save for their offspring the glorious institutions won by the blood and sacrifices of their fathers, to abandon the false mental habits imposed on them by the enemies of these institutions, and, accepting the fixed and immutable truths of the Dred Scott decision, to regard as enemies to the peace of the country, and indeed to the safety of society, all those who, under the pretence of negro liberty, would render liberty for the white man impossible.

Bleeding Kansas

Fears of disunion, a frequently invoked term in the 1850s and into the Civil War, were further highlighted by the vicious violence then unfolding in the Kansas territory. The practical implementation of the policy of popular sovereignty had not been clearly specified, leading to both pro and anti-slavery forces seeking to influence political developments in Kansas and ultimately determine whether slavery would be introduced into the Kansas territory. Emigrant societies sponsored the movement and prospective settlement of new arrivals in Kansas, some of whom used violence to achieve their goals regarding slavery. The most notorious of these new arrivals, particularly for white southerners and northern defenders of slavery, was John Brown from Connecticut, a devoted anti-slavery evangelist who moved to Kansas in 1855, joining 5 of his sons and other anti-slavery advocates. After learning of the attack on Lawrence, Kansas by border ruffians from Missouri as well as the infamous Lecompton Constitution for Kansas that protected slavery, Brown and his sons executed 5 pro-slavery advocates in the Pottawatomie Massacre of May 1856. Brown and his supporters would then successfully fend off retaliatory attacks by pro-slavery forces in Kansas, with some of these battles involving hundreds of fighters. Evading arrest warrants, John Brown would eventually leave Kansas and return east; in October 1859, seeking to spark a large-scale rebellion against slavery, he led a failed attack on the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia that would terrify southern slaveowners and lead to Brown’s execution in December 1859.