Politics and Sectionalism in the 1850s
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The early years of the nineteenth century saw a rise in sectional crises as northern and southern citizens first recognised their differences and then used the grey areas of federalism to pursue their own interests; the Civil War began in 1861, but the political crisis that set the stage for the conflict unfolded in 1850. National expansion and the rise of militant abolitionism made it increasingly difficult to exclude slavery from national attention. The dispute that led to the Compromise of 1850 was at its root a crisis of republicanism, the ideological tradition that grew out of the movement for American independence. Both sections used their own version of republicanism to make sense of the crises of the late 1840s; despite masterful diplomacy, the agreement of 1850 failed to resolve the conflict between them.
The compromise of 1850, a series of legislative bargains over the western territories and slavery, was a sheer demonstration that American political leaders could still defuse sectional tensions. What they could not do was resolve deeper social and political problems that simmered under the surface of the legislative bargains, congressional balancing, and soaring oratory. An increasingly popular “quick-fix remedy to solving the fragile issue of slavery was being discussed as 1850 began. The general idea was to create new states from territories acquired in 1846 & 1848, relying upon the U.S. Constitution Amendment X (see Appendix 1), which allowed states the right to decide for themselves on any issue not expressly prohibited by the federal government. In addition to this, pro-slavery advocates saw a loophole in the proviso of the 1820 Missouri Compromise, which stated that all land above the 36°30'N latitude was to be forever free territory. After careful evaluation from the federal courts, they eventually decided that the proviso would only apply to the territory acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. This meant that slavery could legally exist north of the 36°30'N line, the Oregon and Mexican Cession Territories. The debate over this new admission drove tensions between the slaveholding South and the free soil North to a fever pitch, & most political leaders wanted to avoid another dangerous showdown over slavery. Abolitionist agitation had threatened the status quo in the 1830s, but Congress maintained the silence on slavery with the Gag Rule of 1836, which prohibited antislavery petitions in Congress.
