The Compromise of 1850 was a compromise between the anti-slavery and pro-slavery parties in the USA. As it was finally passed, it took the form of several separate bills, which had been practically comprehended in Clay's 'Omnibus Bill', proposed and defeated a short time before. Under the compromise, Texas was allowed $10,000,000 for New Mexico, and the boundary of that territory was cut down considerably. On August the 13th, California was admitted to the Union with her free Constitution. On August the 15th, bills for establishing territorial governments in New Mexico and Utah were passed, containing a slavery option clause proposed by SenatorSoule. On August the 26th, the fugitive slave bill, denying arrested Negroes a trial by jury, and prohibiting redress to free coloured [black] seamen imprisoned in Southern ports, was passed. Research Compromise of 1850
Historically the Democratic Party was the most important of the American political parties, having been in continuous existence since the end of the 18th century. The rise of such a party, as soon as national politics began under the new Constitution, was natural. The love of individual liberty rather than strong government, was native in the minds of most Americans. Those who felt this most strongly would be likely to look with apprehension upon the Federal Government, and the possibility of its encroaching upon the States under cover of the new Federal Constitution. They were therefore likely to be advocates of strict construction of the Constitution and of States' rights. To these elements of party feeling, which had drawn the Anti-Federalists together in 1788, was added a few years later the strong sympathy of many Americans with the French Revolution, and the desire that Government should aid France in her contest with England.
Thomas Jefferson put himself at the head of the party drawn together by agreement in these sentiments, and led them in opposition to the Federalists. The party took the name of Democratic-Republican. Before Monroe's administration its members were more commonly called Republicans, since then most commonly Democrats. From the first the party was strongest in the Southern States. From its origin in 1792 to 1801, it was in opposition. In 1798 and 1799, upon the passage of the Alien and Sedition laws, it took strong ground for States' rights in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. The election of Jefferson. in 1801 brought it into power. The chief tenets of the party were, belief in freedom of religion, of politics, of speech and of the press, in popular rule, in peace, in economical government, in the utmost possible restriction of the sphere of government, in hospitality to immigrants, and in the avoidance of foreign complications.
Placed in control of the government, the majority of the party drifted away from its strict constructionist ground, and supported measures of a nationalizing character. After the War of 1812, the Federalist party went out of existence, and the Democratic party had complete possession of the field. In 1820, Monroe was re-elected without opposition. But opposing tendencies in the nation and in the party were already showing themselves, and preparing the way for a new party division, between the Whigs, advocates of protection and other nationalizing measures, and those Democrats who held to the old programme of States' rights and free trade and restricted government. With the accession of Jackson in 1829, new social strata came into power in the Democratic party, the widening of the suffrage giving it a more popular character. Managed by skilful politicians, not without the aid of the spoils system, the party won every Presidential election but two (1840, 1848) from this time to 1860, destroyed the US bank, annexed Texas, and carried the country through the war with Mexico. But meanwhile the slavery question, coming into increasing prominence, was gradually forcing a division between the Democrats of the South and the great body of those in the North, who were unwilling to go so far in the protection of slavery by national authority as was desired by their Southern allies. The final split came in the nominating convention of 1860.
Two candidates were nominated, Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans won the election, and the American Civil War broke out. Though many War Democrats aided the administration in preserving the Union, the party was discredited in the eyes of many by its previous connection with the Southern leaders and the pro-slavery cause, and won no Presidential election until that of 1884, when in the minds of many the war issues were extinct and economic questions had taken their place. Defeated in 1888, it was again successful in 1892. By the end of the 19th century the party was hardly more strict-constructionist than the Republican, nor more marked by devotion to States' rights and the party was mostly noted as the opponent of a high tariff.
