like? legend has it he said it looks like the saucer under the teacup and the tea is going to slosh out and cool off and it wouldn't happen quickly. the senate was so slow in the early part of our country, people didn't want to serve. they'd rather be in the house where the action was. so i think the senate has kind of been the brakes against the heat of the moment. against overreacting to things. for most of our history. and it was employed back in the 19th century as well. there was no way to cut it off until the world war i period. good question, kurt. guess we're through. next on american history tv, author fergus bordewich talks about the two generations of senators who dominated the great

debate. he focuses on henry clay, stephen douglas and the impact of slavery on the compromise that preserved the union. the new york historical society and the bryant park host this event. it is just under 90 minutes. >> can you hear me? good evening. thank you, paul, and we're delighted at the new york historical society to partner with the bryant park organization and oxford on this exciting series. this will be followed by a question and answer session and a book signing. i'm really delighted this evening to welcome author and historian fergus m. bordewich. he's the author of six nonfiction books and he's published an illustrated children's book and wrote the

scripts for mr. jefferson's university. he's a regular contributor to smithsonian magazine. and his articles have appeared in many magazines and newspapers including the "new york times," the "wall street journal," and american heritage. his new book, "america's great debate" e mores -- explores the way that slavery distorted american democracy in the years leading up to the civil war. david levering lewis is one of the most distinguished historians of the civil rights movement. he's the jillious silver professor and professor of history at new york university and a recipient of the national humanities medal which was conferred by president barack obama in 2009. he's the author of many books including "king, a critical biography" which is an exploration of the life of dr.

martin luther king jr. and a two-part biography of w.e.b. device, which earned him two pulitzer prizes in biography. i'm very proud to welcome both of them back to a new york historical society sponsored evening. they are great favorites with us, and i'm delighted to ask them to begin their conversation. thank you. >> fergus, what a cast of characters your book has. the familiar ones, thomas hart bennett, perhaps not so familiar. william stewart, william seward, not so familiar, but of great importance at the time. but clay and calhoun and webster and you catch these men at what must be the epitome of their

public lives and moment in american history. 1850, the great debate and the compromise that preserved the union and we follow this debate some nine or ten months i think of a thousand pages of discourse and expaciation and debate and god knows how many votes and finally in september thanks to the wizardry of stephen a. douglas we have a compromise that not even henry clay had the alchemy, the political alchemy to produce. well, all of this was

necessitated i suppose -- posited by the regime crisis of 1850 coming from america's first imperial venture. this is when we've become an empire and we haven't stopped since. the mexican-american war of 1846-48. as i read these debates swirling around the dividends and consequences of that mexican-american war, i thought i'd ask you this question. is it mischievous, counterfactual that nonetheless i think useful. would the topic of your book have been unnecessary if the whig party headed by henry clay had won the election of 1844? you cite historian gary

cornblitz's counterfactualization of that, of a different outcome in 1844. henry clay, president, not james polk. and a very different scenario. well, before asking you to answer that question, would you remind us of the national real estate options presented at the conclusion of america's first imperial war? what did the treaty of guadelupe actually give us? >> i'm happy to get to the hypothetical that you posed, but to answer the perhaps larger question of what this war meant and indeed it was the country's first openly and eagerly imperial war, the creation of an american empire was part of the warp and whiff of the language

at the time. americans by and large though not without exception were proud to march off to earn an empire on the battlefield by marching into mexico. what we acquired, what the nation acquired of course was virtually all the rest of the continent. as you know, from the western edge of the louisiana purchase to the pacific ocean including all of the giant new mexico territory which encompassed far more than the present day state of new mexico. and significantly california. just on the cusp of the discovery of gold in california. and already without gold stirred into the political mix here, the question -- the country faced the question, well what was this going to become? this vast largely terra

incognita, would states be formed there, would they be freed or slaves because because slavery infected every question bearing on the expansion of the united states and to put this in context of course many additional imperial ideas circulating, ranging from the conquest of chunks of canada, the acquisition of cuba, which could form one or two new slave states to compensate for free states that might be carved out of the western territory. or perhaps a second mexican war that would incorporate yet more of mexico into the united states. so the country faced huge questions about what it was going to be. what was going to be the political nature of this vast

western territory. and to come to your teasing question about the outcome of the election of 1844 and henry clay, henry clay for those who may not be quite as immersed in him as you and i have been at one time or another, clay was a -- was probably after webster regarded as the most compelling and charismatic orator of his day, founder of the whig party. a man who inspired an intensity of emotion both enthusiasm and among his enemies contempt. he was so charismatic that there was kind of a cult of kissing henry clay. women swarmed after him and competed with each other to kiss him as many times as possible or to snip bits of his hair when he

wasn't looking. but at any rate, here was clay at the -- one could say the apogee of his career or at least the great final phase of his career. he had aspired to be president for decades. >> having given us of course the missouri compromise. >> and indeed also crafting the compromise that terminated the nullification crisis of the 1830s. so clay had in fact been in retirement before 1850 for a while and was called back on to the stage to craft yet this third compromise. clay hoped to be the whig nominee in 1844. it's been argued by gary cornblith that you mentioned that there would have been no mexican war. clay opposed the mexican war, though his son was to die in it on one of the battlefields of the war.

