By the 1850’s attitudes towards the union had become so divergent as to make compromise, in practice, impossible. Discuss.

When answering this question we must consider the way that attitudes towards the union had evolved over time in the United States, and how these changes affected the possibility of compromise.

Firstly, one must point out the ideas of the union and the original views expressed at the time of the time the union was conceived. The union had been created amongst a wave of patriotic fervour in America, and at the time it was set up, the ‘Founding Fathers’ of the constitution had organised a system, which, while providing a largely democratic (for its time) government, was most importantly, federal. This system provided government on two levels, and this was supposed to satisfy the sections that even then were becoming very apparent – North and South. As the US grew in population, gained more wealth, and expanded massively in territory, it became clear that there were some very potent differences between the two sections. This idea of sectionalism existed on two levels: the first was cultural and the second economic. It is this movement that changed attitudes to the union and as such, I will be considering the impact this movement had on attitudes to the union.

The development of the US had, by the early 1800’s led to two clear systems being set up. In the North, an industrial power was developing (sustained by free workers), with a comparatively urban population. Many immigrants chose the North as a settling place, and on the whole, the population was better educated due to the larger number of schools. By contrast, in the South, a generally feudal, agricultural society was thriving, with an economy based mainly on cotton export. The agriculture in the South was mainly sustained via the use of African slaves, and (not unlike the rich Northern industrialists) the big slave owners, the ‘planter class’ owned most of the wealth. This great difference had arisen partly due to the fact that the South was a very fertile land, and as such perfect for agriculture, and partly due to the fact that the slave population in the South had managed to increase despite the banning of the slave trade by natural growth. However, the union was so beneficial to both sides, and the growth experienced was so great, as to make these differences disappear into the background. As Senator Thomas Hart Benson put it: "...the two halves of the union were made for each other, as much as Adam and Eve".

While the North had banned slavery by 1820, the pure profit turned out by cotton exports in the South, led to slavery being regarded as the natural order of things throughout most of the South, and to it being accepted to a certain point in the North. Certainly, the white farmers were never abolitionists, as the last thing that they would have wanted would have been to deal with a huge influx of incredibly cheap labour. The two sections needed each other, and this is why, in the first part of the 19th century, there was little animosity between North and South. The North benefited greatly from the trade it had with the South – in manufactured goods, agricultural equipment, and in transporting Southern exports. Apart from disagreements over tariffs, there was little to denote any major disagreement coming between the two sections in the near future.

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However, this all began to change with the emergence of an organised abolitionist movement in the North. A revival of religious values, and international influences in the first three decades of the 19th century led to a this movement gaining more support than it had ever done before. It began to bring to people’s attention the slavery issue, and through this fact it began to cause tension. While slavery had always been a problem, it had never been properly addressed, and it had been pushed into the background. Now, all the fears that had existed in both camps all along began to emerge. On the one hand, the Southerners began to truly fear that there was a Northern conspiracy to eliminate slavery completely. This would be a disaster for the South, as it depended almost entirely upon slave labour. The North began to believe that the South aimed to expand slavery everywhere (which some did), but more importantly, that the South had too much power - such as the introduction by Congress of a ‘gag rule’ in 1836 to prevent abolitionist petitions being discussed. This is the crucial turning point in attitudes to the union. The South began to feel that its ‘Peculiar Institution’ was being threatened, and not only this, that individual state rights were under attack. This was one of the principles that the South held most dear, and it regarded any attempt to remove it as an unacceptable insult and danger. The nullification issue that had arisen at the time of the 'Tariff of Abominations' was brought back to the forefront, with many Southern leaders claiming that the North was being oppressive - that it could at any time react over the issue of slavery as it had done over the tariff - by threatening to, and actually using force to impose the will of the federal government. The North began for the first time to truly question the morality of the Southerners, and to consider whether the individual states had the right to make the decision to enslave people.

Slavery proved to be the first, and possibly most important, sectional difference. It proved to be such a great problem because it caused both an ideological battle and an economic danger (for both sides). The question became very intense, because it affected such a wide range of political issues. The first major crisis occurred in 1819, when Missouri applied to join the union as a slave state. This posed a grave problem for the Northern states: until now, the balance of power had been evenly divided; many feared that the loss of balance would destabilise the political system. The North rejected the admittance of Missouri, and this caused many angry arguments between Southern and Northern congressmen. Finally, a compromise was reached, in the form of the creation of a new, free state of Maine out of Massachusetts, and the agreement that no slavery would be allowed in the territory acquired in the Louisiana Purchase – North of 36º 30’ latitude. The now famous “Missouri Compromise” satisfied both sides, but the issues raised during its conception filled many of the ‘old guard’ with fear - such as Thomas Jefferson: “This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror”1. Slowly but surely, the Union began to represent different things to the sections. The South began to look upon it as an oppressive state that was attempting to wipe out its way of life, while the North continued to look upon the union as the basis of government by the people.

