THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA This Great Contest of Principle: Politics, National Identity, and the Compromise of 1850 A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of History School of Arts and Sciences Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy © Copyright All Rights Reserved By Robert R. Camilleri Washington, D.C. 2015 This Great Contest of Principle: Politics, National Identity, and the Compromise of 1850 Robert R. Camilleri, PhD. Director: Stephen West The Congressional debates leading to the Compromise of 1850 represented a critical turning point in the United States’ sectional crisis, and were the product of a contest between differing conceptions of national identity. This study examines the actions, motivations, ideologies, and principles of members of Congress and the executive branch to determine how their respective national ideals were reflected in their proposals for defusing the territorial crisis, and how the interactions of ideological principles and personal rivalries influenced legislation that impacted the political order of the 1850s. The study utilizes transcripts of Congressional debates, manuscript collections, newspaper articles, and voting analysis. It identifies three competing visions of nationalism in the 31st Congress, termed Unionists, transformational nationalists, and Southern nationalists, and describes how the territorial crisis was influenced by and in turn influenced the development of these visions. It also examines how personal rivalries disrupted ideological and factional alignments within these categories, with consequences that impacted the legislative process and eventual terms of the settlement. It traces the development of these competing nationalist visions from their origins in the 1810s, 1820s, and 1830s, and describes how Unionism came to dominate the political elite following the War of 1812, but was increasingly challenged by Southern nationalism and transformational nationalism during and following the Presidency of John Tyler. It assesses the strengths of these groupings within the 31st Congress, and then traces how these principles were expressed during the ensuing debates over the admission of California to the Union as a state, Henry Clay’s Omnibus Bill, and the series of bills that were adopted to encompass the final Compromise of 1850. It concludes that the Compromise of 1850 failed to provide a lasting settlement to the territorial crisis due to the adoption of popular sovereignty, which ensured that territorial agitation based upon these three competing nationalist principles would persist, and that the adoption of popular sovereignty by Unionism started the period of decline and eventual extinction of that nationalist vision. This dissertation by Robert R. Camilleri fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in History approved by Stephen West, PhD., as Director, and by Timothy Meagher, PhD., and Jane Turner Censer, PhD. as Readers. __________________________ Stephen West, PhD., Director ___________________________ Timothy Meagher, PhD., Reader ___________________________ Jane Turner Censer, PhD., Reader ii To Amy, for everything. iii Introduction pg. 1 Chapter 1: A Malign Influence Threatens the Country pg. 34 Chapter 2: Between Scylla and Charybdis pg. 99 Chapter 3: Avowed Enemies pg. 147 Chapter 4: Rule and Ruin pg. 207 Chapter 5: Faction Rules the Hour pg. 267 Chapter 6: A Momentary Quiet pg. 310 Bibliography pg. 342 iv Introduction September 8, 1850, witnessed an outpouring of relief and celebration throughout official Washington, with political leaders and residents joining together for a day of celebration and revelry. “I have never before known so much excitement upon the passage of any law,” Washington resident Jonathan Foltz reported to his friend, former Secretary of State (and future President) James Buchanan.1 Foltz, like many contemporaries, believed that the laws passed that day, concluding the legislative settlement remembered today as the Compromise of 1850, had settled the sectional crisis over the expansion of slavery that had agitated the nation since 1819. Despite the confidence of Jonathan Foltz, however, the territorial question would prove more resilient than the Compromise that was created to settle it. Rather than providing the pivotal moment that the revelers of September 8, 1850 had celebrated, the passage of the Compromise of 1850 is not remembered today as a transformative moment. Rather, it is remembered as one of several episodes in the evolution of a conflict between North and South that would eventually result in the Civil War.2 The sectional conflict over slavery has generally been recognized as the defining American political conflict of the nineteenth century, and the crisis which resulted in the Compromise of 1850 was a critical moment in the evolution of the conflict from a political to an existential crisis for the United States. At the moment when the political will for a permanent settlement of the conflict to preserve the Union was strongest, a collection of the nation’s 1 Jonathan M. Folz to James Buchanan, Sept. 13, 1850, James Buchanan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 2 David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), 120. 1 2 greatest political minds devised a settlement plan that was effectively undone by 1854 and failed to prevent the dissolution of the Union in 1861. Rather than supersede the sectional conflict into a crusade for national unity, the Compromise of 1850 had, in the words of historian David Potter, “weakened the basis of the Union.”3 The authors of the Compromise of 1850 had intended for the legislation to transform the politics of the United States, and indeed the Compromise did change national politics. The aftermath of the Compromise of 1850 and the accelerating sectional conflict resulted in a profound transformation in the political order. The Whig Party—deeply divided by internal factional disputes and in ideological transition at the time of the Compromise—struggled to prosecute a Presidential campaign by 1852, began collapsing in the North by 1854, was forced into fusion with the Know-Nothing Party to mount a Presidential campaign in 1856, and was essentially extinct by 1861. Northern Democrats, triumphant after the passage of the Compromise, were gradually undermined by their conciliatory posture toward the South. Having established a near-stranglehold on the North by 1854, they suffered a chronic and continuing decline at the hands of their opponents, the Northern Whigs and Know Nothings who became the foundation of the Republican Party. Their credibility damaged by their identification with the unpopular fugitive slave law, Northern Democrats’ calls for sectional conciliation lost their appeal to a Northern electorate increasingly willing to confront the South. The beneficiaries of the Compromise of 1850, in the end, were those leaders like William H. Seward and Jefferson Davis, who had developed national reputations as sectional spokesmen through their opposition 3 Potter, Impending Crisis, 143. 3 to the Compromise. The Compromise of 1850 did provide a political transformation, but it did so by accelerating trends, such as political party decline, factionalism, anti-slavery, and Southern nationalism.4 Despite these developments, many—if not most—historians have assessed the Compromise of 1850 as a success. Though the Compromise ultimately failed to prevent the Civil War, it was a moment when violence was averted, sectional accommodation was reached, and cooler heads ultimately prevailed. Historians have generally sympathized with the friends of the Congressional Compromise plan, and have generally credited the efforts of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Stephen Douglas, and Millard Fillmore in preventing the outbreak of violence. While the limitations of the bills have been widely recognized, the spirit of the effort has been appraised as just and proper. As a result, the blame for the acceleration of the sectional conflict and the collapse of the Compromise system has frequently been laid at the feet of Stephen Douglas for his repudiation of the agreement through the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854.5 In this telling, the Compromise of 1850 is best remembered as a final glorious triumph of the statesmen of the Age of Jackson over the forces of radicalism that forestalled the outbreak of Civil War and illuminated a path to eventual sectional reconciliation. This interpretation obscures the deepening social and economic differences between the North and South, which the leaders of the major parties struggled to understand and failed to contain. It underestimates the seeds of conflict that that the Compromise sowed through its precedent opening free territories to slavery 4 Holman Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc. 1964). 5 Michael Holt, The Fate of Their Country (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004). 4 for the first time, and through its flawed and inflammatory Fugitive Slave Act. It underestimates the role that personal pettiness, vindictiveness, and animosity played in the development of the settlement, as well as the dedication to principle, selflessness and patriotism that inspired the opposition to the Compromise. Most crucially, it ignores, as the framers of the Compromise did, the deep philosophical and ideological differences that divided the political elite over the meaning and future of the American