Speeches on the Compromise of 1850

Summary

These three Senate speeches were the central statements in the long debate of 1850 over the lands won from Mexico, and the last great addresses of the three statesmen of their generation. The Mexican War had added California and the Southwest. Gold-rush California asked to enter the Union as a free state, which would end the balance of fifteen free and fifteen slave states; Texas claimed much of New Mexico; Northerners objected to the slave trade in the national capital; and Southerners complained that free states obstructed the return of fugitive slaves. On January 29, 1850, Henry Clay, aged seventy-two, offered eight resolutions: admit California; organize the rest of the cession without any restriction or condition on slavery; fix the Texas boundary and have the United States pay the part of Texas's public debt tied to its former revenues; keep slavery in the District of Columbia but end the trade in slaves brought there for sale; pass a more effective fugitive law; and declare that Congress had no power over the slave trade between states. In his speech of February 5 and 6 he defended each resolution as a mutual concession of feeling rather than principle and closed by warning that disunion and war were the same thing. On March 4 John C. Calhoun, too ill to speak, sat in the chamber while Senator James Mason of Virginia read his address. Calhoun argued that the Union was endangered because the equilibrium between the sections had been destroyed by federal legislation and Northern agitation, that the spiritual, political, and social cords binding the states were snapping one by one, and that neither Clay's plan nor appeals to the Union could save it; only a full settlement on the principle of justice, including an amendment restoring the South's power of self-protection, could do so. On March 7 Daniel Webster spoke, he said, not as a Massachusetts man or a Northern man but as an American. He reviewed the history of slavery and the Constitution, argued that the laws of climate and geography already excluded slavery from New Mexico, so that the Wilmot Proviso was needless, conceded the South's complaint about fugitive slaves, rebuked abolitionist societies and Southern talk of disunion alike, and declared that peaceable secession was impossible. Clay's measures failed as a single bill in July, but after President Taylor's death they passed separately in September under Stephen A. Douglas's management. The library text gives Clay's resolutions and speech, Calhoun's speech, and Webster's Seventh of March speech.

Plot or Argument

• Clay's eight resolutions (January 29)

  A preamble and eight resolutions propose admitting California, organizing territorial governments without restriction on slavery, settling the Texas boundary and debt, retaining slavery but ending the slave trade in the District of Columbia, a stronger fugitive law, and a declaration against congressional power over the interstate slave trade.

• Clay's speech: concessions of feeling, not of principle

  Clay describes his anxious isolation in preparing the plan, blames passion and party spirit for the crisis, and goes through each resolution to show what each section gives and receives, arguing that nature had already excluded slavery from New Mexico and that no Northern principle was surrendered by omitting the Wilmot Proviso.

• Clay's peroration: war and dissolution are identical

  He appeals to Southern Senators not to press matters toward disunion, argues that secession would gain them nothing they seek, predicts a war more terrible than any in history, and prays that he may not live to see the Union dissolved.

• Calhoun: the destroyed equilibrium

  Calhoun's address, read by James Mason, traces the growing disparity in population and power between North and South to federal legislation on territories, tariffs, and revenue, and to a concentration of power in the federal government that changed the character of the system.

• Calhoun: the cords of union snapping

  He shows the spiritual cords breaking as the Methodist and Baptist churches divide by section, and predicts that the political cords of party will follow, until only force could hold the states together.

• Calhoun: how the Union can be saved

  Rejecting Clay's plan and the President's, and appeals to the Union's glory, he answers that the North must concede the South equal rights in the territories, faithfully return fugitives, cease agitation, and agree to an amendment restoring the South's power to protect itself.

• Webster: the history of slavery and the law of nature

  Webster recounts the changing opinions of North and South on slavery since the founding, reviews the annexation of Texas and the Texas compact, and argues that the physical geography of California and New Mexico already settles the question, so that he would not re-enact the will of God with the Wilmot Proviso.

• Webster: grievances on both sides and the impossibility of secession

  He grants the South's complaint about the failure to return fugitive slaves, criticizes abolitionist societies and the language of the Southern press, refuses to admit that peaceable secession is possible, and closes with an appeal to the Union's destiny.

Lessons

• What a compromise asks of each side

  Clay insisted that his plan asked neither section to give up a principle, only feelings and opinions held about matters in dispute. He went resolution by resolution to show a give and take. Calhoun replied that the South had nothing left to surrender and asked for justice rather than compromise. The contrast shows two different understandings of what settling a quarrel requires.

  • How does Clay distinguish a concession of principle from a concession of feeling, and why does the distinction matter to him?
  • Why does Calhoun say the South has no compromise to offer but the Constitution?
  • Can a lasting settlement be reached between parties who disagree about justice itself, or only about interests?

