in the late 1840s the United States experienced the National Emergency the likes of which no one could even fathom the seriousness of the situation of course dwarfed the seriousness of the Missouri controversy and later the South Carolina Nullification Crisis the sectional crisis of the late 1840s was the result of disagreements between north and south over various issues such as slavery in our nation's capital the boundaries of Texas the entrance of New Mexico and California is free states to the union fugitive slave laws and of course the big one slavery in the territories of the United States and as the national debate over these issues swirled Americans began to worry about the fate of their Republic for example one New York wig named philippone wrote in his diary that quote Madness rules the hour faction personal recommendation and denunciation Prevail and men for the first time in our history do not hesitate openly to threaten a dissolution of the Union but was the Union in serious danger did Southerners really intend to secede if they didn't get their way or were they bluffing in order to force some concessions such as perhaps they had done in 1833 and and before in 1820 it asking any Congressman at the time would have found varying degrees of uh a lack of optimism for example William Richardson wrote that it was a bad State of Affairs and a bad state of things here in the nation's capital that little little as it is thought about I fear this Union is in danger and then it was appalling to Richardson to hear gentlemen members of Congress who had taken Oaths of loyalty to support the Constitution to talk earnestly for the dissolution of the union and even John C Calhoun had to readily admit at this time that southern Congressman seemed to be more determined than ever before uh to secede from the union and that those that uh said they were this unionist still an even greater number of them admitted that it was probably the only recourse of action left for southerners and as this controversy over the future of slavery and slavery in the territories unfolded incredibly an All-Star cast of outsized personalities and huge egos emerged and these Egos and personalities were clearly resolved to find a way out of this mess and to preserve the Union now the main thrust of this action was spearheaded by U.S senators such as Daniel Webster John C Calhoun and of course the great compromiser Henry Clay however their actions were also supported by a new cast of figures including people such as William H Seward Stephen A Douglas and Jefferson Davis who will become more and more important as time moves on now together all of these National figures staged one of the greatest dramas of American politics the compromise of 1850. with Southern extremists threatening secession Congressional leaders again turn to the Aging Henry Clay to save the Union as he had done in 1820 and again in 1833. and on January 29 1850 the 72 year old Henry Clay Strode onto the floor of the U.S Senate where he proposed a series of resolutions some of which were paired as compromises between the North and South but all were designed to settle the national disagreements that plagued the Republic as part of these resolutions he called for admitting California to the Union as a free state he called for applying the pop the idea or the concept of popular sovereignty to the remaining territories of the Mexican session he called for um Texas to relinquish its claims to the New Mexico territory and allow for the establishment of a New Mexico territorial government he called for retaining slavery in the nation's capital but prohibiting the sale of slaves there and he called for the adoption of a more effective Fugitive Slave Law now this complex cluster of proposals was deemed uh the Omnibus Bill which is just a large Congressional bill that contains a lot of cogs and a lot of uh items in it but the Omnibus Bill that he proposed that day became the substance of what is regarded today as the compromise of 1850. and over the next seven months The Virtue and the merits of Clay's proposals were hashed out in Congress and were punctuated by one of the greatest debates in Congressional history that great debate took place between John C Calhoun and the great order Daniel Webster and the debate began centering enclave's nine res or Clay's proposal that became the compromise of 1850. the beginning of the debate began on March 4th 1850 when Senator John C Calhoun arrived in the Senate chamber sickly ill with tuberculosis unable to talk his speech was read aloud by a Virginian by the name of John Mason the speech that Calhoun delivered that day or had delivered in his Stead goes down in history as the definitive statement of the southern states in the lead-up to the American Civil War statement in terms of their positions on all of the issues of the day but most importantly the expansion of slavery so important is this speech I want to pay a little bit a closer attention to it than normally we would just because it it is so clear in its in its percent it's so clear in its um regard for the issues of the day that it it it really warrants close scrutiny so in this speech by Calhoun he asserted that you know the question really at hand here four Southerners was that Southerners were desperate in their attempts to protect the institution of slavery in this speech he said that the question of vital importance to the southern section was the relation between the two races of the Southern section which constituted he said a vital portion of the social organization of the Southern States and in this speech he he alleged that every portion of the northern states entertained views and feelings that were more or less hostile to the institution of slavery and that those most opposed to slavery were hostile towards it because they considered it to be a sin and considered themselves under the most sacred obligation to use every effort to destroy it in this speech he was of course referring to not just anti-slavery Northerners those that were opposed to slavery on the grounds