Page 347 - American Stories, A History of the United States

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briDgiNg tHe gAp in this cartoon, Democrats Lewis Cass and john C. Calhoun and antislavery radicals
Horace Greeley, William Lloyd Garrison, and Abby Folsom look on as Martin van Buren, the Free-Soil Party
Candidate in the election of 1848, attempts to bridge the chasm between the Democratic platform and that of the
antislavery Whigs. The Free-Soil influence was decisive in the election; it split the New York Democratic vote, thus
allowing Whig candidate Zachary Taylor to win New York and the Presidency.

broad, sectional, antislavery party. After Taylor won, he sought to bypass congressional
debate by admitting California and New Mexico immediately as states, skipping the
territorial stage; this triggered such strong southern opposition that others stepped in
to seek a compromise.
Hoping again to play the role of “great pacificator” as he had in the Missouri
Compromise of 1820, Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky tried to reduce sectional tension
by providing mutual concessions on a range of divisive issues. On the critical territorial
question, his solution was to admit California as a free state and organize the rest of the
Mexican cession with no explicit prohibition of slavery—in other words, without the
Wilmot Proviso. Noting that Mexican law had already abolished slavery in New Mexico,
he also pointed out that its arid climate made it unsuitable for cotton culture and slav-
ery. He also sought to resolve a boundary dispute between New Mexico and Texas by
granting the disputed region to New Mexico while compensating Texas by having the
federal government take over its state debt. As another concession to the North, he rec-
ommended prohibiting slave sales at auction in the District of Columbia and permitting
the District’s white inhabitants to abolish slavery if they saw fit. To appease the South,
he called for a more effective Fugitive Slave Law.
Compromise of 1850 Five federal These proposals provided the basis for the Compromise of 1850. Proposed in
laws that temporarily calmed the February 1850, it took months to get through Congress. One obstacle was President
sectional crisis.The compromise Taylor’s resistance; although a southern slaveholder, Taylor opposed extending slavery
made California a free state, ended
the slave trade in the District of into the new western territories. Another obstacle was getting congressmen to vote
Columbia, and strengthened the for the compromise as a single package or “omnibus bill.” Few politicians from either
Fugitive Slave Law. section were willing to go on record as supporting the key concessions to the other
section. In July, two developments broke the logjam: President Taylor died and was
succeeded by Millard Fillmore, who favored the compromise; and the omnibus strategy
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