By the end of the 20th century the differences between the Democratic party and Republicans had become blurred, though the Democratic party was generally perceived - not always accurately - as more left-wing or liberal than the Republicans. Research Democratic Party
The Nashville Convention was a convention of delegates from the Southern States of America at Nashville, Tennessee in June, 1850, suggested by the Mississippi State Convention of the previous year. The convention was called to consider the slavery question and the encroachments of Northern abolitionists. It did not meet with universal approval. The Wilmotproviso and the Missouri Compromise were disapproved of, but resolutions of open resistance advanced by Texas, South Carolina and Mississippi were voted down. The convention met again in November, and again moderate resolutions were adopted. Research Nashville Convention
The Omnibus Bill was a bill submitted to the American Congress by Henry Clay on January the 29th, 1850, at the time of the application of California for admission to the Union. The bill provided for the admission of California with her free constitution; territorial governments in New Mexico and Utah without express restriction upon slavery; a territorial boundary line between Texas and New Mexico in favour of the former; a more effective fugitive slave law; and denial to Congress of power to interfere with the slave trade between slave States. After much cutting and amendment the bill was passed in July, 1850, as a series of acts. Research Omnibus Bill
In America, after the adoption of the Constitution of 1787 the thought that the States were sovereign remained familiar to the minds of many, if not most, Americans. This led easily to the thought of secession by a State or States as a remedy for aggressive action on the part of the Federal Government.
The Federalists of New England made threats of secession in 1811 and 1814. As the slavery agitation began to be foremost among political issues, secession was extensively suggested as the constitutional right of the Southern States if the system of slavery was attacked. South Carolina was ready to secede in 1850. In 1860, upon news of the election of Abraham Lincoln, she did so, on December the 20th, by convention, which passed an ordinance purporting to repeal her adoption of the Constitution in 1788 and to revive her independence. Mississippi seceded on January the 9th, 1861, Florida on January the 10th, Alabama on January the 11th, Georgia on January the 19th, Louisiana on January the 26th, Texas on February 1st, all by conventions. These seven States formed the Confederate States of America, on February the 4th, 1861.
Buchanan's government could find no constitutional warrant for coercing a seceded State. After the firing on Fort Sumter and the decision of Abraham Lincoln and the North to suppress rebellion by armed force, four more States seceded - Arkansas on May the 6th, North Carolina on May the 20th, Virginia on May the 23rd and Tennessee on June the 8th. In most of these States there had been strong opposition to secession, but on the ground that it was inexpedient. That a State had a right to secede was the nearly universal belief. The national Government never recognized this right, nor the validity of the ordinances. Research Secession
Slavery in the American colonies began with the importation of a cargo of slaves into Virginia by a Dutch ship in 1619. In the other colonies it was gradually introduced. The slave trade was favoured by the British Government during the eighteenth century. Meantime a sentiment unfavourable to it began to develop in the colonies. The Germantown Quakers drew up a memorial against it in 1688, Boston town meeting in 1701. Woolman and other Quakers preached against it. Slaves were few in the North, but numerous in the South, where their increase and the danger felt from them caused severe laws respecting them.
The American Revolution, as a movement for liberty, with its declaration proclaiming all men free and equal, joined with the humanitarian spirit of the close of the century to increase anti-slavery sentiment. The Northern States either abolished slavery or provided for gradual emancipation. All the States but the southernmost forbade the importation of slaves from abroad. But the sentiment soon declined.
In the Constitution of 1787, States were given representation in the House of Representatives for three-fifths of their slaves, and Congress was forbidden to prohibit the slave trade until 1808. The invention of the cotton-gin made slave labour more profitable than ever before, and the South began to defend slavery as a positive good, in spite of its obvious economic disadvantages.
Abolition societies, first formed about 1793, languished after 1808. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 arranged that the area west of the Mississippi and north of 36 degrees 30 minutes should not be open to slavery, except in the Case of Missouri. The Ordinance of 1787 had forbidden slavery in the region north of the Ohio.
The American Colonization Society tried to palliate the evils of slavery by emancipation and deportation. About 1830 the agitation against slavery took on a more ardentphase, and henceforth for thirty years slavery was the most absorbing of political themes. Slave labour demanded more and more new land, and the Government was led to the annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico largely by this need. After bitter disputes, the territory so acquired was thrown open to slavery if the settlers desired it; this was done by the Compromise of 1850. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 extended the same permission to territory north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, repealing the Missouri Compromise; and the Supreme Court sustained such repeal.