of they didn't want it to expand but he was lumping all Northerners in on the idea that they considered slavery to be a sin they considered slavery to be wrong and were very hostile to it but he obviously left his most biting criticism in this speech to the Abolitionist which he uh references here by talking about those that consider themselves to be under the most sacred obligation to use every effort to destroy it Calhoun in the speech I think touched on a very important Point here that as early as 1850 you can see that it is the protection of slavery at the Forefront of the Southern mindset here and so he goes on in the speech that for a lot of these Southerners the only way to protect the institution is slavery was for slavery to expand and the fact that Northerners were denying that opportunity for slavery to expand to New Mexico or to California or to any other territory of the Mexican session he argued that that this was the cause of the Great and primary danger right uh that by refusing to allow slavery to expand that this was destroying the equilibrium between the two sections of the country uh this is an interesting argument because he's essentially making the case that if Southerners are to feel safe they need this type of protection uh in terms of political power which they had always kind of had uh since the uh creation of the Republic and slavery expanding then must be allowed to happen so that they can continue to protect themselves with this political power now he finished his speech with a very dire warning to the audience that day that if the agitation went on in the same force and acting with increased intensity as it as as it had been shown that it would finally snap every chord and when nothing will be left to hold the states together except force and he finished with a warning to his Northern counterparts he said that if you represent the stronger portion can can you not agree to settle these issues on a broad principle of justice and Duty and if you say so then let the states be both represent or let the states we both represent agree to separate and do it peacefully he said if you're unwilling to let us have peace tell us so and we shall know what to do when we are reduced to the question of submission or resistance this was Calhoun's way of saying that the South has made its case the south is committed that slavery must expand and if it's not allowed to there will be no recourse left for the southern states except for secession and if the north won't let them go in peace then they will resist um three days later three days later Calhoun's speech uh was retorted by the golden throated Daniel Webster uh one of the most magnificent orders of American History definitely from this time he was the best public speaker in an age of American history in which everybody was gifted at public speaking um three days later after Calhoun's speech on March 7 1850 he rose the speak uh and I want to go through his speech just a little bit because his speech really is a fine speech but it it it generally shows you the attitude of the north um in terms of the ideas of secession the ideas of possible Civil War but it also I think shows you the willingness of a lot of people in the country in 1850 to find some type of compromise uh if any way possible Webster began his speech and a lot of grade school kids for a long time in this country had this speech memorized but he began the speech by saying that he will he wished to speak that day not as a Massachusetts man where he was from nor is a northern man but as an American and a member of the Senate of the United States he was there that day to speak for the preservation of the union and he wanted the audience to hear his cause uh the South he argued had legitimate concern over what he considered to be quote infernal Fanatics and abolitionists but that the north he argued in this speech also had legitimate concerns about the continued expansion of slavery that he reminded everyone in the audience that they that the constitution did in fact protect property and that it was wrong for the north to engage in things like personal Liberty laws and the Underground Railroad however he dismissed the idea of secession as he turned a withering gaze right at John C Calhoun and he chastised those for whom quote everything is absolute he who lacked the capacity to compromise he argued and whose threats he argued risked Civil War he finished his speech by gazing right at John C Calhoun and speaking directly to him and saying secession Peaceable secession sir your eyes and mine are never destined to see that miracle instead of looking into such caverns of Darkness Webster said let men enjoy the fresh air of Liberty and Union and let them look upon a more hopeful future now after speaking for hours a sweat drenched Webster ended with a plea to his colleagues that they rise above the absolutism and become compromising Statesmen in Webster's speech of course infuriated the extremists on both sides of the debate Southerners and secessionists denounced them and even abolitionists denounced him no sooner had he finished the speech than someone in the gallery called him a traitor for calling abolitionist fanatics and Calhoun Rose at the end of his speech and reiterated that the union could indeed be broken and that a great moral cause would probably break it now clay clay for his part he admitted that he was very frustrated in the process of trying to get his resolutions passed through Congress uh he was frustrated at abolitionists for refusing to compromise he was frustrated with secessionists who were threatening disunion in Civil War and also were refusing to compromise to compromise but he turned a lot of anger towards um those that you know says the secessionist and abolitionists that he believed were creating the situation abolitionists like William H Seward who at the time was a U.S senator from New York and gave a speech just a few days after Webster's speech now Seward Seward's speech was seen by Henry Clay and those that were trying to achieve compromise as