with clay as president, would the nation have expanded all the way to the pacific? would california ever have become part of the united states? these are open questions. what do i think personally, i think the imperatives of expansion and the desire for empire, american ambitions transcended the personality of any one man and i think clay's politics might have held -- clay might have kept his finger in the dike a bit longer, but i don't think that the on rushing empire would have stopped. >> so then the will not proviso is the element that will make this disposition of real estate really incomparably difficult and challenging. who that proviso of willmott,

rather shambling and stumble bum as you described him, just who proposed that any of the territory exceeded to the united states from the mexican war would be based on popular sovereignty. and that slavery would be absent from that territory. and this really fueled the controversy from almost the get go, didn't it? >> yes, it did. the willmott proviso was probably one of those -- those items of american history that most high school students forget instantly as soon as they have gotten through the exam. but indeed it was the pivot -- one of the -- certainly a pivot on which the crisis of 1850 began to turn. it predated 1850 by a couple of

years. but it meant that every time the discussion of statehood for any western territory came before congress there would be a bitter -- not to say violent, increasingly violent collision between demographically increasing northern forces that wanted to preclude the westward expansion of slavery. and increasingly fierce and in succession minded defenders of slavery who by the late 1840s were insisting that slavery by and large is nothing to be embarrassed about. but rather -- but rather an essential part of the american dream and to deprive any americans of the right, both to own slaves and to carry slavery where any slave master pleased

was to deprive him of his essential rights as an american. this came to a head of course with the application of californians to enter the state as a free state. why did that precipitate a crisis, because at that point in 1850 free states or representatives of free state held an ever enlarging majority in the house of representatives, but in the senate 15 slave states were balanced against 15 free states. the admission of california as a free state would tip the balance and southerners feared with good reason permanently. because they could see that if settlers in the west by and large were allowed to choose whether to be slave or free, very few would make their states slave states. california made the decision imperative because gold had been discovered. 200,000 settlers moved from the

east coast or from the eastern states to california in the space of barely a year, far, far, far more people than the law required to be present to form a state. so willy-nilly california was going to come into the union. how was it going to come? >> so that's the challenge of henry clay then who in january delivers his first address on this roiling question and you paint a picture of such a tenseness, such drama i think of the guardians of the senate had to bar the doors against nabobs who would come from afar, wanting to see this spectacle. this was the television drama of its day.

and when quiet is restored, clay rises and he makes three proposals or rather i'm sorry, he proposes eight resolutions, rather complicated. but the upshot of them would have been that there would have been to satisfy the south a prohibition on congress having anything to say about the constitution of these states from the point of view of the institution of slavery that there would be a settlement of the border of texas finally with mexico, the rio grande, that there would be compensation to new mexico for the properties that it had lost to texas as the -- as the map was redrawn.

that there would be -- and this seemed to be not a great issue at the moment a really effective fugitive slave law so that the property of southerners that migrated to the north and elsewhere on the underground railroad that you have described so well, that filtration of property through the years would cease because the federal government would assure that the apprehension of these vagabonds and these escapees would take place and there would be a return of the escapees and then finally the guarantee that congress would never attempt to prohibit the slave trade within the slave holding states. well, that seemed for a moment i

gather to satisfy enough people that there seemed to be a compromise within reach that week. but i gather by the end of the week as people fought about it, as the details were scrutinized carefully, it began to be more and more difficult to press this. but on the 5th of march, he stood again and this time with all the eloquence that you capture he -- he expaceuated on these resolutions. well, you say -- you ask, you say how on earth -- how on earth did they do it? how did they make the paralyzed system finally work if we'll jump ahead to what actually did work. i want to read if i may the

prose that applies to that question. you say, in your preface, the poll tested, spin doctored and grammatically tested conversation is pathetic and often incoherent by compare schblts it can be no surprise that many americans have lost interest in politics who have forgotten how much can be accomplished by the persuasive power of well-crafted english. in 1850, senators and congressmen who more often than not lacked college education spoke from the barest of notes or none at all. for hours on end and were confident that their colleagues and the public would understand them. in speeches that were peppered with allusions to shakespeare

and british classical law. men who believed in slavery said so, as those who hated it. no matter how much odium the words attracted by listening in on the debate of 1850, we can learn much not only about the american thought about what americans thought about their new empire, about the profound ways in which slavery warped our political system and about the creative craft of compromise but also about how to talk politics to each other so that we actually listened. i read this as i had just listened to a talking head program about the gridlock in

our congress. and i thought, is it really true that if salons have coe jensie and eloquence and candor they can deliver us from stasis and paralysis and warp that makes negotiated settlements possible? so i really wanted to read what happened with clay and douglas and the compromise. what was the compromise? and then i'll ask after you tell us what the compromise, what we might think of it. >> okay. well, first, just a word or two to kind of create the atmosphere in which this was taking place. it's impossible to exaggerate the sense of crisis that pervaded the nation at large,

taverns, churches, crossroads, villages, city, every class of americans and of course congress itself on the cusp of this great ten-month long debate in 1850. there was a perception -- a very widespread perception that the country was about to crack apart as it did in 1861. civil war seemed eminent. warfare, an invasion of the south by the north or vice versa. and newspapers predicted that there would be blood on the floors of congress itself any day. and indeed, in one instance there practically was when senator henry foote pulled a horse pistol on thomas hart benton on the floor of the senate and threatened to blow his head off.

