Compromise of 1850

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Henry Clay's Resolutions of January 29, 1850

In the eight resolutions that he presented to the Senate, Henry Clay stresses the need for unity and good feeling between the North and South. Implicit in his opening statement is a call for both sections to give up something—either materially or in principle—in order to maintain national unity.

The resolutions broadly sketch out proposals regarding the statehood of California, the organization of the remaining territories acquired from Mexico, the settlement of the Texas boundary controversy, the status of slavery in the District of Columbia, the enactment of a strengthened fugitive slave law, and the protection of the interstate slave trade. The eight resolutions are not organized around a defined constitutional principle or any other legal tenet. The moral implications of slavery are avoided. Revealing his attention to issues of practicality, Clay speaks of “inexpedient” and “expedient” aspects of slavery's abolition or protection in the second, fifth, and sixth resolutions. He also claims in the second resolution that slavery “is not likely to be introduced” into the newly acquired Mexican territories, an assertion based upon the region's climate and geography. Taken as a whole, Clay's resolutions base their appeal for all-inclusive compromise legislation upon an overriding desire to protect the Union rather than upon any detailed or closely reasoned arguments.

Act to Establish Texas's Borders and a Territorial Government for New Mexico

This act—like the four other legislative measures of the Compromise of 1850—was taken from the package proposed by a select Senate committee on May 8, 1850, nicknamed the Omnibus Bill. After the Omnibus Bill was defeated, Senator Stephen A. Douglas reintroduced its sections in somewhat rewritten form as separate bills. This act, the act granting statehood to California, and the act organizing Utah Territory all passed on September 9, 1850.

In Section 1 of this act, Congress offers a proposal to settle an ongoing dispute with the state of Texas over its borders with the still-unorganized territory of New Mexico. The first and second articles propose specific boundary lines, corresponding to the present-day Texas–New Mexico border. This was a compromise between two vastly different land claims. The Texas state government had asserted that the Rio Grande formed its western border and had claimed additional territory north to the forty-second parallel as well; this covered the eastern half of New Mexico, including Santa Fe and Albuquerque. At the other extreme, Henry Clay had proposed extending New Mexico's southern border from the city of El Paso east to the Sabine River—which forms part of the present Texas-Louisiana border—adding the northern half of Texas to the new territory.

The third through fifth articles of Section 1 work out the details of a financial settlement between the federal and Texas governments in compensation for Texas's dropping its claims to New Mexican territory. Under these terms, Texas would forgo any compensation for turning over public property—such as military posts, ships, and customhouses—to the United States. The United States would in turn assume Texas's state debt, an amount of $10 million.

The closing sentence of the fifth article of Section 1 refers back to the congressional resolution annexing Texas to the Union in 1845. Specifically, it reaffirms the right of Texas to divide into one or more additional states. This was important, considering the fierce debate over maintaining a balance of free and slave states in the Union. Several proposals to carve new slave states out of Texas were made during the 1850 compromise debates, though none was acted upon.

Section 2 of the act sets the western boundaries of New Mexico Territory and reserves the possibility of dividing it into new territories in the future. (Parts of the territories of Arizona and Colorado were later carved out of New Mexican land.) The last sentence of this section implicitly rejects the Wilmot Proviso by specifying that New Mexico could apply for statehood in the future regardless of whether its constitution allowed slavery or not.

Sections 3–12 are devoted to largely uncontroversial details regarding the establishment of the New Mexico territorial government, calling for a federally appointed governor and locally elected state legislature. As was typical at the time, the voting franchise was restricted to free white males over age twenty-one. The most significant detail is found toward the end of Section 10, where the right to take writs of error and appeal from the territory to the federal Supreme Court is discussed. Specifically, the right to take cases involving titles to slaves and “any writ of habeas corpus involving the question of personal freedom” to the Supreme Court is affirmed. This was an attempt to shift the responsibility for regulating slavery to the Court, dodging the question of whether Congress or a territory's citizens had the right to do so.

