c-span.org/theconte c-span.org/thecontenders. >> there's been honest contention, a spirit of disagreement and i believe considerable arguments. but don't let anybody be misled by that. you have given here in this hall a moving and dramatic proof of how americans who honestly differ close ranks and move forward for the nation's well-being shoulder to shoulder. >> c-span.org/thecontenders. they would wear garments made of home spun cloth and this home spun cloth would be much more rough textured, would be much less fine than the kinds of goods they could import from great britain, but which wearing this home spun cloth women were

visibly and vividly displaying their political sentiments. >> rosemariezagari, part of american history tv on c-span 3 this weekend. each week american history tv sits in on a lecture with one of the nation's college professors. watch the classes every week at 8:00 p.m. and sundays at 1 p.m. this week a look at the compromise of 1850 and the collapse of the second party system with gillis harp, a professor of grove city college in grove city, pennsylvania. the class is part of a survey course called history of the united states to 1865 which covers american history from the colonial era through the civil war. this is about 50 minutes. >> all right, well, i begin as usual with short selection from the osapsalm 119.

blessed of those who walk awarding to the law of the lord. blessed are they who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart, they do nothing wrong. they walk in his ways. you have laid down precepts that are fully obeyed. oh that my ways were steadfast in obeying, you are decreed. that is from psalm 119. okay, well, last time we left off talking about the election of 1848 and we said, remember, you may recall that the wigs had taken a page out of the playbook of the once again had taken a page out of playbook of the democratic party in nominating a war hero rather ironic since they nominated a war hero from a war that they had opposed pretty vociferously, that was zachary tayl taylor, we have a poster with taylor and fillmore.

the wigs managed to win to defeat the democratic party candidate, the democrats hurt very badly by internal divisions especially within new york state really serious battle within new york state had new york gone a different direction, the democratic nominee might have been nominated instead of zachary taylor, the wig nominee, but series divisions within the party, i think i may have talked about it before, a lot of factionalism within the democrats in new york, different elements, the so-called hunker group and so-called barn burner group. we won't get into that but suffice to say the wigs again end up with a successful candidate with electing a president in the form of zachary taylor, but ironically again someone who's not really a committed wig. someone who is less than a

die-hard wig, you know, in the clay or webster mold, taylor had often portrayed himself not as a wig candidate, but as a no-party candidate, as someone who is kind of above party and he incorrectly assumed that a broad coalition had made him president and that he owed little to the wigs per se. political historians know that's nonsense, it was the wig party machine that got him elected but that was his perception. and the way that zachary taylor would attempt to deal with the mexican session, remember the mexican session, that's that territory ceded by mexico to the united states as a result of the american victory in the war with mexico. his approach to the mexican session would reflect this no-party approach, this no-party idea of his. the election after all had not really provided a solution to the problem of slavery in the territories.

and no immediate solution was in sight. now, remember, you've got a long gap here between taylor being elected in november of 1848 and something actually happening in washington. well, first of all, long gap between being elected in november '48 and being sworn into office. those days it was in march, so not until march of 1849 do you have the end of the sort of lame duck period of his predecessor, meanwhile, the gold rush in california was attracting thousands of new settlers west, amid this policy-making vacuum, sectional animosities in congress increased. so there's kind of a lack of leadership, there's a kind of power vacuum and as a result, there's a lot of pretty nasty debate in congress, a lot of maneuvering, political maneuvering, northern democrats are flirting more and more with the willmont proviso.

we talked about that last time, the proposal to exclude slavery from any new territory acquired in the war with mexico. northern democrats are flirting more and more with the proviso and with something new called the free soil party that had emerged. some of them wanted to join that plus northern wigs are alarms at the initial moves of their newly elected president in forming his cabinet. taylor skips over traditional wigs such as clay or webster and ignores clay's american system policy agenda. taylor hoped to build some kind of new political movement. some sort of new party, sometimes he called it the republican party. to be distinguished from the republican party that's later formed a couple years later here. thus, most of taylor's cabinets are actually enemies of what people call ultra wigery. the way he doled out federal

patronage concerned old wig regulars, a lot. remember that's one of the key things presidents do. a little bit less today, definitely true in the mid-19th century, one of their most important jobs was to pay off people to pay off supporters within the party, complaints from party regulars poured into the white house as taylor's first year in office went by. so you've got conflict between taylor and his party, you've got a kind of power vacuum at the top -- oh, another aspect of the power vacuum is as i said taylor is not inaugurated till march of '49. congress doesn't actually go into session until december of '49 so, again, you've got basically more than a year of not much happening. okay, well, eventually though taylor comes forward with a plan regarding the mexican session. what's his plan? you can see some of it eventually takes the form you see here.