of course, i was talking to somebody about this not long ago who said, well, if you'd listen to thomas hart benton for ten months you'd might want to do the same thing. it was unkind. >> might i add that senator foote was also a bloviater. i think we're going to lose our president zachary taylor because on july 4th of 1850, foote is going to give the july 4th oration which will go on and on under a sun hotter than today and then the president will day of sunstroke. >> so the compromise itself -- so bear in mind this atmosphere of terrible crisis. you're familiar with the sense of the crisis of 1861. it was the same in 1850. people expected the country to break any time. and break not necessarily just into two parts.

a southern confederacy and the remainder of the union. but perhaps into three or four, because once secession had begun, it would be established as a precedent. on the floor of congress, fearful congressmen and senators are talking about the near inevitability of a pacific confederacy. of a northern -- a northern midwestern confederacy. of new england going its own way. this is the fear that pervades people. this is what clay is addressing when he stands up in the senate as david has described him. and clay has a profound faith in the power of pervasive political argument, and he is indeed pervasive. his speeches are magnificent. they're literature. they rise sometimes to the level of art as many of these speeches by webster and many of the less well known men of the moment did

as well. so he believes in the power of persuasion and he believes that by persuading other members of the senate and bear in mind the same debate is taking place in the house of representatives, although we're dwelling primarily in the senate that he can win enough people from the radical fringes. that means the left and the right of the time. that means from amongst abolitionists who oppose any kind of compromise with the south and from amongst southern nationalists who oppose any kind of compromise of -- that would undermine their right in their minds to enslave other people and to carry slavery to -- as far as they wish. and this -- does clay succeed? you have outlined his various

proposals. and these are the core of the compromise. clay comes into the senate with the idea in his mind, his capascious mind, it looks like it's stuffed with wonderful ideas and he is -- he's determined to craft a compromise that will answer all of the country's anxieties about slavery, not just the admission of california, not just a resolution of this extremely dangerous and contentious texas border conflict. it was texas that got the payoff, rather than in new mexico. it was texas' claim because texas was financially under water and was looking for a federal handout. >> i stand corrected. >> and it would be texas' payoff

for not invading the new mexico territory on behalf of the rest of the slave-owning south. texas is mustering an army of texas rangers ready to march on santa fe and had there been a civil war in 1850, the first shots wouldn't have been in charleston harbor, but in santa fe, because they were prepared to fight the texas troops if they passed the territory line. so clay understands -- as many do that slavery is going to bring on a war unless it's -- unless the rush to war is halted. so he's trying to address the concerns of the north, concerns of the south. by giving a piece in his view to each part of the country. whether those pieces are fairly shared out in the end is a subject of very lively scholarly

debate. did his persuasion work? no, clay did not accomplish the compromise that he believed over months and months and months of contentious, exhausting debate that goes into the summer in washington, 100-degree heat day after day, clay is so brutal in his handling of the senate. he's in effect the floor leader during this debate. that he refuses to allow a recess even to take up the filthy tobacco stained, smelly carpets or to have the curtains cleaned. senators are begging him pathetically to have this done, but he's pushing, pushing,

pushing. and in the end he can't do it because he can't poach his persuasiveness. can't poach enough -- in fact, any people from either the radical end of the political spectrum. >> at some point, does it not happen though that clay had initially thought that each element could be voted on, but that along the way senator fo e foote, a mississippi unionist and a curious man who will end up opposing secession in 1860, he thought he could do clay a favor and bundle all the elements together in an omnibus bill. it's that omnibus bill that clay now has to argue in ways that he hadn't played to. and he will argue and argue and argue until i think july 22nd when it fails. so the whole thing crashes. so the possibility of compromise would seem to be precluded.

>> yes, so one might ask, why did clay do this? you're quite right. clay initially did not set out to bundle all of these ideas in the single bill. his initial notion was to argue them one after another. so why did he change his mind? and why did he take on board a proposal by henry s. foote, largely forgotten to history, although a very colorful individual in his own right, in addition to his horse pistol. he was famous for challenging people to duels and he got into a fistfight with his rival. mississippi rival, jefferson davis at one point. why? because clay needed to bring somebody on board from the deep south who could bring other -- he hoped, other senators belonging to the deep south

slave owning states and foote was an ardent defender of slavery and at the same time, an ardent unionist. i mean, these men existed at that moment. in the end, foote really -- he's such a contentious, irritating individual. he's -- his personalities are -- like i said, an apoplectic elf. sort of imagine david sedaris in 1850 wearing black broad cloth with a horse pistol. but anyway, it doesn't work. yes, he's saddled with foote's omnibus bill. the first use incidentally or at least popularization of the term omnibus to apply to legislation is this bill. so finally, as david just