The remaining sections of the act are devoted to territorial organization and follow the model of the recently created Oregon Territory. Sections 11–13 deal with the creation of law enforcement and judicial offices and the establishment of a state capitol. Section 14 grants the territory the right to send a nonvoting delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives. Section 15 calls for reserving land for schools. Section 16 gives the territorial governor the right to draw judicial district boundaries. The slavery question arises again (at least indirectly) in Section 19, which was added as a last-minute amendment. The amendment was originally offered by the Georgia representative Robert Toombs to prevent slaveholders from being deprived of “life, liberty, or property” in the territory—the “property” in question being slaves. However, in its final form, the amendment appeared to have the opposite effect. By stipulating that property could be regulated by “the laws of the land” within the territory, the section seems to refer back to the laws of Mexico, which prohibited slavery.

The Texas–New Mexico bill—known as “the little omnibus”—passed the Senate by a 31–20 vote. The negative votes came from antislavery northerners and extreme southern partisans. The bill went on to pass the House by a vote of 108 to 97.

Act for the Admission of the State of California into the Union

Thanks to the discovery of gold in 1848, California experienced fast population growth and had an immediate need for government. Its application for admission as a free state became stalled at the start of 1850. Southern congressmen contended that admitting California would upset the balance between slave and free states, and they sought to obtain some sort of compensation, such as the guaranteed protection of slavery in New Mexico. Northern antislavery congressmen objected to linking California's statehood to any other measure. In the end, California was indeed admitted as part of the Compromise of 1850.

The act granting statehood to California begins by accepting its request for admission into the Union “on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever.” Section 2 grants the new state two representatives to the U.S. Congress, a number that could change following an official census. In Section 3 the ability to tax or interfere with the disposal of federal lands within California is prohibited, as is any restriction of the use of the state's waterways.

The act for the admission of California passed the Senate by a vote of 34 to 18 and the House by a vote of 150 to 56. The negative votes came entirely from southern legislators.

Act to Establish a Territorial Government for Utah

When Clay's Omnibus Bill came up for a vote in the Senate on July 31, 1850, the measure was so riddled with amendments that only the provision for the organization of the territory of Utah survived. This passed on a 32–18 vote.

In nearly all respects, the Utah act resembles the one establishing the territory of New Mexico. Section 1 sets the boundaries of the territory, declares that slavery will not be a barrier to the territory's later admission as a state, and leaves open the possibility of dividing the territory in the future. The language of Sections 2–17 is largely identical to comparable sections in the Texas–New Mexico act. Exceptions are found in Sections 12 and 14, where funds are appropriated to construct public buildings and purchase a library. In Section 9 the right to take writs of error and appeal involving titles to slaves from the territory to the federal Supreme Court is affirmed. As in the case of New Mexico, this blocks the application of the Wilmot Proviso to the territory.

On September 7, 1850, the House voted 97–85 to establish the Utah Territory. The measure subsequently passed the Senate on September 9, 1850.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

The legislation popularly known as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was intended to strengthen Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, of the U.S. Constitution, which states, “No person held in service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.” Clay's proposal to aid in the enforcement of this clause recognized the fact that several northern states had passed personal liberty laws protecting the rights of persons claimed as fugitive slaves. Indeed, the states had done so in reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which provided that a slave (or “servant”) could be captured by a slaveholder or his agent and brought before a federal or local judge. If the judge ruled that the charges against the fugitive were true, he or she would be returned to slavery. The act was challenged in the free states as a violation of the right to trial by jury.

The increase of antislavery activity in the North and the growth of the Underground Railroad caused southern proslavery forces to demand a new fugitive slave law. Pro-compromise leaders from both the North and the South aligned themselves with this position. In his famous speech of March 7, 1850, the Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster stated that the South's only legitimate grievance against the North was “the want of a proper regard to the injunctions of the Constitution for the delivery of fugitive slaves.” (Tefft, p. 527). Many in the North disagreed with him, making the Fugitive Slave Act the most controversial part of the Compromise of 1850. President Millard Fillmore signed the act into law on September 18, 1850.

Section 1 of the act authorizes the U.S. circuit courts to appoint commissioners to act as law enforcement officers in runaway slave cases. Their authority was similar to that granted to justices of the peace under Section 33 of the Judiciary Act of 1789. They were given the power to arrest and imprison fugitive slaves. Section 2 includes organized U.S. territories within the same system. Section 3 allows for the possibility of enlarging the number of commissioners in the future.

