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The Compromise of 1850 and the Secession Crisis
Contributing teacher:
Bruce Baskind
Time period: 1850–61
E-Seminar Approach
In his discussion of the crucial role of the election of 1860 in the secession crisis, Professor Eric Foner points out that Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) was easily able to capture the majority of electoral votes, even though he won only forty percent of the popular vote. This occurred because Lincoln won a solid North, including the industrializing states with the largest populations and therefore the most electoral votes. Even though the South voted solidly against Lincoln, they could not prevent his victory. This clearly convinced Southerners that they could not hope to control national politics in the foreseeable future.
Making Lincoln's ascent to the White House even more daunting to the South was the fact that he and his Republican Party had made opposition to the expansion of slavery their most important issue. Although Lincoln pledged not to interfere with slavery where it already existed, most Southerners understood that if they could not expand, their peculiar institution would be placed in jeopardy. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court's 1857 decision in the Dred Scott case, which seemed to indicate that slave owners could safely take their slaves even to a free state without fear that the slaves could go free, Southerners understood that without the protection of both federal and local laws, slavery could not exist. The decision of most of the Southern states to secede between the election of 1860 and early 1861 was based on the feeling of a majority of Southerners that their best hope for the protection of slavery and its expansion would come with the formation of a new, pro-slavery nation, the Confederate States of America.
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850), the U.S. senator from South Carolina, former vice president, and leader of the states' rights movement, understood all this, ten years before the secession crisis of 1860–61. While many Americans' hopes for the future of the Union had been buoyed by the Compromise of 1850, Calhoun concluded that the compromise would bring only temporary relief. He saw that the equilibrium of power that had existed between the North and the South during most of America's history up to then had ended by 1850 and that disunion was virtually inevitable. The incredibly acute, clear analysis of the problem put forth in his final speech to the Senate (delivered by a friend because his deteriorating health would not allow him to speak publicly) is as lucid and understandable an analysis of the cause of secession as we have, even though it predates secession by nearly a decade.
In this lesson, your students will understand that the North had come to dominate national politics. They will see why this was such a grave problem for the South. They will comprehend why the expansion of slavery was so crucial to the South's desire to preserve the institution. Because the North would long control the House of Representatives, unless the South could have at least as many votes in the Senate, the region would have to live in fear that slavery could be legislated out of existence. Thus students will understand why further compromise between the North and South had become virtually impossible by 1860. Have a look at the Crittenden Compromise Convention Simulation if you would like to spend two full days with your students on the impossibility of compromise in 1860.
Suggested Teaching Activity
Ask students to read and analyze John C. Calhoun's tirade against the Compromise of 1850. Then ask them the following discussion questions:
1. What was Calhoun's thesis?
2. To what extent did Calhoun accurately predict the circumstances of secession, nearly a decade before it occurred?
3. What would the North have had to agree to in order to satisfy Calhoun? How could the "equilibrium" have been restored?
4. What were the chances that the North would agree to restore the equilibrium?
5. Had he lived, what course of action would Calhoun have suggested for the South after Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860?
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