Chapter 57: Congressional Profiles: 1841-1851

The congressional baton is now passed to the new men in Congress who are soon defined by their stands on the issue of slavery in general and its extension into the new land won from Mexico. As of 1852, they fall roughly into four groups, as follows:

Stances On Slavery By Leading Congressmen As Of 1852

By far the largest contingent are the Moderates, a mix of Democrats and Whigs, Northerners and Southerners, who remain ready so far to prioritize their dedication to preserving the Union over their often sharp differences on the slavery issues. In general they support the 1850 Compromise, which deflects the Wilmot Proviso ban on expansion and puts the final decision back on territorial settlers to vote for either a Slave State or Free State declaration.

Four powerful senators – all rooming together in DC at their “F-Street Mess” quarters – are responsible for the 1850 Compromise: Stephen Douglas, President Pro-Tem, along with two Virginians, Robert Hunter (Finance Committee Chair) and James Mason (Foreign Affairs) and South Carolinian Andrew Butler (Judiciary).

It is Douglas who leads the way. Along with Lewis Cass, he argues that instead of any Wilmot-like federal mandate banning slavery in the new territories, “let the local voters decide for themselves.” This appeal to a fundamental principle of Democracy carries the day in 1850, With his victory here, Douglas becomes the congressional linchpin holding the Moderates together.

Help comes his way, however, from various sources. In the North they include Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, soon-to-be House Speaker Linn Boyd of Indiana, prior Speaker Robert Winthrop, Cass of Michigan and Dickinson of New York.

But it is the solid Southern support which dampens the 1850 crisis. This rests heavily on two staunchly pro-Union leaders: the venerable Whig, John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, who will serve in the Senate for 21 years; and the Democrat from Texas, Sam Houston, whose loyalty to the flag never wavers, even in 1861.

Other currently Moderate Southerners include John Bell of Tennessee, Jefferson Davis and Henry Foote of Mississippi, John Breckinridge of Kentucky and Andrew Johnson of Tennessee.

Finally there are the three House members from Georgia, all in their thirties: the Democrat Robert Toombs and the two Whigs, Howell Cobb and Alexander Stephens. Together they plot a course aimed at derailing secession efforts from the South’s radical States Rights advocates – including their home state rivals, William Berrien and Governor George Washington Bonaparte Towns.

Cobb leads the efforts to pass the 1850 Compromise before later joining Buchanan’s cabinet as Treasury Secretary. Toombs authors the “Georgia Platform” with its “conditions” for saving the Union, which he will later reprise in a landmark speech in Boston. Stephens goes on to befriend Lincoln and work for peace before becoming Vice-President of the Confederacy. But as of 1852 these three in particular are able to hold off calls for Disunion.

The 1850-1852 timeframe marks the end of the road for three men who have dominated the political landscape since coming to Washington during the War of 1812.

John Calhoun will be first to go, dying at sixty-eight of tuberculosis in Washington in March 1850. Failing rapidly, he relies on James Mason to deliver his farewell address to the Senate, once again urging Southern unity against Northern attacks on slavery.

Henry Clay announces his pending resignation from the Senate in December 1851 still unable to get his version of the Compromise of 1850 approved. He struggles with tuberculosis until June 1852 before passing at age seventy-five, and becoming the first man to lie in state at the capitol rotunda.

Dan Webster dies four months after Clay, while still serving his second term as Secretary of State. He is seventy years old and back on his estate in Massachusetts, suffering from cirrhosis of the liver.

Both Clay and Webster will lose precious sons in American wars. Lt. Colonel Henry Clay Jr., a West Point grad, is killed-in-action in 1847 during the Mexican War at the Battle of Buena Vista. Harvard grad, Colonel Fletcher Webster, dies defending the Henry House Hill in 1862 at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Only one of John Calhoun’s five sons serves in the military. Patrick Calhoun is an 1841 West Point graduate whose regiment is never mustered in during the Mexican War and who resigns as Captain 2^nd Dragoons while in Kansas at age thirty-three due to illness.

On February 21, 1848, the late-comer, JQ Adams, suffers a fatal stroke on the floor of the House after debating a war-related measure. Most historian will agree that his 17 years back in the House as the principal voice of abolition surpass his accomplishments as President 1829-1833.

