A School History of the United States Part 38

2. That there must be "free soil for a free people."

3. "No more slave states, no more slave territories."

4. That we will inscribe on our banners "Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men."

They also asked for cheaper postage, and for free grants of land to actual settlers.

The Whigs won the election.

%374. Zachary Taylor, Twelfth President.%--Taylor and Fillmore were inaugurated on March 5,1849, because the 4th came on Sunday. Their election and the triumph of the Whigs now brought on a crisis in the question of slavery extension.

[Ill.u.s.tration: %Zachary Taylor%]

%375. State of Feeling in the South.%--Southern men, both Whigs and Democrats, were convinced that an attempt would be made by Northern and Western men opposed to the extension of slavery to keep the new territory free soil. Efforts were at once made to prevent this. At a meeting of Southern members of Congress, an address written by Calhoun was adopted and signed, and published all over the country. It

1. Complained of the difficulty of capturing slaves when they escaped to the free states.

2. Complained of the constant agitation of the slavery question by the abolitionists.

3. And demanded that the territories should be open to slavery.

A little later, in 1849, the legislature of Virginia adopted resolutions setting forth:

1. That "the attempt to enforce the Wilmot Proviso" would rouse the people of Virginia to "determined resistance at all hazards and to the last extremity."

2. That the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia would be a direct attack on the inst.i.tutions of the Southern States.

The Missouri legislature protested against the principle of the Wilmot Proviso, and instructed her senators and representatives to vote with the slaveholding states. The Tennessee Democratic State Central Committee, in an address, declared that the encroachments of their Northern brethren had reached a point where forbearance ceased to be a virtue. At a dinner to Senator Butler, in South Carolina, one of the toasts was "A Southern Confederacy."

%376. State of Feeling in the North.%--Feeling in the free states ran quite as high.

1. The legislatures of every one of them, except Iowa,[1] resolved that Congress had power and was in duty bound to prohibit slavery in the territories.

[Footnote 1: Iowa had been admitted December 28, 1846.]

2. Many of them bade their congressmen do everything possible to abolish slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia.

The struggle thus coming to an issue in the summer of 1849 was precipitated by a most unlooked-for discovery in California, which led the people of that region to take matters into their own hands.

%377. Discovery of Gold in California.%--One day in the month of January, 1848, while a man named Marshall was constructing a mill race in the valley of the American River in California, for a Swiss immigrant named Sutter, he saw particles of some yellow substance s.h.i.+ning in the mud. Picking up a few, he examined them, and thinking they might be gold, he gathered some more and set off for Sutter's Fort, where the city of Sacramento now stands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: %Sutter's mill%]

As soon as he had reached the fort and found Mr. Sutter, the two locked themselves in a room and examined the yellow flakes Marshall had brought. They were gold! But to keep the secret was impossible. A Mormon laborer, watching their excited actions at the mill race, discerned the secret, and then the news spread fast, and the whole population went wild. Every kind of business stopped. The stores were shut. Sailors left the s.h.i.+ps. Soldiers defiantly left their barracks, and by the middle of the summer men came rus.h.i.+ng to the gold fields from every part of the Pacific coast. Later in the year reports reached the East, but so slowly did news travel in those days that it was not till Polk in his annual message confirmed it, that people really believed there were gold fields in California. Then the rush from the East began. Some went overland, some crossed by the Isthmus of Panama, some went around South America, filling California with a population of strong, adventurous, and daring men. These were the "forty-niners."

[Ill.u.s.tration: %San Francisco in 1847%]

%378. The Californians make a Free-State Const.i.tution.%--When Taylor heard that gold hunters were hurrying to California from all parts of the world, he was very anxious to have some permanent government in California; and encouraged by him the pioneers, the "forty-niners," made a free-state const.i.tution in 1849 and applied for admission into the Union.[1]

[Footnote 1: For an account of this movement to make California a state, see Rhodes's _History of the United States_, Vol. I., pp. 111-116.]

%379. Clay proposes a Compromise.%--When Congress met in 1849 there were therefore a great many things connected with slavery to be settled:

1. Southern men complained that the existing fugitive-slave law was not enforced in the free states and that runaway slaves were not returned.

2. The Northern men insisted that slavery should be abolished in the District of Columbia.

3. Southern men demanded the right to go into any territory of the United States, as New Mexico or Utah or even California, and take their slaves with them.

4. The Free-soilers demanded that there should be no more slave states, no more slave territories.

5. The North wanted California admitted as a free-soil state. The South would not consent.

So violent and bitter was the feeling aroused by these questions, that it seemed in 1850 as if the Union was about to be broken up, and that there were to be two republics,--a Northern one made up of free states, and a Southern one made up of slave states.

Happily this was not to be; for at this crisis Henry Clay, the "Compromiser," the "Pacificator," the "Peacemaker," as he was fondly called, came forward with a plan of settlement.

To please the North, he proposed, first, that California should be admitted as a free state; second, that the slave trade--that is, the buying and selling of slaves--should be abolished in the District of Columbia. To please the South, he proposed, third, that there should be a new and very stringent fugitive-slave law; fourth, that New Mexico and Utah should be made territories without reference to slavery--that is, the people should make them free or slave, as they pleased. This was called "popular sovereignty" or "squatter sovereignty." Fifth, that as Texas claimed so much of New Mexico as was east of the Rio Grande, she should give up her claim and be paid money for so doing.

%380. Clay, Calhoun, Seward, and Webster on the Compromise.%--The debate on the compromise was a great one. Clay's defense of his plan was one of the finest speeches he ever made.[1] Calhoun, who was too feeble to speak, had his argument read by another senator. Webster, on the "7th of March," made the famous speech which still bears that name. In it he denounced the abolitionists and defended the compromise, because, he said, slavery could not exist in such an arid country as New Mexico.

William H. Seward of New York spoke for the Free-soilers and denounced all compromise, and declared that the territories were free not only by the Const.i.tution, but by a "higher law" than the Const.i.tution, the law of justice and humanity.[2]

[Footnote 1: Henry Clay's _Works_, Vol. II., pp. 602-634.]

[Footnote 2: Johnston's _American Orations_, Vol. II., pp. 123-219, for the speeches of Calhoun, Webster, and Clay.]

After these great speeches were made, Clay's plan was sent to a committee of thirteen, from which came seven recommendations:

1. The consideration of the admission of any new state or states formed out of Texas to be postponed till they present themselves for admission.

2. California to be admitted as a free state.

3. Territorial governments without the Wilmot Proviso to be established in New Mexico and Utah.

4. The combination of No. 2 and No. 3 in one bill.

5. The establishment of the present northern and western boundary of Texas. In return for ceding her claims to New Mexico, Texas to receive $10,000,000. This last provision to be inserted in the bill provided for in No. 4.

6. A new and stringent fugitive-slave law.

7. Abolition of the slave trade, but not of slavery, in the District of Columbia.

Three bills to carry out these recommendations were presented:

1. The first bill provided for (a) the admission of California as a free state; (b) territorial governments for New Mexico and Utah without any _restriction_ on slavery; (c) the present northern and western boundary for Texas, with a gift of money. President Taylor nicknamed this "the Omnibus Bill," because of its many provisions.

2. The second bill prohibited the slave trade, but not slavery, in the District of Columbia.