Page 344 - American Stories, A History of the United States

arrogant and violent slaveholders who were allegedly conspiring to extend their barbaric labor
system. By 1856, therefore, the sectional cleavage that would lead to the Civil War had already 14.1
undermined national unity.
The crisis of the mid-1850s came only a few years after the elaborate compromise of 1850
had seemingly resolved the dispute over the future of slavery in the territories acquired in the 14.2
Mexican War. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 renewed the agitation over the extension of
slavery, revived sectional conflict, and led to the emergence of the Republican Party. From that
point on, sectional confrontation increased and destroyed the prospects for a new compromise. 14.3
violence on the Senate floor foreshadowed violence on the battlefield.

The Compromise of 1850

14.1 How did territorial expansion intensify the conflict over slavery?
T he conflict over slavery in the territories began in the late 1840s. During the

early phase of the sectional controversy, the leaders of two strong national
parties, each with substantial followings in both the North and the South, had
a vested interest in resolving the crisis. Furthermore, the less tangible features
of sectionalism—emotion and ideology—were less divisive than they later became.
Hence, in 1850, a kind of give-and-take achieved a fragile compromise that would not
be possible in the changed environment of the mid-1850s.

The Problem of Slavery in the Mexican Cession
As the price of union between states committed to slavery and those in the pro-
cess of abolishing it, the Founders had attempted to limit the role of the slavery
issue in national politics. The Constitution gave the federal government the right
to abolish the international slave trade but no authority to regulate or destroy the
institution where it existed under state law. It was easy to condemn slavery in prin-
ciple but difficult to develop a practical program to eliminate it without defying the
Constitution.
Radical abolitionists acknowledged this problem and resolved it by rejecting the
law of the land in favor of a “higher law” prohibiting human bondage. In 1844, William
Lloyd Garrison publicly burned the Constitution, condemning it as “a Covenant with
Death, an Agreement with Hell.” But Garrison spoke for a small minority dedicated to
freeing the North, at whatever cost, from the sin of condoning slavery.
During the 1840s, most Northerners showed that while they disliked slavery,
they also detested abolitionism. They were inclined to view slavery as a backward and
unwholesome institution, much inferior to their own free-labor system, and could be
persuaded that slaveholders were power-hungry aristocrats seeking more than their
share of national political influence. But they regarded the Constitution as a binding
contract between slave and free states and were likely to be prejudiced against blacks
and reluctant to accept them as free citizens. They saw no legal or desirable way to bring
about emancipation within the southern states.
But the Constitution had not predetermined the status of slavery in future states.
Since Congress could admit new states to the Union under any conditions it wished
to impose, the price of admission could include the abolition of slavery. This had led
to the Missouri crisis of 1819–1820 (see Chapter 9). The resulting compromise was
designed to decide whether new states would be admitted as slave states or free by
drawing a line between slave and free states and extending it westward through the
unsettled portions of what was then American soil. When specific territories were set-
tled, organized, and prepared for statehood, slavery would be permitted south of the
line of 36°30’ and prohibited north of it.
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