 California
at the time had about 80,000 people who had come for the gold
rush. These people wanted California, their state, to be admitted
as a free state. This caused a bit of a problem, however, because
the United States had gone to war with Mexico to please the South.
In order to please them, they would have to make California a
slave state. Northerners protested that slavery should not be
extended any further, it had gone far enough. All but one of
the northern legislature voted to ban slavery from the new territory.
Calhoun
made some suggestions that he felt would solve the problem. He
thought that the Northerners must allow the Southerners "equal
right" by allowing them to use the new territory as slave
land. This of course was because he was a southerner and this
idea appealed to his needs. His suggestion was that the slave
states should have one president, and the free states should
have another. Then he said the rest of the territory could decide
where they stood one the issue of slavery. His ideas of course
were a little too drastic and were not put into action.
An
attempt was made by Henry Clay to please both sides. For the
north he proposed to make California a free state and to abolish
slavery in the District of Columbia. The south was given the
Fugitive Slave Act (which allowed them to get their runaway slaves
back even from a free state) and protected slavery. Utah and
New Mexico were to organize states with not mention of slavery
or such. This compromise was fought in Congress all spring and
summer.
Clay
had the support of influential men like Stephen A. Douglas and
Daniel Webster, both Union men. Webster made the speech declaring
that New Mexico would not profit with slaves, so it would be
useless to make it a slave state. However, it was unnecessary
to ban slavery by law because the laws of nature already prohibited
it. His speech supported the compromise, so he took a lot of
heat for his decision. He was afraid that the Union would split
if they did not fell like there was a compromise. Clay's compromise
was almost vetoed by President Taylor because he wanted California
and New Mexico to be admitted as free states, but he died before
he actually did. So after fighting for eight months Clay and
Webster finally came up with the Compromise of 1850, or the Omnibus
Bill. Senator Stephen A. Douglas helped it be passed by presenting
it in small chunks. President Fillmore signed it on September
of 1850.
This
so called "compromise" only postponed the war. Obviously
both sided voted for the issues that they wanted, but only a
few compromised the two. |