American History Series: Plan in 1850 on Slavery Aims to Save Union
”Life itself is but a compromise between death and life,” said Henry Clay, the Kentucky senator who offered a way to keep the states together. Transcript of radio broadcast:
18 March 2009
Welcome to the MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.
The United States faced a deep national crisis in eighteen fifty. That crisis threatened to split the nation in two. It began over the issue of slavery in the new territories of California and Mexico. President Zachary Taylor had no clear policy on the issue. He tried to be neutral. He hoped the problem would solve itself. But he did not get his wish.
The split between the North and South only got wider. There was a real danger that the South would declare its independence. Then, Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky stepped forward to save the Union.
This week in our series, Stuart Spencer and Jack Moyles begin the story of the Compromise of Eighteen Fifty.
VOICE ONE:
After being away from the Senate for almost eight years, Clay was surprised to find how bitter the two sections of the United States — north and south — had grown toward each other. Clay urged his friends in the border states between North and South to try to build public support for the Union. He felt this would help prevent the South from seceding.
Clay also began to think about a compromise that might settle the differences between the two sections of the country.
VOICE TWO:
Clay was a firm believer in the idea of compromise. He once said: “I go for honorable compromise whenever it can be made. Life itself is but a compromise between death and life. The struggle continues through our whole existence until the great destroyer finally wins. All legislation, all government, all society is formed upon the principle of mutual concession, politeness, and courtesy. Upon these, everything is based.”
Clay was sure that a compromise between North and South was possible. Near the end of January, Clay completed work on his plan. Most parts of it already had been proposed as separate bills. Clay put them together in a way that both sides could accept.
VOICE ONE:
Clay offered his plan in a Senate speech on January twenty-ninth, eighteen fifty. Clay proposed that California join the Union as a free state. He said territorial governments should be formed in the other parts of the western territories, with no immediate decision on whether slavery would be permitted.
Clay proposed that the western border of Texas be changed to give New Mexico most of the land disputed by them. In exchange for this, he said, the national government should agree to pay the public debts that Texas had when it became a state.
He proposed that no more slaves be sold in the District of Columbia for use outside the federal district, but also proposed that slavery should not be ended in the district unless its citizens and those of Maryland approved. Clay said a better law was needed for the return of fugitive slaves to their owners.
He also proposed that Congress declare that it had no power to interfere with the slave trade between states. Senator Clay believed these eight steps would satisfy the interests of both the North and the South.
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VOICE TWO:
Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi declared that Clay’s compromises did not offer anything of value to the South. He said the South would accept nothing less than extending the Missouri compromise line west to the Pacific Ocean. This meant that land south of the line would be open to slavery.
Clay answered that no power on earth could force him to vote to establish slavery where it did not exist. He said Americans had blamed Britain for forcing African slavery on the colonists. He said he would not have the future citizens of California and New Mexico blaming Henry Clay for slavery there.
VOICE ONE:
Clay said he did not want to debate, but wished that the senators would think carefully about his proposals. He said he hoped they would decide on them only after careful study. He asked them to see the proposals as a system of compromise, not as separate bills. Clay expected extremists on both sides to denounce the compromise. But he believed the more reasonable leaders of the North and South would accept it.
One week after Clay first proposed the compromise, he rose in the Senate to speak in its defense. The Senate hall was crowded. People had come from as far away as Boston and New York to hear Clay speak. Some senators said there had not been such a crowd in the capitol building since the day Clay said goodbye to the Senate eight years earlier.
Clay had to rest several times as he climbed the steps of the capitol. He told a friend that he felt very tired and weak. His friend advised Clay to rest and make his speech later. “No,” Clay said. “My country is in danger. If I can be the one to save it from that danger, then my health and life are not important.”
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VOICE TWO:
Clay began his speech by talking of the serious crisis that faced the nation. He said that never before had he spoken to a group as troubled and worried as the one he spoke to now. Clay listed his eight resolutions. Then he said: “No man on earth is more ready than I am to surrender anything which I have proposed and to accept in its place anything that is better. But I ask the honorable senators whether their duty will be done by simply limiting themselves to opposing any one or all of the resolutions I have offered.”