i'll explain how we get there. taylor wanted california and other parts of the session to bypass or skip the territorial stage and be admitted immediately as states, thus, he thought sidestepping the world wilmont pro-voice so question. rather dishonest move but think about it. if you're talking about debating, should we have slavery in the territories, taylor's response is, okay, well, we won't have territories. no debate. we'll just bring these territories in immediately as states. by the time taylor submitted the proposal to congress, though, most southern wigs were annoyed with his cabinet and patronage appointments that i mentioned already. they weren't interested in his proposal, which their democratic opponents in the south called the lmn substance if not in form. so it was clear that taylor's plan would garner little support

onof dead on arrival. he didn't have sufficient support within the whig party. democrats were certainly not inclined to support the proposals of a whig -- at least nominally whig president. okay, so what happens? who steps into the power vacuum? predictably it's henry clay, right? clay, a shall always an aspirant and the great the context of the missouri compromise back in 1819, 1820, clay comes forward with package. his original set of eight separate resolutions was introduced in late january of 1850, again, note quite a bit of time has passed, so january 1850, then actually some of this first set of clay's proposals

looked something like taylor's plan. clay wanted to admit california immediately as a free state. it had recently, by the way, applied for admission with an anti-slavery constitution. the difference was this measure was now tied, though at first rather loosely to certain concessions to the south. okay, so the beginnings of some kind of compromise are taking shape. and clay saying, all right, well, we'll bring in california as a free state but we recognize we have to give some -- grant some concessions to the south. as far as the other territories were concerned, well, the wilmont proviso was not necessary because he believed nature would prohibit slavery from happening. arrid conditions, so why needlessly antagonize, why needlessly antagonize

southerners with, you know, with the wilmont proviso. he was trying to steal the thunder and believed if he could resolve the sectional debate this would help him wrestle back control of the whig party and definitely interested in running for president in 1852 although as we'll see he doesn't make it. he dies before then. but like taylor, though, clay had counted upon united whig support in congress and it simply wasn't there by early 1850. another senator by the name of foot mississippi tries to combine the separate measures into a single omnibus bill and let's pull it all together in one big package. that doesn't work either. he was hoping thereby to lock in southerner concessions to southerners for the admission of california as a free state. the battle over the bill's

different parts, though, was very fierce. eventually the omnibus package had to be broken up into separate legislation and ran through the congress interestingly under the leadership not of a whig but of a democrat, of a northern democrat senator steven a. douglas of illinois, more about him later. but it's interesting that it's a democrat that does it, not a whig. okay, so that's ultimately what gets passed. here is what you can see happens. you admit california as a free state. the other territories, oh, you chop down the size of texas and you have these other territories, the question of slavery, the status of slavery in those territories to be determined by popular sovereignty. makes sense, because after all,

it's douglas who is proposing this and douglas is a democrat. remember, democrats had since 1840 -- well, since the late 1840s had embraced this idea of popular sovereignty, sometimes called squatter's sovereignty. okay, so what's the package then? number one, california is admitted as a free state. utah and new mexico as you can see on our map there are organized as territories. popular sovereignty there, as i said, to determine the status of slavery, texas is compensated for loss of territory granted to new mexico. that's number three. if you're not getting all these down, don't worry about it. your text has it in some detail. number three, number four, perhaps most controversial tough new federally enforced fugitive slave law is introduced. more about that in a minute. also, the slave trade in washington, d.c. is abolished that is the slave trade in d.c. is abolished, the selling of

slaves in the nation's capital. okay. so that's the package. and you can see, as i said, on the map what that means. ironically these measures may not have been made law had it not been for president taylor's untimely death in july of 1850. remember we said that the whigs had a bit of a hard luck story with electing presidents, only elect two, both died in office. taylor dies in office in july of 1850. some indication that taylor actually might have vetoed the compromise, but, remember, taylor is succeeded by our -- my personal favorite millard fi fillmore. i don't know why he's become such a brunt of jokes. maybe it's the name but millard fillmore is a die-hard whig. taylor my not have been but fillmore is. fillmore is a traditional whig.