observed, the omnibus crashes and newspapers reported it as the wreck of the omnibus. >> lots is going on outside the senate chamber actually. and you retrieve some historical doings that i think really arcane these days be to read them is to say my goodness, gracious, what was going on? while these debates were happening in the senate, we have a curious man who is familiar to us because we live near his birth place, don't we? in rynebeck, new york. john quickman, the rapidly -- the rabidly slave holding governor of mississippi, a yankee who migrated to

mississippi and reinvented himself. in the process of reinvention he displayed great valor at the -- at the battle that gave the united states the victory ultimately and the mexican-american war. he reached a generalship there and then he becomes mississippi governor. he decides that given all this bloviatation in washington, the south needs to look after itself in rather adventuresome ways and we have some 550 men who are organized under quickman and a cub cub cuban emigre and what is the story there? >> i was so enthralled on this, i need another 50 pages in the

book because it deserves extended treatment on its own. this is the first american invasion of cuba which occurred in the midst of the debate, while the debate is taking place in washington. this force -- it's the bay of pigs in 1850. all of them toged out in bright red shirts and bandanas, the uniforms for the invasion. fully expecting to be met by a huge popular uprising pro slavery, pro american uprising in cuba that will welcome them, strew roses on their path all the way to havana. john quickman expects to become the governor, but he means dictator of cuba with a view of

cuba being brought into the united states as one or two slave states and this will persist beyond this particular expedition. as i said it's the bay of pigs. there's no popular uprising. there's a battle, but the americans are pretty nearly driven back into the water, reboard their steamships and high tail it to key west, florida. chased at a distance of just a few hundred yards by a spanish warship, straight into key west harbor. but this is part of the same atmosphere of crisis. >> well, in nashville, we have the anticipation of this secessionist conference of congresses that we'll have later in nashville, represented by maybe some nine i think of the confederate states there. so that is serious business.

articulating reasons for leaving, exiting the union. >> yeah. i think it's worth pointing out that the south -- the leaders -- political leaders of the south have already by 1850 in large numbers, not universally, but in large numbers already have arrived at a belief that secession is both desirable and probably inevitable. john calhoun, the grandfather of southern nationalism who will die also in the midst of this debate, not quite on the floor, but across the street from the senate. it's his last gasp. clay and webster will die not long afterwards. zachary taylor as you mentioned the president dies in the midst of this debate as well. but one of the truths that was

brought home to me in the course of researching this book was that spiritually if you like psychologically, mentally, most of the southern leadership had already embraced the idea of secession. they had seceded in their minds already. they were ready to go. now, that didn't occur because the compromise was crafted and secession was postponed. jefferson davis who is the heir apparent and indeed steps into the leadership position once calhoun is gone, apologists for davis have frequently said he didn't really believe in secession. he regarded it as a tragedy. you will hear him stating again and again on the floor of the senate in 1850 that it's pretty nearly the only option after the south. if there should be secession and

there's a confederate states of america, he would be available to lead it. 1850. he's made it perfectly clear. >> so how do we then rethread this? how do we pull this all together? it seems that we have fragments on the floor of the senate we need to gather them together. weave them into something viable that will become a compromise. who on earth does this and how? >> the man who pulls it all together is both the youngest men in the senate and the shortest man in the senate. i have the great fondness for short politicians. a certain affinity. but this is stephen a. douglas who you all know from the lincoln douglas debates and as the democratic candidate against lincoln in 1860. but that was the climax of stephen a. douglas' career. stephen a. douglas was widely

regarded as an almost inevitable president around 1850, a dyna c dynamic, brilliant illinois politician as i said. he was only 35 i believe at the time of this debate. and he was widely regarded as one of the most skilled strategists and tacticians in the senate and is writing the issue of popular sovereignty. the right of any citizens in if i territory to decide for themselves whether to be slave or free. he's riding this he believes to the white house. clay is exhausted, he's got tuberculosis. he's physically broken by the many months of debate. he can't keep it up any longer. he leaves washington, goes to new port, rhode island, to go swimming which is his favorite

form of therapy and relaxation. preceded by women clipping his hair and snatching kisses as he passes through new york and philadelphia. he's 72 years old at the time. stephen a. douglas steps into the arena and here's clay. the founder of the whig party. here's douglas who is mr. democrat, mr. western democrat. pulls apart many of the issues of the day, but almost welded at the hip on the necessity of crafting compromise. now, clay's persuasiveness hasn't all gone for naught. that's to say he has laid out the issues that everybody agrees have to be addressed. and there is a widespread feeling that if there's a solution that lies in the proposals that clay has

articulated. what douglas does is count the numbers, do the math. it's to do the math in a completely different way. he has no illusions at this point that a great consensus omnibus can be enacted. >> so these are deals that are going to be wielded? >> deals are being wielded in the corridors of the senate and in particularly in douglas' favorite hangout which is an eatery literally known as the hole in the wall. just off the senate floor. where senators could anyone and sip and -- could nip and sip and you have to imagine douglas, who was rather johnsonian in the lyndon sense in his way of -- a very short guy as said, but his