“If my plan of peace and unity is not right, give us your plan. Let us see how all the questions that have arisen out of this unhappy subject of slavery can be better settled more fairly and justly than the plan I have offered. Present me with such a plan, and I will praise it with pleasure and accept it without the slightest feeling of regret.”
VOICE ONE:
Clay said the major differences separating the country could be settled by facing facts. He said the first great fact was that laws were not necessary to keep slavery out of California and New Mexico. He said the people of California already had approved an anti-slavery state constitution. And he said the nature of land in New Mexico was such that slaves could not be used.
Clay said there was justice in the borders he proposed for Texas, that it would still be a very large state after losing the area it disputed with New Mexico. And he said it was right for the United States to pay the debts of Texas, because that state no longer could collect taxes on trade as an independent country.
VOICE TWO:
Clay said there was equal justice in his resolutions ending the slave trade in the District of Columbia and strengthening laws on the return of runaway slaves. He said the South, perhaps, would be helped more than the North by his proposals. But the North, he said, was richer and had more money and power.
To the North, slavery was a matter of feeling. But to the South, Clay said, it was a hard social and economic fact. He said the North could look on in safety while the actions of some of its people were producing flames of bitterness throughout the southern states.
Then Clay attacked the South’s claim that it had the right to leave the Union. He said the Union of states was permanent — that the men who built the Union did not do so only for themselves, but for all future Americans.
VOICE ONE:
Clay warned that if the South seceded, there would be war within sixty days. He said the slaves of the South would escape by the thousands to freedom in the North. Their owners would follow them and try to return them to slavery by force. This, he said, would lead to war between the slave-holding and free states. He said this would not be a war of only two or three years. History had shown, he said, that such wars lasted many years and often destroyed both sides.
Even if the south could secede without war, he said, it still would not get any of the things it demanded. Secession would not open the territories to slavery. It would not continue the slave trade in the District of Columbia. And it would not lead to the return of slaves who escaped to the North.
So, said Clay, the South would not help itself by leaving the Union. Clay’s two-day speech gave new hope to many that the Union could be saved.
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ANNOUNCER:
Senator Henry Clay’s compromise seemed to be a way to settle the dispute. But extremists on both sides opposed it. That will be our story next week.
Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Stuart Spencer and Jack Moyles. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs can be found, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION — an American history series in VOA Special English.
This is program #76 of THE MAKING OF A NATION
American History Series: Zachary Taylor Is Elected President in 1848
Congress was hopelessly divided. The anti-slavery Free Soil Party controlled the House. Pro-slavery southerners controlled the Senate. Transcript of radio broadcast:
11 March 2009
ANNOUNCER:
Welcome to the MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.
The Whig Party considered four candidates for the presidential election of eighteen forty-eight: Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, General Zachary Taylor, General Winfield Scott and Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts.
Clay was seventy years old. He knew it would be his last chance to get into the White House. He worked hard to get the support of party leaders. But they did not give Clay their support. They wanted to win the election, and they felt they had a better chance for victory with a military hero like General Taylor.
Now, with this week’s program in our series, here are Doug Johnson and Gwen Outen.
VOICE ONE:
Taylor was sixty-three years old. He had almost no formal education. He had spent almost forty years in the West as an Indian fighter and commander of small army posts.
A number of politicians did not believe he had the ability to be president. General Taylor’s supporters put great energy into their campaign for his nomination. They tried to sell the idea that the old general was the only man who could defeat the candidate of the Democratic Party.
On the first vote of the convention, Taylor got the most votes. But no candidate got the necessary majority. On the fourth vote, all of Webster’s supporters and many of Clay’s supporters gave their votes to Taylor. He finally won the Whig Party’s nomination for president.