• Diagnosing a political illness

  Calhoun treats the crisis as a disease with a cause. He argues that discontent is a symptom, traces it to the loss of sectional balance, and describes the cords of union breaking one by one, first in the churches. Whatever one concludes about his remedy, his speech is a model of reasoning from symptom to cause.

  • What evidence does Calhoun give that the equilibrium between the sections had been destroyed?
  • Why does he begin his list of breaking cords with the churches?
  • Is Calhoun right that a union held together only by force has ceased to be a union?

• Speaking against one's own section

  Webster opened by declaring that he spoke as an American rather than as a Massachusetts man, and he went on to grant Southern complaints about fugitives and to rebuke Northern agitation as well as Southern threats. Many of his New England supporters turned against him. The speech raises the question of what a representative owes his constituents and what he owes the whole country.

  • Which Southern grievances does Webster grant, and which Southern positions does he reject?
  • Why does Webster argue that the Wilmot Proviso is needless in New Mexico?
  • When should a representative vote against the strong wishes of the people who sent him?

• Three old men facing the end of the Union they built

  Clay prays not to survive the Union's dissolution, Calhoun is too weak to read his own speech and dies within the month, and Webster asks what he would be if he were an American no longer. The speeches carry the weight of a generation that had known the founders and feared outliving their work.

  • How do Clay's and Webster's perorations use their own age and memories?
  • What effect would Calhoun's silent presence in the chamber, while Mason read his words, have had on his hearers?
  • What responsibilities does an older generation bear for the political inheritance it hands on?

Context

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 transferred California and the New Mexico region to the United States. The Wilmot Proviso, first offered in 1846, would have barred slavery from all land acquired from Mexico; it repeatedly passed the House and failed in the Senate. By late 1849 California had drafted a free-state constitution, the House had taken three weeks and sixty-three ballots to elect a Speaker, and Southern leaders had called a convention to meet at Nashville in June 1850. President Zachary Taylor wanted California and New Mexico admitted directly as states and opposed linking the questions together.

Composition

Clay introduced his resolutions on January 29 and spoke on February 5 and 6. Calhoun's speech of March 4 was written out and read for him by Senator James Mason of Virginia; it was his last formal address. Webster's speech of March 7, published as The Constitution and the Union, was revised for print soon after. The library text joins Clay's resolutions and speech from Calvin Colton's The Last Seven Years of the Life of Henry Clay (1856), Calhoun's from volume 4 of his Works edited by Richard K. Crallé (1854), both as OCR with page heads removed, and Webster's from the Project Gutenberg edition of his speeches.

Reception

A Senate committee of thirteen under Clay combined the measures into one omnibus bill, which was defeated in pieces on July 31, 1850. Taylor had died on July 9, and his successor Millard Fillmore favored settlement; Stephen A. Douglas then carried the measures as five separate acts in September, including the Fugitive Slave Act. Webster's speech was praised in commercial circles and bitterly condemned by antislavery New Englanders; John Greenleaf Whittier's poem Ichabod lamented his fall. The settlement was widely hailed as final, but the fugitive law and the principle of territorial self-determination became the grounds of new conflict within four years.

Comparisons

• webster-second-reply-to-hayne

  Twenty years apart, Webster again answers a South Carolina theory of the Union, but in 1850 he couples his defense of the Union with concessions to the South that he had not been asked for in 1830.

• hayne-speech-on-foots-resolution

  Hayne's compact theory of 1830 and Calhoun's equilibrium argument of 1850 present the same South Carolina constitutional school at two stages, before and after the slavery question displaced the tariff.

• lincoln-douglas-debates

  Douglas, who passed the 1850 measures, later cited their territorial provisions as the first enactment of popular sovereignty, while Lincoln claimed Clay as his own model of a statesman.

• uncle-toms-cabin

  Stowe wrote her novel in response to the Fugitive Slave Act, the part of the settlement Webster defended as a constitutional obligation in the Seventh of March speech.

• democracy-in-america

  Tocqueville's chapter on the prospects of the Union, written in the 1830s, weighed the same forces Calhoun describes: the growth of the North and West and the weakening of the federal bond.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• How Clay presents each of his eight resolutions as giving something to each section, and where he admits the balance is uneven.
• Calhoun's chain of reasoning from the loss of sectional equilibrium to the breaking of the cords of union, beginning with the churches.
• Webster's argument from geography and climate that New Mexico would never be slave territory.
• The three perorations: Clay's prayer, Calhoun's demand for justice, and Webster's vision of the heavenly bodies leaving their spheres.

Key terms and names

Wilmot Proviso

The proposal to bar slavery from all territory acquired from Mexico; Clay and Webster argued it was unnecessary, Calhoun that it violated Southern equality.

Equilibrium

Calhoun's term for the balance of power between North and South at the founding, which he argued federal policy had destroyed.