arm would sort of creep around another senator's shoulders until the man was practically in douglas' face and douglas was making him promises and blandishments. >> so we have a robert carew and his cloakroom in the previous -- >> yeah this is what's happening. to cut to the chase here, what douglas succeeds in doing is crafting seven different coalitions to pass several -- seven different pieces of legislation, which were all the key components of clay's compromise. but with a different mathematical formula for each one. for example, to pick the most obvious ones, california's brought in as a free state with support from abolitionists and

free soil northerners and not a single deep south vote. by the same token, the draconian fugitive slave law which one can argue is perhaps the single -- is the piece of this compromise that has the greatest immediate impact by having a terrifically alienating impact around the north. i don't know if we might address that in a moment or two. the fugitive slave law, very, very harsh law is passed without a single antislavery vote. but with a solid -- but with solid southern backing. and different configurations pass different pieces. so this is douglas' triumph. it is a triumph that very much resembles lyndon johnson's in the 20th century. >> your reviewer in the sunday

times, richard rukeyser says this. the compromise of 1850 did not resolve the underlying intransigence of the south, it did not even try, for the task could not be accomplished by traditional horse trading. i gather what rukeyser is saying is that this delayed the inevitable. the irrepressible conflict stewart's words were irrepressible. what did it really accomplish then? delay? it fudged over issues, but it also actually accelerated the inevitable, didn't it, because of the one element, you said we might look at it a bit and that

was the fugitive slave law which everybody thought not a good thing to do. but like say the immigration act of 1965 in the united states, something that would have created a real consequence. it was electric though, wasn't it? >> yes. let's take the bigger question first and then -- and then bore in on the fugitive slave law. so what did -- what did this compromise mean? how much did it really matter? had this compromise not been formed and enacted in 1850 there would have been secession and civil war in 1850. this was a war that in 1850 the north would not have won because it wasn't prepared to fight a war. the deep south was ready to go out. it's perfectly clear that the

core states of what became the confederacy were ready to go in 1850. they were motivated. they were arming themselves and they were ready to act decisively. there was none of the determination to confront that politically or militarily that you found in the north, finally by 1861. millard fillmore a new yorker from buffalo was not abraham lincoln. although he was a more interesting politician and president and very deft in this particular year. more than he's generally given credit for. but he was no abraham lincoln and he would not have taken the united states -- what remained of the united states to war. could the u.s. have won it had it tried to fight the civil war? i doubt it. it was not militarizing in the same way. as the south was. so by postponing the

irrepressible conflict by a decade, it became a war that the united states -- the north could actually win and of course as we know did win. that makes all the difference in the world. had compromise not been brokered in 1850, this country would have fractured once and quite possibly more than once as i said earlier had secession been established as a precedent. how did the fugitive slave law -- i'm sorry, the other question. >> perhaps i would like to interpose this. okay, we -- by a decade, 11 years, but is that so? in 1850 we have the compromise. it might have held for 15 or 20 years but for an abrogation of the compromise by the man who put it together, stephen a. douglas with the kansas-nebraska bill. what's going on here?

>> okay, let's look at what happened between 1850 and 1860. several things happened. let me start with the fugitive slave law because i want to talk about and i think -- i think its importance can't be underestimated. this was a nasty law. it was not the first fugitive slave law. >> we have one in the constitution. >> yes. it was tightened in 1793. and southerners demanded that it be tightened yet again by 1850. wildly exaggerating the impact of the underground railroad in the deep south. the underground railroad didn't reach very deeply into the south, but southerners were determined to shut down the anti-slavery movement and shut down what it believed -- what they believed was the reach of abolitionism into the south. in short, the bill provided for extremely harsh punishments of

anybody, white, black, who assisted in the escape of a fugitive. people were punished under it. they were punished harshly. what white northerners saw who might have been nominally anti-slavely but didn't care a great deal about black americans in the deep south so long as slavery remained in the deep south, cared a lot when the slave power reached its own communities and plucked either self-emancipation slaves out of their communities or punished farmers who did nothing but what most northerners regarded as a charitable act by assisting fugitives. in addition the fugitive slave law sent thousands of fugitives into northern communities where for the first time ordinary,

white northerners encountered people who had been enslaved and many were radicalized by the experience. so the fugitive slave law had a decade long effect of radicalizing white northerners and bringing many to the point where they were willing to fight slavery which they saw as increasingly encroaching on their own cherished freedoms. yes, stephen a. douglas is more ambitious for the presidency and more ambitious for the leadership of the democratic party. than he is consistent in his defense of the compromise that he brokered in 1850. and yes, it's -- the compromise or that part of it that relates to the settling of the west is in effect abrogated in 1854. kansas-nebraska act which enables slavery -- in fact to be carried into -- in principle in any territory in the west that

principle is later affirmed by the dred scott decision. which affirms that slaves and black mens basically have no rights that need to be respected because they're not citizens. but it's also -- it supporters the principle that a slave is a slave anywhere and that mr. scott, mr. dred scott was not emancipated by the fact that he lived for a considerable length of time with his owner in the free state of wisconsin. finally, you have as an outcome of the kansas/nebraska act a civil war or the first battle of of the civil war, some would say in kansas. john brown, increasingly

