Let's consider reactions to the Compromise of 1850 because you'd think compromise is a really good idea, right? But that's not what people said at the time. Both Northerners and Southerners spoke out against the Compromise of 1850 even before it went into law. Northerners hated the fugitive slave part of this Compromise, saying that it was immoral.
They said it made them support slavery by forcing them to help slave catchers from the South. And William Seward of New York, who we heard about in the last lecture, made a very famous speech against the Compromise because of the Fugitive Slave Law. On March 11, 1850, he gave a speech known as the Higher Law Speech, which is kind of ominous. Seward argued that the Compromise was constitutional and legal, but not moral. And morality, he said, was more important than the Constitution itself.
His quote said, the Constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to defense, to welfare, and to liberty. But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain and devotes it to the same noble purposes. Basically, what he said in this speech is that the compromise may be constitutional, but that's not the only thing we listen to in this country, which is a very disturbing statement from a U.S. politician sworn to uphold the Constitution. Southerners didn't like the Compromise either, and they made that clear at the Nashville Convention, which met in June of 1850. Here, Southerners came together to brainstorm ways to defend the Southern way of life and to defend slavery.
The first session of the Convention met in June of 1850, and Southerners spoke against the Compromise, arguing that it was not good for the South. What Southerners wanted was to extend the Missouri Compromise Line of 1819 through the Western Territories. At least, that's what they wanted at this particular convention. They thought that if you extended the line, above the line you could have freedom, and below the line you could have slavery, and you would restore balance.
In the second session of this Nashville Convention, which met in November of 1850, some Southerners called for secession from the United States. now that the Compromise was law. Not every Southern state agreed with this idea, but they did affirm the right of secession and talked about forming a Southern Congress to look out for Southern rights.
Most scholars agree the Nashville Convention paved the way for secession and for a Southern Confederacy. In the aftermath of the Compromise, anger and hostility festered below the surface. And that anger didn't improve after the publication of a book in 1852. The book's title was Uncle Tom's Cabin, and it was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
It ran 300,000 copies in its first year, and it went all over the country. If you were a Southerner, this book would have alarmed and enraged you at the same time. It would have alarmed you because of what it was saying to the North. Written in response to the new Fugitive Slave Law, this book intended to show Northerners what slavery was like, so they could understand the institution the law required them to protect.
It centered around an elderly, decent individual, a slave named Uncle Tom, who met a brutal and violent end at the very last parts of the book. The book casts Southern society as utterly corrupt, arguing that slavery ruined everyone it contacted, free or slave, in some way. It included murder, loss, tragic scenes involving family separation, and graphic violence. It showed how terribly slaves suffered in the South. But Uncle Tom's Cabin also made the point that slavery turned slave owners brutal, irresponsible, childish, and immature, and it ended up exacerbating sectional tensions and was certainly a contributing factor in the upcoming Civil War.
This publication made many Northerners conclude that slavery absolutely had to end, and this book was also banned in many parts of the South. So, the California issue and the argument over the Western territories was the first serious crisis our nation faced in regards to the question of slavery. One shouldn't underestimate the intensity of this first crisis.
The stress involved here... killed a president, destroyed the health of a prominent politician who had previously guided our nation through all kinds of problems. This first crisis also left the South talking about secession.
But even with the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, it didn't cause a civil war. Not just yet. The second crisis will take us into the conflict.
So we'll do that next.