When Calhoun dies in 1850, his secessionist torch passes to a set of politicians and intellectuals who become known as “Fire-eaters.” They perpetuate Calhoun’s main themes: that “slavery is a positive good” (offering heathens a chance for salvation along with safety exceeding that of Northern factory workers), and that the South must unite quickly against Northern aggression.

The geographical hub for the Fire-eaters begins in South Caroline with the “Nullification” crisis around 1830, and Robert Barnwell Rhett continues as a primary spokesman through his 14 year membership in Congress and ownership of his powerful newspaper, The Charleston Mercury.

But by 1850 the flames are spreading. Another former newspaperman, William Yancey of Alabama, authors his “Alabama Platform” in 1848 to oppose the Wilmot Proviso and rejects the 1850 Compromise. Yancey is known for his hair-trigger temper, killing one man in a street fight and engaging in a duel with fellow congressman Thomas Clingman. He declares that his political aim is “to precipitate the cotton states into a revolution.”

Another central figure is John Slidell, a native New Yorker, who moves to Louisiana and becomes a dedicated proponent of slavery and its expansion into Mexico and Cuba. Along with James Mason, Slidell will later become a CSA diplomat caught up in the famous Trent Affair. David Atchison will resign his Senate seat in 1856 to lead his Missouri “Border Ruffians” into battle with anti-slavery settlers in Bloody Kansas.

Opposing the Southern demands for the expansion of slavery are two Northern blocs in Congress, both gaining public support.

At the extreme end are the Abolitionists who have finally broken through the 1846 Southern “gag orders” in Congress and have assembled a sufficient number of advocates to advance their agenda. Among them are three future members of Lincoln’s cabinet, Ohio’s Salmon P. Chase, Henry Seward of New York and William Fessenden of Maine.

Chase experiences a spiritual epiphany in 1834 after the death of his wife that finds him dedicating his life to ending slavery. As a lawyer in Cincinnati he defends run-away slaves, then helps found both the Liberty Party and the Free Soil Party.

Two other men will also match the Fire-eater’s rhetorical zeal jab for jab, labeling the South as the “Slave Power” and accusing them of perpetuating an evil cause that violates both Christian and American ideals.

One is Thaddeus Stevens, born with a clubfoot and into poverty, who becomes a successful lawyer in Gettysburg often backing the downtrodden before joining the House in 1849 at the ripe age of 56 years. He predicts that the 1850 Compromise will lead to Civil War and refuses to give any concessions on slavery to the “Southern tyrants.” In turn they accuse him of miscegenation for carrying on a sexual liaison with his long-time African-American housekeeper.

Matching Stevens for his invective is Charles Sumner, elected to the Senate from Massachusetts in 1851, after growing up among the intellectual elites of Boston. No other congressman is able to match Sumner for antagonizing the South over slavery. In 1856 he will almost pay with his life for his provocative rhetoric when he is caned on the floor by South Carolina’s Preston Brooks after his “Crisis in Kansas” speech.

Finally, as of 1850, there are the more moderate voices who oppose further expansion of slavery in the west, while allowing it to continue to exist as is in the Old South. Their motivations for doing so vary from person to person.

Some, like Abraham Lincoln, Henry Seward, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine and Pennsylvania’s Simon Cameron, regard slavery as immoral and would end it except for its legal guarantees in the 1787 Constitution. Some, like David Wilmot, Preston King and Jacob Brinkerhoff (joint authors of the “Wilmot Proviso”) claim that the presence of slaves would “diminish the dignity of white labor” were they allowed in. Others simply feel that America should be preserved for the white race, and that all blacks – be they slaves or freedmen – threaten that outcome.

The passage of the 1850 Compromise provides a momentary pause in the growing conflict between the North and South – with the Moderates still favoring continued efforts to hold the Union together. But the underlying strains have not been resolved. The South must be allowed to expand slavery into the new territories to sustain its economic wealth, and the North remains unwilling to guarantee that outcome. Instead of a firm Congressional commitment to expansion, all that’s left is a hope that settlers will vote for state constitutions that favor slavery. Soon enough this hope will be tested in the Kansas-Nebraska Territory.

Stephen Douglas

William Yancey

Howell Cobb

Robert Toombs

Abraham Lincoln

William Henry Seward

Salmon Chase

Charles Sumner

See Appendix for more details.