he's busy fighting free soil forces within his own party and consequently fillmore's eager to support the compromise and signs it into law. all right, so he's keen about getting the compromise through, in fact, as we'll see fillmore locks on to the compromise as a kind of test as a litmus test for party loyalty in the whig party. we'll see there's some dangerous consequences and bad consequences that come from that. all right. but let's step back for a minute here, analyze who supported the party and why. excuse me, who supported the compromise and why. it's difficult to determine since the various measures were all voted upon separately and different voting alliances supported each measure. thus, not unlike clay's earlier missouri compromise, the compromise of 1850, as we call

it, is really more of an intersectional truce than it is a genuine compromise, you know, where everyone is sort of giving a little bit. it's really more of a time-out or a truce. basically, though, one can generalize the attitudes regarding the compromise in this way, as you can see on our chart he here. you can see that folks from -- whoops. folks from -- let's go back, the -- folks from the north, whigs from the north tend to be anti-compromise, democrats from the north like steven douglas who champions it, he's the one whose parliamentary skills get it through congress, they tend to be pro-compromise. in the south whigs tend to be pro-compromise, democrats on the other hand tend to be anti-compromise. now, i want to pause for a second and analyze what's going on because this is really important. maybe i'll throw it open as a question.

what's going on? how do you interpret this chart? what's happening to the second party system? i'll let you chew on that for a minute. what's happening to the second party system and what is this chart tell us as far as what's happening to it? what's going on? >> planning to -- >> i think a man is going to come to you here. go ahead. >> the second party system is really splitting amongst itself. it's not really functioning as a second party system. >> as a national -- >> as a national second party system. the whig party is actually splitting into almost two parties and the democrats are almost splitting into two parties so the two-party system is really collapsing on itself on a national level. >> yes, exactly. we're really move ago well from a well integrated national party system and so what this is evidence of is the beginnings of a sectional realignment.

all right. as we move away from the second party system or i should say as the second party system begins to collapse, you get the emergence of something new, still sort of taking shape, taking form. we haven't seen what form it's going to take yet but you get a sectional realignment, in other words, it seems to be more important what part of the country you come from than what political party you're affiliated with. however, having said that, okay, that's a good point. but having said that, notice within the regions what's going on. so, for example, within the north, ignore the south for a minute. within the north, what's going on? in terms of the distinctive positions of the two parties. remember we talked about it in the 1848 election and said it was kind of interesting how in those days the national parties could really rung a candidate two different ways, could run

him one way in the south and one in another rather different way in the north. but what's going on within the regions, within the sections, within the north, for example. what's happening? how are the parties trying to deal with this hot potato -- political hot potato of slavery's expansion? within the north, you've got what? what's happen? yes, rick? >> the whigs are opposed to the expansion of slavery while the democrats are open to the possibility of it. >> right. the democrats taking, of course, that squatter's sovereignty, popular sovereignty approach. yeah, notice within the regions, you still have a choice. you see, a vital and vibrant two-party system, in part, is

built on the idea of giving people real choices, right? so within the second, you still have got a choice there, right, within the north you've still got the whigs taking a different position from the democrats. and for that matter in the south, right, the whigs are taking a different position from the democrats. now, i think the writing is on the wall that this is not a good thing in the long run for a national -- for a well integrated national two-party system. but you can see the parties trying to come to terps with this, trying to deal with this very difficult issue. okay, well, let's move ahead. so note that within the sections, the parties are still able to take different positions regarding the compromise issue, but clearly unified national parties are in serious trouble here. a sectional realignment appears to have begun. all right. but arguably the most important -- the single most important element that comes out

of the compromise of 1850 is this tough new federal fugitive slave law. in the north whigs denounce the compromise as a democratic document especially obnoxious because of this controversial fugitive slave law. what exactly does this mean? it made it illegal, it made it a federal offense to help escaped slave, to help fugitive slaves or federal offense to refuse to cooperate with federal officials who were responsible for tracking them down and returning them to their masters. this would produce a storm of controversy in the north. a lot of opposition in the north where most people were outraged by this feature of the compromise. and we should emphasize this point, remember, of course, as we said a couple lectures ago we were talking about the abolitionist movement, of course, most northerners are not abolitionists, but they don't

like this idea of the federal government intervening in state affairs in this way. they don't like local officials having to go along with federal slave catchers. so many people who are not by any mean, many northerners who are not by any means abolitionists are concerned about this. and you can say in some respects the compromise of 1850 did what abolitionists had failed to do thus far, that is, it really alarmed northerners regarding the slavery issue. okay, and there's a lot of fallout from that as we'll see. you can see boston, warning boston's significant free black population that they needed to be concerned. they needed to be worried and careful about being kidnapped.