Section 4 gives the commissioners in question the power to “grant certificates to such claimants, upon satisfactory proof being made, with authority to take and remove such fugitives from service or labor … to the State or Territory from which such persons may have escaped or fled.” The fact that this section denied an alleged fugitive slave any right to a jury trial raised intense northern opposition. Some argued that the legal presumption of innocence prevented the return of an alleged slave to a claimant without a trial. This view was rejected by supporters of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Implicit here is the principle that a slave is not a person but “property.” Moreover, a presumption made in this act is that anyone claimed as a slave was of African descent. After the act became law, this led to cases of free blacks being mistakenly arrested in the North and sent into slavery in the South. Behind the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 stood the belief that African Americans were not recognized under the Constitution as citizens—a belief later made explicit by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1857 Dred Scott decision.

Section 5 states that local marshals and their deputies would be required to aid commissioners in the capture of fugitive slaves. Failure to comply would result in a $1,000 fine. If an alleged slave was to escape from a local law officer's custody, the officer was to be liable for the full value of the slave. This section also empowered commissioners to appoint their own deputies for assistance in slave catching—and even to compel ordinary citizens to perform such functions. In addition, the act states, “All good citizens are hereby commanded to aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution of this law.” This provision, in particular, was widely disliked in the free states. While many northerners considered slavery wrong, they were content to leave the South to manage its own affairs; even those northerners who did not favor the abolition of slavery objected to being involved in the process of recapturing slaves.

In Section 6, the owner of a slave is given the right to pursue and reclaim his property in any state or territory, either by procuring a warrant or seizing and arresting the slave personally. The captured slave was then to be brought before a judge or magistrate and, “upon satisfactory proof being made,” the slave was to be handed over to the claimant. The affidavit of the claimant would be the primary evidence in the case; the testimony of the alleged fugitive slave would be inadmissible. Once a judicial officer had determined the claim to be valid, a certificate was to be issued authorizing the claimant or his or her agent “to use such reasonable force and restraint as may be necessary” to return the fugitive slave to bondage. No court or law officer would be legally permitted to interfere once the certificate had been issued.

Section 7 prohibits anyone from interfering with the arrest of a fugitive slave. Harboring or concealing a slave is likewise deemed a crime. Anyone accused of these offenses was to be tried before a U.S. district court in the district where the alleged offenses took place. A maximum fine of $1,000 and a maximum six-month prison term would be the penalties in the case of conviction. In addition, a $1,000 fine for civil damages was to be payable to the claimant for each fugitive slave involved.

Section 8 specifies that marshals, deputies, and clerks of the district and territorial courts would receive fees for their services in fugitive slave cases comparable to those for similar services in other cases. A commissioner issuing a certificate to a claimant allowing for the arrest of a fugitive slave was to be paid $10; a commissioner declining to issue a certificate would be paid $5. (Critics charged that the commissioners were in effect given $5 bribes for issuing certificates.) Those authorized to arrest fugitive slaves were to be paid $5, along with compensation for expenses incurred in keeping the slaves in custody.

Section 9 requires the local arresting officer to physically return the fugitive slave to the claimant or his agent or attorney. The officer would receive compensation for expenses, including the hiring of assistants to help confine and transport the slave.

Act to Suppress the Slave Trade in the District of Columbia

This bill ended the practice of selling slaves in Washington, D.C. For many years, a desire—even among southerners—to close the slave markets in the nation's capital had been building. The controversial aspect of this was the acknowledgment of the right of Congress, versus the rights of individual states, to restrict slavery. If Congress could regulate slavery in the District of Columbia, some argued, it could do likewise in other areas under congressional jurisdiction, such as the New Mexico and Utah territories. Most southern leaders opposed the bill for this reason.

Section 1 of the bill makes the slave trade illegal in the District of Columbia as of January 1, 1851. Thenceforth, any slave brought into the district for the purpose of being sold would be declared free. Section 2 gives local governments the power to close down slave markets. The prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia passed the Senate by a 33–19 vote and the House by a 124–59 vote, becoming law on September 20, 1850.