locked gates and carded gates where you would have crew members saying, no, you can't come up here now, you have to wait it forr orders. we cover that very much in detail appendix j of the book? really new stuff dealing with the problem of locked gates and so forth. as far as how the recovery process by the mckay bennett, we don't get into that at all in the book. and i am not familiar with how the treatment was between a first and second class body being recovered and third class. so i would rather not comment on that. >> i just had heard that first and second class passengers for the most part were -- the bodies were taken back into halifax and most of the steerage were buried at sea. >> there is definitely a number of steerage that were taken back as well.

not all to halifax either. but to other locations. with the new -- about it thif t where the family was. but that's one area we don't really get into. we sort of go through as i say to the point where the car pait i can't rescue and then we deal with the changes to the ship itself, to the sister ship and the other ship under construction. okay. >> sam, thank you for your time. >> you're welcome. [ applause ] each week american history tv sits in on a lecture with one of the nation's college professors. this week a look at the compromise of 1850 ands collapse of the secretaries party system

with gillis harp, a professor at 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. we'll begin as usual with a short selection of psalms. blessed are they whose ways are blameless who walk according to the law of the lord. blessed are those who keep statutes and keep him in his heart. they walk in his way. you have laid down precepts that are fully obeyed. oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying you are decreed. that's 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 whigs had taken a page out of the playbook of the -- once again had taken a

page out of the playbook in nominating a war hero. this was general zachary taylor. now we have a poster from the 1848 campaign with taylor and the immortal mill phil more. the immortal millard fillmore. the whigs under taylor 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 elected instead of zachary taylor, the whig nominee. serious internal divisions within the democratic party in new york. i think i may have talked about this before.

a lot of factionalism among the democrats in new york. factionalism. hunker group and the barn burner group. we won't get into that, but suffice to say the whigs again end up with a successful candidate with electing the president in the form of zachary taylor, but ironically again, someone who's not really a committed whig. someone who is less than a diehard whig, you know, in the clay or webster mold. taylor had often portrayed himself not as a whig candidate but as a no-party candidate, as someone who's kind of above party, and he incorrectly assumed that a broad coalition had made him president and that he owed little to the whigs per se. political historians know that's nonsense, that in fact it was the whig 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 territory. and no immediate solution was in sight. 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 him being elected in november of '48 and being sworn into office, in 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 new settlers west. amid this policy-making vacuum

sectional an him in moss cities 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 wilmot proviso. 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. some of them wanted to join the new free soil party. plus northern whigs are alarmed at the initial moves of their newly elected president in forming his cabinet. taylor skips over traditional whigs 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 formed a couple of years later here. thus, most of his cabinets were against ultra whiggery. remember, that's one of the key things presidents do. well, a little bit less today. definitely true in the mid 19th century, that is, 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's not inaugurated until 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. eventually tailor comes up with a plan regarding the mexican session. what's his plan? you can see some of it eventually takes the form 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 side stepping the whole wilmot proviso question. it's a rather dishonest move in some ways, but think about it. if you're talking about evading should we have slavery in the territories, taylor's response is, okay, we won't have territories, no debate. we'll bring these territories in immediately as states.

by the time taylor submitted the proposal to congress, most southern whigs were annoyed. they weren't interested in his proposal which their democratic opponents in the south called the wilmot proviso in substance if not in form. it's clear it would not garner any support in congress. it seemed to be dead on arrival. he didn't have sufficient support within the whig party. democrats were certainly not inclined to support the proposals of at least nominally a whig president. okay. so what happened? who steps into the power vacuum? predictably it's henry clay, right? clay, always an aspirant for the executive mansion. always someone interested in running for president. clay comes forward, the great compromiser.

remember we talked about him in the context of the missouri compromise back in 1819, 1820. clay comes forward with a 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. 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 that 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 is saying, all right, 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 wilmot proviso was not necessary there because clay believed nature would prohibit slavery from thriving. arid conditions. you're not going to have plantations there growing cotton so why needlessly antagonize, why needlessly antagonize southerners with the wilmot proviso by excluding slavery in those territories. all right. so clay, it seems, was trying to steal the administration's thunder and believed that if he could resolve the sectional debate, this would help him wrestle back control of the whig party and he is definitely interested in running for president in 1852 although as we'll see he doesn't make it. he dies before that. 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, name not that important, tries to combine the separate measures into a single omnibus bill. let's pull this altogether in one big package. that doesn't work either. he was hoping thereby to lock in 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. that's ultimately what gets passed. here's the -- here you can see what happens. here's the package.