all right, for several reasons the compromise would prove to be unhealthy for the second-party system. there were those that favored the compromise as the definitive endless slavery extension debate. remember i noted already how now once vice president now president fillmore wanted to enforce loyalty to the compromise within the whig party. to use it as a kind of litmus test. just as northern democrats wanted support for the compromise also to be a test of party loyalty. but, but this had all sorts of bad consequences. if this agreement was enforced so let's say let's enforce the support for the compromise of 1850 as a kind of sign of party loyalty, if that happened, the two major parties then would not disagree on this issue.

remember we said that one of the key features of a vital and vibrant two-party system is to really have different positions, distinctive positions on issues. especially issues that americans that most americans cared a lot about. well, if the agreement was enforced in this way the two major party was have consensus over this issue. some politicians thought that was okay. they viewed the slavery extension issue or the slavery question in general as too difficult, as too controversial, you know, as a political hot potato that they simply couldn't handle and they thought that new issues, perhaps maybe even new parties would emerge once the compromise had been universally accepted. well, as we'll see, the issues don't go away, new parties do emerge. the question remains, what if the two major parties did agree about the finality of the compromise but voters in the north and the south remained

unhappy about its features and remained concerned about the larger issue of slavery's extension? what then would happen to the loyal constituencies of the major parties? might they grow disenchanted with the major parties go looking elsewhere for political group as dressing these concerns? you know, these concerns about slavery in a meaningful way. well, this, of course, is precisely what happened in the north in the wake of the compromise. nerd, at just the point where many northerners are starting to say, wait a minute, this is a serious issue, this does have serious political consequences, okay, i don't necessarily support black equality or immediate emancipatioemancipati worried about the political power of slave owners, especially in the national government and i'm worried about the expansion of the slave system, remember, we talked about that free soil ideology

last time that many northerners subscribed to. very voters appear to have grown steadily more disenchanted and began to gravitate to the call of third parties. in the north, there was a free soil party that had run back in 1848. it was gathering some momentum. and was attracting the support of some individuals, former democrats like david wilmont of pennsylvaniaary others and, of course, we saw earlier the parties had been able sometimes to handle the slavery extension issue but now nationally enforced agreement on that issue denied them the issue at about the same time that both northerners and southerners were increasingly fearing threats to the survival of the republic arising from that very question. okay.

let's talk a little more about what happened between 1850, the passage of the compromise, 18 50shgs and, of course, we have in the presidential election cycle 1852 coming up and how are the two major political parties going to handle that? how are they going to handle 1852? that's the situation as the presidential contest approaches of 1852. both major parties were in serious trouble in most states with the whigs disintegrating especially rapidly in the deep south. in the south you see especially in some state, the deep south, you see the traditional parties falling apart and the emergence of a kind of states' right party, of a kind of southern rights party emerging, it takes on different names and different states in the deep south and then in some cases a union is party sometimes made up of

former whigs, but definitely the second-party system is in serious shape in many southern states by 1851, 1852. so you could say that the presidential contest of 1852 was only another nail in the coffin of the second-party system. the whigs were in a particularly tight spot as a result of erosion for support of the party at the national level. here a critical factor was immigration. this is something we haven't talked too much about for awhile. but it's something that has serious political consequences for the whigs and especially for how they handle for how they handle the question of immigrant voting, immigrant support. the immigrant population especially roman catholic immigrants had grown by leaps and bounds during the 1840s and most of them were courted by the democratic party. first of all, we should pause

and note just how large a group we're talking about here. people t lot about illegal immigration today but look at these numbers, it's really quite remarkable. 3 million foreigners came to the u.s. between 1846 and 1854. 3 million. now, how does that compare in terms of total population? that constituties 14.5% of the 1845 population. so those are huge numbers. obviously that's going to be viewed especially by native born evangelical protestants with some alarm. they're going to be alarmed by this influx of catholics and as we shall see they're going to organize politically to meet this perceived threat. in a couple of minutes i'll talk about how they organize politically, first, in these secret fraternal organizations, ultimately in a national political party called the american party.