VOICE TWO:
The Democratic Party’s candidate for president was Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan. Many Americans did not like either candidate, because of the candidates’ policies on slavery. Lewis Cass saw nothing wrong with slavery if that was what the people wanted. Zachary Taylor was a slave owner.
In Ohio, a group of men decided to form a new political party. They called it the Free Soil Party, because they believed in free land for free settlers. They wanted no further spread of slavery.
The Free Soil leaders proposed a convention of all who supported their ideas. Ten thousand people went to the convention in Buffalo, New York.
For two days, the delegates debated the slavery issue and discussed their choice of a candidate for president. They also worked on a platform — a statement of their party’s purpose.
VOICE ONE:
The platform declared that slavery was an institution of the states, not the nation. It said Congress had no right to help spread slavery by permitting it in the new western territories. The platform declared that the issue should be faced with firmness. No more slave states. No more slave territory. No more compromises with slavery, anywhere.
Convention delegates then voted on candidates. They chose former President Martin Van Buren as candidate for president.
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VOICE TWO:
The people of the nation voted on November seventh. It was the first time a presidential election was held on the same day in all parts of the country. Zachary Taylor won both the popular and electoral votes. He became the twelfth president of the United States.
Congress met a few weeks after the election, long before Taylor took office. It faced serious problems. Territorial governments were needed for the areas won in the war against Mexico.
California, especially, needed help. Gold had been discovered in California. Thousands were moving there. A government was needed to protect the lives and property of the new population.
VOICE ONE:
The dispute over slavery had prevented Congress from acting earlier. Southerners wanted the right to take slaves into the new territories. Northerners wanted to keep slavery out.
Then there was the question of laws forcing northern states to return escaped slaves to their owners. The laws were not always obeyed. Southerners wanted a new law that would be easier to enforce.
Congress found it difficult to act on these problems. The House of Representatives was controlled by members of the Free Soil Party, which opposed slavery. The Senate was controlled by southerners, who supported slavery. The two houses found it almost impossible to agree on anything.
Early in January, eighteen forty-nine, a congressman proposed a bill to first limit, and then end, slavery in the District of Columbia. The bill would free all slaves in the district who were born after a certain time. It would permit the federal government to buy slaves and then free them.
VOICE TWO:
Opposition to the bill was strong. It was amended. The new bill would simply close all places in the District of Columbia where slaves were bought and sold.
Southern congressmen disliked the bill, even as amended. They organized a committee representing every one of the southern states. Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina said the committee should write a declaration explaining the position of the South. The committee agreed, and Calhoun wrote most of the declaration himself.
VOICE ONE:
The southern declaration accused the North of many aggressions. The South, it said, faced many dangers. Soon there would be enough free states to control both the House and the Senate. And then the Constitution would be changed and all slaves would be freed.
And this, said the southern declaration, would lead to bitter hostility and war between North and South. The declaration called on the people of the South to unite and be firm in their opposition to the North.
VOICE TWO:
With this new firmness, southern lawmakers fought to make slavery legal in the new territories. They effectively blocked proposals for territorial governments in California and New Mexico.
Congress ended its session on March fourth, eighteen forty-nine, without any progress. Zachary Taylor was sworn-in as president that same day.
The new president believed it would be easier to get statehood for California and New Mexico than to create territorial governments for them. Taylor, as we have said, was a slaveholder. But he believed that both California and New Mexico should be free states.
VOICE ONE:
During these years around eighteen fifty, the people of the United States were becoming more and more involved in the dispute over slavery. In the North, more people joined the anti-slavery campaign. Even those who did not wish to end slavery in the South felt that slavery should not spread further.
In the South, many people felt that the constitutional equality of fifteen southern states was being questioned. Sixteen hundred million dollars worth of slave property was threatened by Abolitionists. Southerners felt that if the campaign against slavery was successful, everything they believed in would be destroyed.
People hoped that President Taylor would be able to bring the North and South together again. But his message to Congress showed no signs of such leadership.