radicalization, both north and south. >> quick tour of the 1850s there. >> quick tour of the 1850s. then perhaps we open up the floor for questions, i might just read this statement just read this statement from william seward just as all of this is being wrapped up, the compromise of 1850. seward was an interesting man. he truly was a civil libertarian. truly a person who believed that the rights of african-americans were of concern. and this is what he said, "i think it's wrong to hold men in bondage at any time and under any circumstances, and i think it right and just, therefore, to abolish slavery when we have the power at any time, at all times, under any circumstances. if the presence is not the right time, then there must be or there must have been some other time, and that must be a time that has already passed or time

yet to come. well, sir, slavery has existed here under the sarvenction of congress for 50 years undisturbed. the right time, then, has not passed. it must, therefore, be a future time. will the gentlemen oblige me and the country by telling us how far in the future the right time lies?" he also confected a construction or interpindication of the constitution which -- interpretation of the constitution which said there is a higher power than the constitution, of course, that felt like a lead balloon in the chamber of the senate. it seems to me he was quite precipient of the fragility of the compromise. >> a word about seward. i think that's the perfect note on which to bring this part of the discussion to an end because

seward is the most modern man in the senate. we head as david did seward's words in 1850. he's speaking to us. we're hearing ourselves when we hear seward. seward talks about civil rights. he talks about human rights. and he understands these things in the way that we do today. he could walk in here, he'd be sitting in the back of the room, he'd fit right in. he'd know what we're all talking about and what our politics of the 21st century is about when we talk about human and civil rights. and he is a lone, fierce voice on the floor of the senate in 1850. and in a way, he is the kind of unspoken hero, the quiet hero of this debate. >> he alludes to lincoln in the presidential competition, but he will be lincoln's indispensable counselor throughout the lincoln

administration. well, i think we have to accept questions because they are about to stampede with them. >> i'm curious, what did john calhoun sound like? is there any analogous contemporary politician? because seward sounded great, but i don't know what calhoun sounded like. >> well, he sounded like a guy from up-country south carolina. clemson university sits on his property, if you've ever been there. his house is there. it's an interesting visit. he was educated in the law in connecticut. he was an unusual man. he's not likeable.

frankly, it's -- for me, it was a struggle to try to get kloos to calhoun as it was for his contemporaries. he was not an approachable man. he was a very cold individual. he was very cerebral, and somewhat disparagingly, some of his southern contemporaries said he's as cold as a yankee. >> hofstadter said he had the mark of the master class, although he had a different prediction of the outcome of the dialect dialectic. he was sort of cadaverous, wasn't he? a dry orality. indeed, harsh, harsh. >> he was not an orater. he was possibly the most intellectual senator of that period. he did a lot of thinking. he had a -- all sorts of complex

ideas about the way society worked, and he was very wonkish if you like. but he couldn't -- he couldn't craft a vivid oratory the way the others did. >> thanks a lot. that was just fascinating. as you sort of implied at the end, we now have a lot of difficulty i think appreciating the mindset of people who think that slavery is remotely acceptable, let alone desirable. so why -- you mentioned that all the new territories were obviously going come in as free states if they were left to their own devices. why -- clearly back then people,

a lot of people thought slavery was, i guess, okay or something. why were they all going to come in as free states? and if it was because a lot of people actually didn't think slavery was okay, what would have happened if we hadn't had a civil war? i mean, would it have just sort of died out anyway without killing all those people? >> it didn't look like it demographically. it was a real growth industry. 1860, there was no indication that slavery would have petered out if left alone. indeed, we've already seen that there was a southern imperialism to match the manifest destiny of the free soilers, which would have incorporated cuba. the austin manifesto, for example, is one of the great manifestos of the next administration. the franklin pierce

administration, if anyone remembers franklin pierce. he was determined that we get cuba from spain and was secretly negotiating until wikileaks revealed what he was up to. so, no, it wouldn't have died out. and if you look at brazil, it didn't die out there either. it was abolished finally in the 1880s. and that was, i think, because it was a growing concern economically. not so -- pardon me? >> why didn't any of the new territories want to come in as slave states then? >> kansas is a little dubious, isn't it? we're not quite sure what would have happened there, certainly the split. well, there are enough people who will not benefit from that institution. mostly the immigrants coming over from ireland, mostly

workers in the north. when the planins are opened up for grub stakes, you don't want to move into these territories and compete against slaves. so quite apart from any kind of post enlightenment view that slavery was wrong, there were good economic reasons not to want to be a part of it. but then your point's a good one. and davis reminds us, doesn't he, that the unnatural institution was not slavery for most of mankind's history, it was liberty. >> i think to add to that, advocates of southern nationalism who were many and forceful had every intention of carrying slavery westward across the new mexico territory. that's what was behind the --

the punitive texan invasion of new mexico. to carry slavery all the way to the west coast. and slavery's advocates talked in this debate about the future state of -- slave state of south california. and there was every intention to settle those territories with slaves. john a. quitman is a new york renegade who went south and became one of the fiercest advocates of slavery. stated that he intended to take a thousand of his slaves to california and settle them there, except he felt he was deterred by the uncertainty of him being protected by federal law. so there was every intention to expand it. bear in mind, too, that slavery, the number of slaves was not shrinking. it was increasing from about one million in 1800 to about 4

million in 1860. and it was continuing to increase. the more slaves there were, the less political will there was regardless of economic concerns to emancipate them in the south. southerners were terrified of a knapp turner rebellion at large. they say so over and over and over again. a haiti, a reliving of what had happened in haiti at the turn of the century. there's much more to be said on this except that without the war, slavery would have -- had secession succeeded, slavery would have continued to grow. there was no sign whatsoever that it would have just died away on its own, although that argument is made by many historians. i don't think it was going that way. i think it would have found new fields conquer. >> thank you very much. very interesting.

