Compromise of 1850

Impact

The historians David Potter and William Freehling call the Compromise of 1850 an “armistice” rather than a true compromise (Freehling, p. 487). No central point of agreement was established, aside from the broader aims of avoiding disunion and war. The five separate bills that made up the Compromise of 1850 were each passed by different combinations of northern and southern votes; only four senators ended up voting for all of the individual bills. The fact that none of the compromise legislation declared whether Congress could regulate slavery in the territories proved to be both a strength and a weakness. The vague language in the New Mexico and Utah territorial bills enabled their passage but did not provide any guiding principles to help the nation avoid future battles over slavery. As a result, the Compromise of 1850 proved a temporary cure rather than the long-lasting solution it was intended to be.

The voting patterns in Congress for the compromise bills fell along regional rather than party lines. The divisions split the Whig Party the most deeply. In the 1852 presidential election, both the Democratic nominee, Franklin Pierce, and his Whig opponent, Winfield Scott, endorsed the Compromise of 1850. However, the Democrats were more nationally unified in their support of the legislation, while many northern Whigs disliked the compromise and distrusted those in their party who approved of it. Pierce was overwhelmingly elected, and the Whig Party dissolved over the next several years.

The Compromise of 1850 proved too fragile to survive. In particular, northern opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act grew in intensity, which enraged the South and increased support for disunion. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, opening the territories to the expansion of slavery. This, in turn, led to the rise of the antislavery Republican Party, which achieved the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in 1860 with only northern support. The outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 was the final evidence that, however good its intentions, the Compromise of 1850 had only delayed the final conflict over slavery.

Overall, the Compromise of 1850 probably aided the preservation of the Union in delaying the Civil War by a decade. During that time the North expanded its population and industrial bases, enabling it to ultimately defeat the Confederacy.