nothing but muddying the waters uh his speech was known as the higher law speech and I want to show you a portion of it because I it it shows you how in spite of people like Webster and clay and even to a lesser extent uh uh uh uh that others that we haven't talked about we're trying to find compromise that even Northerners believe that the time for compromise was over in essence I want to show you we made sure because he he represented the polar extreme of where John C Calhoun was if John C Calhoun was immovable in terms of it has to be this way or no way William H Seward represented the northern reply to that and in his higher law speech he argued that the Congress regulates the stewardship of the U.S Constitution and that the constitution devoted the domain to Union to Justice into defense to welfare into Liberty but he argued that there was a higher law than the Constitution one which regulates our authority over the domain and devotes it to the same Noble purpose the present crisis Seward said Embraces the fearful issue whether the union shall stand and slavery under the steady peaceful action of moral social and political causes be removed by gradual voluntary effort and with compensation or whether the union should be dissolved and Civil Wars ensue bringing on violent but complete and immediate emancipation um this speech was denounced by Clay this speech was denounced by Webster this speech was even denounced by the president of the United States Zachary Taylor but I think it's worth looking at and I think it's worth knowing because it really represented kind of the finest answer to the immovable absolutism of John C Calhoun and in many ways it is the northern version of this absolutism no compromise whatsoever and it was people like William H Seward and it was people like John C Calhoun who frustrated Henry Clay in his efforts to uh get this compromise and get this giant piece of congressional legislation shepherded through Congress it appeared as though everything was going to be in vain and then there was even Zachary Taylor Zachary Taylor was of no help to Henry Clay either Zachary Taylor was singularly focused on California as the biggest issue he only wanted to see California brought into the union and wasn't willing to uh give on any of the other issues he you know Clay's trying to pass a giant compromise package but Taylor the president of the United States the person that'll have to sign off on all of this he only cared about the entrance of California and so Taylor along with people like Calhoun and people like William H Seward all they did was frustrate Clay's efforts um and Clay after months of working you know he had given all that he could to this great compromise but it appeared as though his efforts were going to be in vain and that's when things ratcheted up even more in June of 1850 with the seemingly collapse of Clay's proposal nine slave holding States dispatched the total of 176 delegates to Nashville Tennessee for the purpose of a convention and the purpose of this convention was to consider secession if the federal government went ahead with plans to either ban slavery in the Mexican session or to allow the entrance of California to as a free state and after a heated debate at this Nashville Convention the southerners who had urged secession at the convention if slavery were restricted in any of the new territories were narrowly just narrowly overruled by moderate Southerners in attendance here who wanted to give Clay's proposals more time to be achieved and so in the National Convention con adjourned on June 11 1850 uh a CRI the danger had been averted but the extremists at the convention had already called for a second session to meet in November of 1850. um to decide what to do should Clay's efforts ultimately fail and so when we now have a Convention of Southern States openly talking about seceding from the Union this means that the national crisis has reached the Tipping Point the entirety of the Union hinges on Clay's proposals now they say that even in the darkest hour there's always a sliver of Hope always a sliver of light and indeed by early July of 1850 a pathway to compromise finally did emerge the first Domino to fall was Zachary Taylor Zachary Taylor while uh observing a uh July 4th celebration in 1850 uh he suffered a sunstroke uh and to alleviate that sunstroke he began gorging himself on iced milk cherries and raw vegetables in this feeble attempt to alleviate him of the sunstroke he had suffered uh and as a result of those that iced milk cherries and raw vegetables well he apparently he developed a stomach order a disorder uh and he died um now he died on July 9 1850 after lingering for a while but with the removal of Zachary Taylor as president of the United States this this meant that the new president uh Millard Fillmore uh Millard Fillmore it was a supporter of Clay's proposals right whereas Zachary Taylor was just focused on California and more of an obstacle to what Henry Clay was trying to do the new president Millard Fillmore was actually a supporter of what clay was attempting to do and so this bolstered Clay's chances at a compromise uh Taylor had been willing to risk war with his native South in order to save the union but Fillmore however well he wanted to make peace and once he became president he ended up firing Zachary Taylor's cabinet and he ended up naming Daniel Webster as his secretary of state and that was a clear signal then to nationalists in the country and and moderates in the country that Fillmore was in support of these compromise efforts because Webster was obviously a major proponent an advocate of Clay's attempts um and uh once Fillmore had done this at the other thing he began doing is he began listening to the advice of a young senator from Illinois by the name of Stephen A Douglas who actually was the youngest man in the Senate at the time and was considered a rising star in the Democratic party but he was also a friend of the South and what Douglas helped Fillmore do is that Douglas helped convince filmer that the best way