i have a question about the senate and compromise. a couple of questions. the first one is if the filibuster rule had been in effect in 1850, would there is ever been a compromise? and are there any lessons that you could draw from your study of that debate and that moment in history and the challenges that are facing the congress and america right now with what's being called a grand bargain to reach some settlement of the issues facing us right now? >> well, those are two good, big questions. to address the filibuster one, well, in effect, filibusters were taking place in the course of this ten-month-long debate. and thomas hart benton in

particular was essentially filibustering. he was playing an independent role. benton opposed the omnibus for a variety of reasons which i don't think we should digress into at this late, late moment. fascinating character. he was from missouri, yes, he was the grandfather of the painter, by the way. from missouri, he owned slaves. he adamantly opposed the expansion of slavery westward. his daughter married john c. fremont and was an abolitionist, fascinating guy. so filibusters did occur, and they did delay the climax of the debate, and it drove clay crazy, and he said so. to attempt to draw some lessons about the present -- do you want to take that first? >> no, go ahead. i'll come along. >> okay.

i'll say parenthetically here, my wife works on capitol hill. she's the staff director of a u.s. senate committee. and this is my dinner table conversation every night. and are there lessons to be learned, let's say. is there -- i think there are some. i think the debate illuminates where we stand today. i think the analogy between the gridlock which we didn't talk about very much here, but both the house and the senate were gridlocked. the term didn't exist in 1850, but that was very much the situation. it took scores of ballots for the thousands elect a speaker, for example, in 1850. scores of ballots. an amazing feats in its own right, which i cover in the book. and the senate did nothing else in ten months but debate this.

nothing. all other business was pushed to the margins. whatever else government was supposed to do basically didn't get done except in a few -- in a hastily organized session now and again. so the analogy's not bad. okay, here are some things that seem to me pertinent. one is that in all of the deb e debate, all the great debate, great oratory of 1850, never once, never once is there a speaker no matter where he's coming from, whether it's the deepest corner of the pro-slavery south or anywhere else, no one attacks the federal governme government. and today we have a faction in

the united states where the -- the role is dismantling or damaging government itself. that was not the case in 1850. everybody shared a consensus that the american system was a good system. they all expressed pride and admiration for the government. and they claimed the founder as their patrons. jefferson davis thinks -- and calhoun think they are the embodiment of the founder's intentions. so we are dealing with an element in the present day that is -- that didn't exist in 1850. but the challenge of compromise, the challenge of compromise was the same then and now, to somehow or other find some

meeting ground between people who are violently opposed to each other's views. i mean, that's nothing new in this country. that's nothing new then, now. and the challenge of finding that meeting ground with people you basically abhor in the name a larger, greater public interest. i think there are people in washington today who were chiseling away even on the other side of the fence, the anti-government side of the fence, who are chiseling away at their -- at their hostility to compromise because they see the consequences for the united states as potentially dire. why did that compromise happen in 1850? because people were afraid of civil war. they were afraid. it wasn't -- compromise isn't pretty. it's a mess that makes everybody unhappy. there's a rather -- a rather, i

think, naive notion abroad about compromise as it being people getting together and being nice to each other. nobody's nice in the political compromise. they're beaten up on each other, and they're getting tired of it. >> 1860, the compromise failed, and the country split apart. is there something similar at this fork in the road, with this election? with a santorum who expresses views that john c. calhoun would have said, boy, i want to copy those down? the tea partiers who are very much like some of the extreme southern nationalists. and if it was race finally that made compromise impossible, is it now -- is it now -- what would it be? it would be i suppose class? and it would be the fact that

the citizenry is angry because it draws a valid impression that the leaders of power are beyond its reach, whether middle class or poor. and there's some question about what one is to do about that, and that's why you have something like occupy wall street which is an epi-phenomenon. it doesn't have anything to say except something is wrong. but this election is going to fuse the something is wrong-ness to a point that the next chapter may be one in which we really do have a center that cannot hold and, indeed, the centrifugal forces will be disastrous. >> yeah, i agree with you. i agree with that overall.