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VOICE TWO:
Taylor asked Congress to give statehood to California immediately. He reported that California leaders had written a state constitution. The constitution banned slavery. Settlers from both the North and South supported the document.
The president also reported that the people of New Mexico would be asking for statehood soon. He said it would be best to let the people themselves decide if New Mexico would be a slave or free state. Taylor’s opponents described these proposals as his “no action plan.”
VOICE ONE:
President Taylor really had no policy. He could not support a bill to keep slavery out of the territories. That might start a quick revolt among the southern states. He could not support a bill to let slavery spread into the territories. That would make the North rise in anger.
Taylor tried to be neutral. He hoped the problem of slavery would solve itself. But the problem would not solve itself. The division between North and South grew wider. That will be our story next week.
(MUSIC)
ANNOUNCER:
Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Doug Johnson and Gwen Outen. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs, along with historical images, are at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION — an American history series in VOA Special English.
This is program #75 of THE MAKING OF A NATION
American History Series: Polk Decides Not to Seek Second Term in 1848
President James Polk may have served his country well, but he had not served his party well. He let disputing Democrats move even farther apart. Transcript of radio broadcast:
04 March 2009
ANNOUNCER:
Welcome to the MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.
In eighteen forty-eight, while James Polk was president, there was a great constitutional debate in the United States. It arose over slavery in the new territories. Southerners argued that they had the right to take slaves into New Mexico and California. Northerners opposed any further spread of slavery. The question was this: did Congress have the power to control or even ban slavery in the new territories?
There seemed to be no answer to the problem. Everyone agreed that governments had to be organized in the territories. But northern and southern leaders could not settle their dispute over slavery.
Now, with this week’s program in our series, here are Jack Moyles and Jack Weitzel.
VOICE ONE:
Senator John Clayton of Delaware proposed to the Senate that it name a special committee on the question of slavery in the new territories. Both parties — the Whigs and the Democrats — had the same number of senators on the committee. Senator Clayton was its chairman.
South and North were equally represented. After six days, Clayton’s committee agreed on a compromise bill. It proposed that Oregon be organized as free territory. Slavery there would be illegal.
And on California and New Mexico, the bill proposed this: they could be organized as territories. But their territorial legislatures would not have the power to act on the issue of slavery. All questions on slavery in these two territories must be decided by the United States Supreme Court.
VOICE TWO:
Not everyone believed this plan was a good one. Some northern senators believed that Chief Justice Taney would decide for slavery. Southern senators were just as sure that Taney would decide against slavery.
Many Whigs in the House of Representatives opposed the plan, because they feared that the political dispute over slavery would destroy the Supreme Court. The Senate approved the compromise bill. But the House rejected it.
After long debate, Congress finally approved territorial government for Oregon. And it voted that Oregon should be free territory, with slavery illegal.
The vote on the Oregon bill was very close. It passed in the Senate only because two men from slave states voted for it. They were Senator Thomas Benton of Missouri and Senator Sam Houston of Texas.
Senator John C. Calhoun said it was a bad defeat for the South. But what was worse was the fact that it was caused by the votes of two southern senators.
Soon after, at the end of August, Congress ended its session. And the nation’s leaders prepared for the national election of eighteen forty-eight.
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VOICE ONE:
The country moved quickly into the presidential campaign. President Polk was old, tired and in poor health. He had decided not to try for a second term. Polk felt he had done his duty. During the first days of his administration, he listed the things he planned to do as president.
First, he wanted to reduce the tax on imports. Second, he wished to establish the independent treasury, which the Whigs had voted out. Third, he hoped to settle the Oregon border dispute with Britain. And fourth, he wanted to get California for the United States.
Less than four years later, he had succeeded with each item on his list. The United States and Britain agreed on a compromise in the Oregon dispute. In eighteen forty-six, he was able to establish the independent Treasury again, where the government could keep its own funds. No longer would government funds be kept in private banks.