Omnibus bill

The single bill into which a Senate committee combined Clay's proposals in May 1850; it failed in July, and the measures then passed separately.

Fugitive slave law

Clay's seventh resolution, later the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, providing federal machinery for the return of escaped slaves; Webster defended it as a constitutional duty.

Peaceable secession

The idea of a voluntary separation of the states, which Clay and Webster both declared impossible.

Texas boundary and debt

The dispute over Texas's claim to land east of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, settled by fixing a boundary and paying part of the Texas debt.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension List Clay's eight resolutions and say which section each was meant chiefly to satisfy.
2. Comprehension Why was Calhoun's speech read by James Mason, and what four things does Calhoun say the North must do to save the Union?
3. Interpretation Clay says his resolutions ask for concessions of feeling, not of principle. Does Calhoun's speech accept or reject that distinction?
4. Interpretation Why does Calhoun think the division of the churches is the clearest sign of danger?
5. Interpretation How does Webster's argument that nature already excludes slavery from New Mexico allow him to oppose the Wilmot Proviso without defending slavery?
6. Interpretation Clay and Webster both say secession means war. How do their reasons differ?
7. Big Question Is it wise to settle a deep moral and political dispute by a package of concessions, or does such a settlement only postpone the conflict?

Faith Connections

• Matthew 5:9 (Scripture)

  Blessed are the peacemakers. Clay presented his resolutions as a plan of peace and accommodation; the speeches invite reflection on whether making peace always means splitting differences.

• Amos 3:3 (Scripture)

  Can two walk together, except they be agreed? Calhoun's account of the cords of union breaking, first among the churches, asks how much agreement a people must share to remain one.

• Augustine, City of God XIX.13 (Great Conversation)

  Augustine defines peace as the tranquillity of order. Calhoun argued that the order of 1787 had been overturned and that peace required restoring it, while Clay and Webster sought peace through mutual adjustment within the existing order.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Clay: the controversies can be settled only by mutual concessions that sacrifice no principle; each resolution gives something to each section; disunion means war; therefore both sections should accept the whole plan. Calhoun: the Union is endangered because federal action has destroyed the sectional balance and Northern agitation is breaking every bond; compromise cannot remove that cause; therefore only a full settlement securing the South's equal rights and power of self-protection can save the Union. Webster: the territories are already free by nature, the Constitution obliges the return of fugitives, and secession is impossible without war; therefore both sections should drop their grievances and accept the settlement.

Rhetorical device: erotesis (rhetorical question). Calhoun organizes his whole address around the question how the Union can be saved, raising it at the start and returning to it after dismissing every answer but his own.

Debate: Resolved: that the Compromise of 1850, as Clay proposed it, was the best course available to the Senate in 1850.

Memory Work

I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and a member of the Senate of the United States.

The South asks for justice, simple justice, and less she ought not to take.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Clay, Calhoun, and Webster all claimed to be saving the Union. Explain what each man thought endangered it and what each thought would preserve it, and identify the point on which their diagnoses most sharply disagree.

Comparison with Second Reply to Hayne: Compare Webster's Second Reply to Hayne (1830) with his Seventh of March speech (1850). How had the threat to the Union changed in twenty years, and how did Webster's answer change with it?

Medical Lens

The medical interest is biographical. Calhoun was gravely ill through the winter of 1849-1850, and his contemporaries and biographers describe his final illness as pulmonary consumption (tuberculosis); he could not deliver his own speech and died on March 31, 1850. Clay, who was also in failing health, died of tuberculosis in Washington in June 1852. The scene of a dying Senator sitting wrapped in the chamber while a colleague read his words was much remarked at the time. Nineteenth-century diagnoses of consumption were clinical rather than bacteriological, since Koch did not identify the tubercle bacillus until 1882.

• Calhoun's speech of March 4, 1850, opening

  The address was read by James Mason because Calhoun was too ill to speak; it is the last formal speech of a dying man.

  Tuberculosis Consumption Death Dying
• Clay's speech, February 5-6, 1850, final sentence

  Clay prays not to survive the dissolution of the Union, a reference to his age and health two years before his death.

  Death Dying

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Assign each of Clay's eight resolutions to a pair of students, one speaking as a Northern Senator and one as a Southern Senator; each states what his section gains and gives up, and the class tallies whether Clay's claim of mutual concession holds.

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation between Calhoun and James Mason on the evening of March 3, 1850, as Mason prepares to read the speech the next day.

• Essay

  Compare the perorations of Clay and Webster with the final section of Calhoun's speech and explain how each man imagines the Union might end.

Further Reading

• The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, Merrill D. Peterson

• Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850, Holman Hamilton

• America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union, Fergus M. Bordewich

• Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union, Robert V. Remini

• John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union, John Niven

• The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861, David M. Potter