you admit california as a free state. these other territories, you chop down the size of texas and you have these other territories. the question of a slavery, the status of slavery in those territories to be determined by popular sovereignty. makes sense because, after all, it's douglas who's proposing this and douglas is a democrat. remember democrats had since 1840, since the late 1840s had embraced this idea of popular sovereignty or what's sometimes called squatter's sovereignty. so what's the package? number one, california's admitted as a free state. popular sovereignty there to determine the status of slavery. texas is compensated for loss of territory granted to new mexico. that's number three.

you're not getting all of these down, don't worry about it. your text has them in some detail. number three and 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. that's the package. you can see it on the map here what that means. ironically these measures might not even 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. they only elect two, both of them die in office. taylor dies in office in july of 1850.

some indication that taylor might have actually vetoed the compromise. remember, taylor is succeeded by my personal favorite millard fillmore. i don't know why he's become such a brunt of jokes. maybe it's the name. i don't know. millard fillmore. he's a diehard, traditional whig. he's busy fighting free soil forces within his own party and consequently fillmore is eager to support the compromise and he signs it into law. so he's keen about getting the compromise through. in fact, as we'll see, fillmore locks onto the compromise 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.

let's step back for a minute here and analyze who supported the party and why, 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 where everyone's 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. you can see it on our chart here, you can see that folks from -- oops. folks from -- go back. 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 gets it through congress, they tend to be pro compromise. in the south whigs tend to be pro compromise. democrats tend to be anti-compromise. 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'm going to let you chew on that for a minute. what's happening to the second party system and what does this chart tell us as far as what's happening to it? what's going on? i think a man's going to come to you here. go ahead. >> the second party system is really sitting amongst itself. it's not functioning 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. the two party system is collapsing on a national level. >> exactly. we're moving away from a well integrated national party system. what this is evidence of is the beginnings of a sectional realignment. as we move away from the second party system, or as 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 exactly 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, 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 a little bit about this last time in the 1848 election. we said that it was kind of interesting how in those days the national parties could really run a candidate two different ways. could run them one way in the south and one in another, rather different way in the north. what's going on within the region, within the section? within the north for example. what's happening? how are the parties trying deal with this hot potato, you know, political hot potato of slavery's expansion? within the north you've got what? what's happening? anybody? thoughts?

random ideas? 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 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 section you've still 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's 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 sort of come to terms 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 but clearly unified national parties are in serious troubling 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 did this mean? it made it a federal offense to help fugitive slaves or a federal offense to refuse to cooperate with federal officials who were responsible for tracking them down and returning them to their master.

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. 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 means, many northerners who are not by any means abolitionists are concerned about this. and you could 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.

there's a lot of fallout from that as you'll see. you can see here's a broad side from boston warning boston has a significant free black population that they needed to be concerned, worried, careful about being kidnapped. all right. for several reasons the compromise would prove to be very unhealthy for the second party system. there were those who favored the compromise as the definitive revolution of a slavery debate. remember i noted how once vice president and now president fillmore wanted to enforce the loyalty to the compromise within the whig party. 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 this had all sorts of bad consequences. if this agreement was brought forth, let's say let's enforce the support for the compromise of 1850 as a 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 parties would 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. 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 once loyal constituencies of the major parties? might they grow disenchanted with the major parties while looking elsewhere for sew political groups that were addressing these concerns, 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. in other words, at just the point when 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 emancipation, but i'm worried about the political power of slave owners, especially in the national government. i'm worried about the expansion of the slave system. remember we talked about that free soil ideology last time that many northerners subscribe to. all right. so voters appear to have grown steadily more disenchanted with the traditional party and they 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 support of some individuals, former democrats like david wilmot of pennsylvania and others. of course, we saw earlier that the parties had been able

sometimes to handle the slavery extension issue but now a nationally enforced agreement on that question denied them the issue at about the same time that northerners and southerners were increasingly fearing threats of the survival of the republic arising from that very question. okay. let's talk a little bit more about what happens between 1850, the passage of the compromise 1850 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 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 states, the deep south, you see the traditional parties falling apart. you see the emergence of a kind of a state's rights party, of a kind of southern rights party emerging. it takes on different names in different states in the deep south. and then in some cases a unionist party sometimes made up of former whigs. definitely the second party system is in serious shape in many southern states by 1851, 1852. so you can 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 of support for the party at the national level. here a critical factor was immigration. this is something we haven't talked too much about for a while, but it's something that has serious political

consequences for the whigs and especially 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 democrat particular party. first of all, we should pause and note just how large a group we're talking about here. people talk a lot about illegal immigration. look at these numbers. 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 constitutes 14.5% of the 1845 population. so those are huge numbers. obviously that's going to be