That same year, Polk was able to get Congress to approve a bill that greatly reduced the taxes on imports. And the peace treaty with Mexico gave the United States not only California, but also New Mexico. So, Polk believed he had served his country well.
VOICE TWO:
Polk, however, had not served his party well. He was not a good politician. He failed to unite the disputing groups of the Democratic Party. What was worse, he let them move even farther apart.
There seemed to be no strong Democratic candidate who could unite the party. At one extreme were the supporters of former President Van Buren — New York Democrats opposed to slavery. They were called “Barnburners.” They got this name from their political opponents, who charged that they were willing to burn down the barn to get rid of pro-slavery rats.
At the party’s other extreme were the Democrats of the South, led by John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. In every state, the Democrats were divided between those who supported the administration and those opposed to it.
VOICE ONE:
The Democrats met in Baltimore in May eighteen forty-eight to choose their presidential candidate. Several men were proposed as possibilities: Polk’s Treasury Secretary Robert Walker of Mississippi; John Dix of New York; and Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan.
On the fourth vote, the convention chose Cass as the party’s presidential candidate. Cass was sixty-six years old. He was a middle-of-the-road Democrat. He was a northerner who did not oppose slavery.
On the question of slavery in the new territories, Cass believed that the people of the territory should make the decision. The Barnburner Democrats of New York refused to accept Cass as their candidate. They walked out of the Baltimore convention.
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VOICE TWO:
Senator Henry Clay — three times the Whig Party choice for president — expected to be its candidate again. The old members of the party still supported Clay. But young Whigs felt that a new candidate was needed.
Some Whig leaders remembered how William Henry Harrison had won the presidency for the party by campaigning as a military hero. The country had a new military hero now. “Old Zach” — General Zachary Taylor. General Taylor and his men never lost a battle in the Mexican War. Several times, he defeated Mexican forces much larger than his.
After the general’s first victory, New York political leader Thurlow Weed happened to meet Taylor’s brother on a Hudson River steamboat. That meeting had a most important effect on future events.
VOICE ONE:
Weed asked Joseph Taylor if his brother was a political man. Joseph answered that “Old Zach” was not. He said his brother belonged to no party, that often he did not even vote. He said Zach supported Henry Clay and did not like Andrew Jackson.
Joseph said his brother felt strongly that American products should be protected against competition from foreign imports. He felt so strongly about it, Joseph said, that he refused to wear any imported clothing. Weed made a quick decision. “Your brother,” he said, “will be our next president.”
“That is preposterous. My brother knows nothing about government or civil affairs. When I tell you,” said Joseph Taylor, “that he is not as fit to be president as I am, you will see how foolish this idea is.”
VOICE TWO:
Weed, however, did not think his proposal was foolish. He began to build support for General Taylor among Whig politicians. When Old Zach first heard of efforts to make him president, he agreed with his brother. The idea was foolish.
“I would not accept such high office,” he said, “even if it were offered.”
This statement he made in June, eighteen forty-six. A month later, he was saying he was not a candidate for president — and never would be. He said he felt it was wrong to make a military man president. But, a few months later, Taylor changed his mind. He told his son-in-law in December: “I will not say I would not serve if the good people were to be so unwise as to elect me.”
VOICE ONE:
By July of eighteen forty-seven, Old Zach had made up his mind. He told a friend: “I am satisfied that if the election were held now, nothing could prevent me from becoming president.” Senator Clay did not think Taylor had the ability to be president. But Clay knew well how the voters loved a military hero. Senator Clay was seventy years old. He knew this would be his last chance to become president. He worked very hard to get the support of Whig leaders.
(MUSIC)
ANNOUNCER:
The Whig Party held its convention in Philadelphia in June of eighteen forty-eight. Four names were put before the convention: General Zachary Taylor, Henry Clay, General Winfield Scott and Daniel Webster. That will be our story next week.
Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Jack Moyles and Jack Weitzel. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs, along with historical images, are at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION — an American history series in VOA Special English.
This is program #74 of THE MAKING OF A NATION