and perhaps, i think we have every reason to fear that if the political class can't find some -- some rational meeting place that the crisis will not be a war this time. it's not going to be a secession. it's going to be an economic catastrophe that will make the near miss of a few years ago look like, you know, sandbox time in kindergarten. i think that's certainly a real danger. and there are some people, tea party-influenced people, and people who are likely to add to their numbers in congress in this coming election, regardless of whether obama can be re-elected, who are so profoundly ignorant of the founding documents that they

claim to adore. so profoundly ignorant of that, so profoundly ignorant of political process, and so profoundly ignorant of how democracy actually works that they will lead us over the cliff if they have the ability to do so. i think that's an absolutely valid concern. and they were abetted by people in the leadership of the republican party. right at the top of the republican party, frankly. although as i said, i mean, there's some hope that some people that that party are going to break ranks sufficiently to prevent that from happening, though i know too much history to be a pollyana about these things, and we've often had leaders who have made catastrophic mistakes on our

behalf. i don't think we're necessarily out of the woods. much depends on how the election goes clearly. >> final question perhaps. i think we are close to -- >> i just wanted to return to the topic that this lady brought up. i always thoughts that slavery if left alone, i always thought if slavery was left alone, no civil war would ultimately implode. i always -- i always thought that the south was not heading toward the 20th century. nobody was thinking about manufacturing. i really found it funny that the cotton gin, although invented in the south, was invented by somebody from massachusetts. i mean, the southerners were the experts on cotton. if you look at the cotton gin

that was invented, it's really not that complicated. yet, they themselves couldn't create that. eli whitney was a teacher from massachusetts and tutoring somebody in the south. and he saw the problem and invented the cotton gin. so i thought the south was just not heading toward the 20th century. and eventually they would have been surrounded by freedom. i mean, mexico got rid of slavery in 1820 or approximately. and so anyway, that's -- >> well, a couple of generations of americans were educate certainly with the rather pleasant notion fostered by a school of southern historians and those who were friendly to them that slavery would have just faded away and everything would have been hunky-dory.

there's really not much basis in my opinion for believing that anymore. there is no real reason to assume either that slavery would not have perhaps adapted in ways that were not necessarily foreseen in 1861 to new economic realiti realities, although the agrarian leadership of the south certainly saw slavery's future as agrarian. and sugar in cuba, other plant, other agricultural were large-scale farming in mexico and so. on the great central valley of california, imagine it tilled by slaves. that was a vision of pro-slavery southerners. >> we had a movement, didn't we? cesar chavez i think dealing with a labor problem that

approximated in every way slavery, certainly servitude. i think it is 8:30. i don't want to be arbitrary, but yes. >> if i can, just one last question. thank you for illuminating all of those interesting figures of the 1850s and american history. i was struck by your notion of the radicalization of northern whites through the whole '50s in terms of the groundswell creating of the abolitionist movement and saying this has to end, and this has to become a war. this is our struggle. one thing i find interesting now, a parallel that may be something that's going to come in the future but is not being spoken specifically. president obama actually kind of did an executive order to kind of address it. i don't know if it's going to come back up in this political cycle. also interestingly related to the contested areas in the 1850s

is the whole notion of immigration and how that possibly can happen in terms of the radicalization of americans to say you know what, maybe this is an issue that we need to address. and i wonder if we think our current politicians can come to that moment and say, okay, this is an issue that maybe we should address, and one that is worthy of a larger debate. >> well, certainly debate, but i think when you say address, you mean the kocogency and enlightenment that would lead us toward some mitigation or soluti solution. and one would hope that since it is obviously an almost so significant that it is changing the dna of the american

structure, the country will become increasing ly hispanic, and that poses all sort of issu issues. so therefore, it should be a front burner. it's also, however, so susceptible of exploitation and division that it can be at the end of the day something that precludes any kind of prudent address. and i don't think we know yet where we'll be there. >> i think it's worth remembering that it took almost 80 years for the united states to really come to grips with the

deep distortion of the american political system caused by the concessions made to slave owners back at the constitutional convention. it took until 1861 for the country to face up to the consequences of it. and as many of us, doubtless we'd still agree, the country is still dealing with the consequences of it. these are deep issues. issues of this type are not solved neatly or quickly. and i think the route to finding a political solution to what you're talking about is going to be hard and circuitous. i don't think it will be embraced. it will continue to be a brutal political process. >> i want to thank fergus and

david levering lewis. this is an enlightening conversation. thank you, everyone, for coming. we enjoyed it very much. [ applause ] >> thank you. >> thank you. tonight on c-span3's american history tv in primetime, the start of two weeks of our series "the contenders." they ran and lost but changed political history. programs about henry clay lead off the series. we will show you a profile of the former house speaker from kentucky known as the great compromiser in the early 19th century. we'll also tour his ash land estate in lexington. senator mitch mcconnell talks about the legacy of henry clay as a member of the house and senate for over four decades. then a look at the compromise of 1850 and the impact of slavery on the compromise that preserved the union. all of this coming up on american history tv on c-span3 beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern

time. now, "the contenders." our series on key political figures who ran for president and lost but nevertheless changed political history. next, we feature former house speaker henry clay of kentucky, known as the great compromiser. the program was recorded at clay's ash land estate in lexington, kentucky, and is about 90 minutes. this 14-week series is airing at 8:00 p.m. eastern, august 1 through august 14th here on american history to have c-span3. this is a portrait of kentucky's henry clay, known to us from history books as the great compromiser. during his 49-year political career, clay served as secretary of state, speaker of the house, and as a u.s. senator. and he was a contender, making sure presidential bids