to get Henry Clay's proposals passed was to break them up into separate proposals rather than one giant Omnibus Bill and to vote on these proposals one at a time right rather than all at the same time and it was Stephen A Douglas that helped to prepare these proposals for implementation and voting it was Stephen A Douglas that helped uh shift Miller Fillmore into supporting this idea which uh you know this means that the president is now more inclined to support Henry Clay's proposals if Henry Clay will break them into smaller portion uh and so that's ultimately what Henry Clay was going to do so we give a lot of credit here for helping to get this Clay's proposals passed you know a lot a lot of credit has to be given to the death of Zachary Taylor unfortunately but also Millard Fillmore uh uh signaling to clay that he's in favor of these proposals and working closely with people like Stephen A Douglas uh to ensure that these proposals will be passed uh the other kind of domino to fall here that helped to facilitate the passage ultimately of these compromise efforts uh was the death of John C Calhoun who uh after a long and illustrious and nefarious in many ways career and National politics um that stalwart of the South John Caldwell Calhoun finally died on March 31st 1850. uh here's his uh his tomb he's buried in in Charleston South Carolina with the removal of Calhoun there was no longer any major Southern obstruction to these efforts of conciliation I mean no nobody could Garner the influence uh among Southern leaders as as Calhoun could the Calhoun was really the only way that uh the the only person that could have held the the south in solidarity against these proposals and so in the end each part of Clay's proposals uh passed and several of them though were just passed by the very narrowest of margins um but all of these proposals as they passed throughout September uh of 1860 that this became of course known as the Compromise of 1850 and on the day that it became clear and apparent that all the measures would pass senators and congressmen you know they burst into tears uh that night celebrants in the states in the streets of Washington DC you know they lit bonfires they ring church bells and they chanted the union is saved the union is saved so let's talk a little bit about this Compromise of 1850 and talk about its final form uh and then of course talk about the legacy of the compromise of 1850. uh in its final form the Compromise of 1850 included the following elements number one California statehood on September 7 1850 Southerners agreed to stop blocking the entrance of California to the union something they'd been doing since Zachary Taylor had had pushed the plan uh before his death and so California entered the Union as a free state as the 36th state uh on September 7th 1850 uh the picture you see on the screen here is of the uh celebration in California on October 19th celebrating statehood um the second element of the Compromise of 1850 concerns the New Mexico territory uh it was agreed that the the Constitution and the territory created by that constitution in New Mexico would not stand uh that what had been done in Santa Fe with the with a small number of settlers and soldiers in that area creating the New Mexico territory and and taking uh uh and claiming territory that Texas claimed that that is undone that's not gonna happen uh however it was agreed that a new New Mexico territory would be organized uh and some of the territory that Texas had claimed it was agreed here in the Compromise of 1850 would become part of it so this map kind of shows you this new uh or the the territory that Texas claimed that will now be shifted over to the New Mexico territory and that of course then led to the third element of the uh Compromise of 1850 was Texas's borders in the Compromise of 1850 Texas's present day borders were established uh and to just kind of smooth it over with uh Texas uh Texas Texas was uh given 10 million dollars by the federal government uh that it used of course to pay off debt it had accrued uh when it was an independent republic another element of the Compromise of 1850 is that the slave trade was going to be prohibited in Washington D.C a federal Bill uh here it is right here this is Senate Bill 226 uh from 1850 uh became effective on September 20th 1850 and this prohibited the slave trade in Washington DC now it did not ban slavery in Washington DC for reasons I'll explain in just a second but it did prohibit the slave trade in our nation's capital so that was another element here another element was of course the fugitive slave laws um Southerners got pretty much everything they wanted here in terms of a stronger Fugitive Slave Law this one was known as The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 it was enacted on September 18th um 1850 and this law uh it required the federal government and and northern states to help slaveholders recapture runaways so remember we talked about that prig versus Pennsylvania case where it said that the federal government's responsible for for uh enforcing fugitive slave laws the Fugitive Slave Act kind of rolls that back on its head and says yes the federal government is in charge but States also have to play a role and so this made it now easier for slave catchers and slave owners to recapture their runaway slaves um uh and return them to the South it also made the punishment for ignoring this law more severe right so it's going to have the effect of greatly stifling things like the Underground Railroad and it has the effect of essentially wiping out those personal Liberty laws I will mention that Northerners greatly despised this part of the compromise uh and a lot of senators and a lot of Northern senators and a lot of Northern representatives in the house they lost their jobs because of this they got voted out in the next election this was a very hard pill for a lot of people in the north to swallow and a lot of people just never did a lot of people never really never forgave clay for this or forgave anybody that was