However, the question of the extension of slavery into new territories came back in 1836-1837, with the Texan fight for independence from Mexico. Once the army that had gathered from the South and West defeated General Santa Anna and Texas had effectively gained independence, its citizens hoped that it would be allowed to join the union. However, this is where the flames of mistrust were rekindled. Some Northerners feared that slave owners had orchestrated the Texas rebellion against Mexico, in order to allow the South to gain control of government. It was the sheer size of Texas that frightened them: it would be perfectly possible for it to be split in to 3 or 4 slave states, which would severely change the balance of power. It became clear that the problem would not stop at Texas. Many began to see that as westward expansion continued the sectional conflict would just get worse. The reasoning is simple: new lands meant new opportunity, and while the South was very eager to extend slavery in order to increase profits (and to prove a point), the North would never allow itself to be controlled on a political level.

During the Mexican War, David Wilmot, a Northern democrat, proposed a very controversial piece of legislation. The “Wilmot Proviso” would not allow slavery to exist in any lands gained from Mexico as a result of the war. The idea for this proviso did not stem from any abolitionist feeling on the part of Wilmot, but rather from a concern that the lands that were taken from Mexico would be settled by free white farmers, who would not have to face competition from the large scale slave plantations. One can imagine that this angered the South immensely, as it led them to believe that the North was bent on trying to wipe out slavery (which they rightly believed, had to expand to survive). In fact, the reaction was so violent as to provoke Senator Robert Toobms of Georgia to declare that he would prefer “disunion rather than ‘degradation’”2 (if the Congress passed the Proviso).

By 1849, the situation was becoming desperate. A new compromise was needed in order to protect the union. As distrust had grown, the two sections increasingly felt that the other was plotting its downfall. After much deliberation, it was agreed that the idea of popular sovereignty would be used in order too determine whether a territory applying to become a state would be free or not. However, even this posed a problem, as it begged the question of whether Congress still had the powers that the founding fathers had meant it to have – the power to control the territories, and their ascension into statehood. It also served to alienate the two sections further, as the South feared that the North would, by making free states, limit the ability of Southerners to take their property wherever they wished, and therefore create inequality between citizens of the North and South. The South was also angered at what it saw as attempts to keep it out of land that it had helped to conquer during the Mexican war. Finally, the issue of the enforcement of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act led to the South drawing the conclusion (rightly) that many Northern states were actively involved in frustrating slave owner's efforts to catch runaways and return them to the South. This served only to amplify the complex that the South had developed - that the union was proving to be very dangerous to the South's ideas and way of life.

As we can see, by 1850, slavery had caused numerous problems between the sections, and it had severely undermined the stability that had kept views towards the union positive. The main problem stemmed from the fact that they could not decide on a way of extending US territory without offending either the North or the South. The South, emboldened by the continuous rise in profits from cotton throughout the period, wanted to be allowed to expand freely if it so wished. The Southerners regarded the territories as free land, and they saw the attempts of the Northerners to limit the possible expansion of slavery as little more than a conspiracy to wipe out the ‘Peculiar Institution’ and to force the will of the federal government upon the individual states. The North, which had, by now, begun to take an anti-slavery, if not necessarily abolitionist (i.e. slavery should be allowed to die out naturally – by not being allowed to expand) felt that the Southern states were attempting to extend slavery simply as a means to get power in Congress.

In this atmosphere of tension, it became very hard to see how the two sides could come to a lasting agreement. It seemed that as soon as one problem was addressed, another would spring up, and that a true compromise could never be reached. The truth is that by 1850, views towards the union had not as much diverged as gone off at right angles to each other. The North, heavily influenced by Jackson and Clay, continued to believe that the basis of popular government was the maintenance of territorial integrity- that the union was quite simply the highest form of government, and that it had to be preserved at all costs – even if it meant interfering in individual states’ rights. The South, on the other hand, took the view that the rights of slave owners (as protected by the constitution) had to be respected, and that its distinctive way of life had as much a right to expand and grow. This idea of protecting its own distinctive way of life was really at the heart of the Southern philosophy.

Therefore, what can we say about the chances of compromise? The answer is that as things stood at thee start of the 1850’s there was little chance of a practical, long-term compromise. Any such deal would have to placate both the abolitionists, by ensuring that, at the very least, slavery would no longer expand; the slave owners, by ensuring that they no longer felt threatened by the North; and all the groups in between, by offering a solution that would not only save the honour of the South, but also the union from the internal tensions that are threatening to tear it apart. The problem is that, as with every compromise, not everyone will be completely pleased, and even if they could be convinced to accept the terms as the best on the table, there is no way to allow for future practical problems (such as the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Bill which the South viewed as a key failure in the attitude of the North). The compromise of 1850 did indeed seem to offer a solution, but the problem remained that there was no way to erase the memories of the sections, and as such, any incident against the compromise could cause all the old demons to return.

In conclusion, I believe that, due to the nature of the sectional conflict, and because the views towards the union had changed so dramatically, by 1850, it had become impossible to work out a long-term compromise. A conflict was needed, because, as Lincoln put it: “A house divided against itself cannot stand…this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free”, and possibly war proved to be the ultimate kind of compromise – the compromise of loss of life versus loss of government.