The question of slavery in the territories proved the crucial question. Many in the North who had no desire for the abolition of slavery in States where it was already existent and legal were unwilling to see it extended, while slave-owners claimed Constitutional right to protection of their property in slaves, as essential if they were to have any share in the common territories. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and the unwillingness of Northern people to execute it assisted to precipitate conflict. Finally, in 1860, the election of Abraham Lincoln was taken by the South as proof that their claims were to be disregarded, and secession and the American Civil War resulted.
In 1790 there were 698,000 slaves in the United States 40,000 in the North, 293,000 in Virginia, 107,000 in South Carolina, 103,000 in Maryland, 101,000 in North Carolina; in 1800, 894,000; in 1810, 1,191,000; in 1820, 1,538,000; in 1830, 2,009,000; in 1840, 2,487,000; in 1850, 3,204,000; in 1860, 3,954,000, the last being about one-fourth of the total population of the Southern States. Research Slavery in America
The Texas Gazette and Brazoria Advertiser was the first newspaper published in Texas. It was established at Brazoria in 1830. On September the 4th, 1832, it was merged in the Constitutional Advocate and Texas Public Advertiser which was itself suspended in 1833. Research Texas Gazette and Brazoria Advertiser
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was negotiated between the USA and Mexico by Nicholas Trist for the United States in 1848, at the conclusion of the Mexican War. By this treaty Mexico ceded to the United States the territory of Texas, New Mexico and Upper California, and agreed upon the Rio Grande River as the boundary between herself and Texas. The United States agreed to pay Mexico $15,000,000 and to assume all claims of its citizens against Mexico arising before the treaty. It reserved to Mexicans in the ceded territory the option to remove or remain and assured protection of their rights of property. Research Treaty Of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The term Wild West refers to the frontier society of 19th-century USA. Around the masculine, saloon-bar world of the gold rushes and the cowboy cattle-drives of Texas, California, and the largely unsettled western territories there early developed a mythology. Bandits such as Billy the Kid and Jesse James were romanticised, as were General Custer and his 'last stand'. An early perpetrator of the myth was Edward Z. C. Judson, who, under the pseudonym Ned Buntline, wrote penny (dime) novels romanticising the exploits of his friend W. F. Cody as 'Buffalo Bill'. The latter in turn organised 'Wild West Shows' from 1883 onwards, which included the appearance of the Indian Chief Sitting Bull and which travelled as far afield as Europe.
There is no evidence that the West was much less law-abiding than the rest of the USA. Nonetheless, the 'Wild West' was no purposeless myth; it suggested an arena in which individuals struggled to make order out of chaos and to progress through individual effort and moral worth. The North American continent had had a succession of 'Wests', as its frontiers receded, and that known as the Wild West was the last. It disappeared after 1890, with the end of Indian hostilities, the decline of the long-distance cattle drives, the building of the railways, and the steady growth of population. Research Wild West
The Wilmot Proviso was an American anti-slavery proposal. On August the 8th, 1846, President Polk of America, in a special message to Congress, requested 'money for the adjustment of a boundary with Mexico', that is, for the purchase of Mexican territory outside of Texas. A bill appropriating $2,000,000 was at once introduced into the House. David Wilmot, a Democrat, of Pennsylvania, proposed as an amendment the since famous 'Wilmot Proviso', which 'provided that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party shall first be duly convicted'. The bill thus amended passed the House, but failed in the Senate. On January the 4th, 1847, a bill appropriating $3,000,000 instead of $2,000,000 was proposed by Preston King. It passed the House with the proviso attached, but the latter was dropped in the Senate. For a number of years the Wilmot Proviso was brought up and debated whenever new territories were to be organized. It was discussed in the case of Oregon, California, Utah and New Mexico, but was not finally established until June the 9th, 1861, when Congress passed an act prohibiting 'slavery in any territories of the United States now existing, or which may be hereafter formed or acquired'. Research Wilmot Proviso
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Compromise of 1850