associated with it but the final element of the Compromise of 1850 of course concerns the expansion of slavery uh to the territories I mentioned previously that the New Mexico territory was not going to become a state it was going to become a territory again uh and what was decided here was we were going to take the remaining portion of the Mexican session divided into two territories one in the south of New Mexico territorium one in the north of Utah territory but when it came to the question of slavery's expansion here the agreement reached in the compromise was that um the concept of popular sovereignty was going to be applied to these territories now you may look at that and say well uh that's a victory then for the North well not really uh you know the compromise meant there would be no Wilmot Proviso there would be no federal law prohibiting slavery here but there also wouldn't be any law allowing it but Southerners and regardless saw this as a type of Victory because popular sovereignty meant that slavery might expand here it has the opportunity to expand here but more importantly it did not establish a a further precedent of the U.S Congress passing a law prohibiting slavery in a territory uh and that was kind of the big thing so instead of banning slavery here or allowing slavery here the decision was made to apply the concept made famous by Lewis Cass a popular sovereignty to these two new territories the two territories that remained after uh the entrance of California and the borders of Texas established so those were the principal elements of the compromise of 1850. okay so let's just finish up by talking about what is what's important about this coming what's the legacy of the Compromise of 1850 well the the compromise is regarded by my by it you know was regarded by its moderate contemporaries as as as a final settlement right or or a solution to quote pacify tranquilize and harmonize the country um but it wasn't lasting you know it it it's it's not as much as an example of Warring people making concessions as it is simply a temporary and imperfect truce over the future of slavery um now extremists on both sides you know they vowed they vowed to defy it abolitionists hated it because it didn't do anything you know it didn't ban slavery in their nation's capital it didn't do anything but uh allow the possibility of Slavery to expand um and but even Southerners you know even Southerners uh extremists they vowed to to defy it as well uh when that second session of the Nashville Convention got together in November of 1850 uh you know there were much less members uh much less delicates not every single state sent people because nobody saw the point uh but those extremists that did show up they denounced the compromise and they affirmed the right of individual states to secede from the union now of course this second session had little National impact but it shows you that the seeds continue to be sown right the seeds are continuing to be sown for the American Civil War because you still have a a a a a you know a a significant number of Southern extremists that are willing to regard you know they're not willing to compromise at all uh and and want nothing more than secession a southern Confederacy and War if so you know if if if if that's the case now back to why you know the legacy of all this um there was a Free Soil a member of the Free Soil Party and a future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court his name is salmon P Chase and he stressed that quote the question of slavery in the territories has been avoided it has not been settled and of course what he was referring to was the idea that responsibility for addressing the issue of slavery's expansion had simply been placed on the shoulders of the settlers that are going to go to the Utah and the New Mexico territories and so in the end the compromise of 1850's legacy is that you know while it successfully prevented a breakup of the Union in 1850 it really only postponed secession in Civil War for 10 years because soon there was going to be aspects of this compromise that would reignite sectional tensions um and and that would go down as the worst decade in American history uh the 1850s but you know hindsight though has shown that the Compromise of 1850 didn't bring either the security of the Union which many had hoped for uh and it didn't bring security for slavery which you know others had feared but but at the time that that wasn't evident right or that we only know that now with hindsight uh realistic men like like the guy just mentioned salmon P Chase and Stephen A Douglas uh they knew that the North and South had they that North and South had not really acted in accord and that the arrangements for the Utah and New Mexico territories did not really answer the territorial question but if the measures were not themselves a compromise could they maybe become a compromise right that was the hope um you know the the questions that face the country at the time they were settled by the healthy influence of public opinion I think um at the very least you know this Congress through the leadership of Henry Clay Daniel Webster Millard Fillmore and even Stephen A Douglas you know they had averted a crisis and we should give them credit for that they'd reach the settlement on issues that four proceeding sessions of Congress had been unable to handle and we should give them credit for that but it remained to be seen whether or not the American people North and South whether they would by their own sanction convert this settlement into an actual compromise and as I mentioned with hindsight this compromise would not be lasting because as I mentioned aspects of this compromise would come up again and again and again and eventually what would happen is we would go from the Compromise of 1850 in a seemingly settlement of all the agitating issues that divided us in just 10 years we would be killing each other in the bloodiest war in American history now what happened well what happened was the worst decade this country's ever seen the 1850s