Why The Civil War Could Have Started In New Mexico… in 1850

00:00:10
Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. You’ve probably learned about the Compromise of 1850 in history class, but it was almost certainly glossed over in favor of the Civil War, which came a mere ten years later. We think that’s unfortunate because the story behind how the Compromise came to be says a lot about the state of America at that time. Here to tell the story is Gettysburg National Park Service Ranger John Hooptech. Take it away.

00:00:50
Speaker 2: John. Well,

00:00:53
Speaker 3: after years and years of tension, the American Civil War began in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the summer of 1850, when Texas state forces overran and attacked U.S. infantry posted there under Colonel John Monroe.

00:01:12
Speaker 2: Did anyone guess that? Good. Good.

00:01:16
Speaker 3: Of course, you know this is not true, but, but it very nearly was the case. This Civil War almost began eleven years before Fort Sumter, and if it did begin, then the most likely place was Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1850, the nation was at the edge of this union, and the issue that was tearing the country apart was slavery. There were 30 states in the country in 1850 and about 23 million people. Of those 23 million people, approximately 3.2 million were enslaved. The United States had also just trounced its neighbor to the south, Mexico. Now, as a result of the Mexican-American War, the United States grew by a staggering 40 percent, from 1.75 million square miles to 3 million square miles, getting the territories of New Mexico, Utah, and California.

00:02:18
Speaker 2: Yet, of course, ironically.

00:02:20
Speaker 3: It was this very vast acquisition of new land which very, very likely threatened to tear the nation apart. The debate, very simply stated, was whether slavery would be allowed to spread into that newly acquired land. Southerners and slaveholders in particular said yes. Slaves, they thought they felt, were property, and the Fifth Amendment says the government cannot interfere with personal property, that they should be able to take their enslaved people wherever they wanted to go. And especially into this territory. Many Southerners, of course, had fought in the Mexican War, and they were adamant that they will not be denied entry into that land.

00:03:08
Speaker 2: Many Northerners, on the other

00:03:10
Speaker 3: hand—and not just abolitionists, but many Northerners—said no. Slavery had already grown too powerful in this land of liberty; that it should not spread any further, and especially not into this territory, because Mexico had outlawed slavery here. In the 1820s, the argument between the North and South was at a fever pitch, to such a degree that there were many in this country who felt that this union was inevitable, and there were some people who thought that nothing should be done.

00:03:43
Speaker 2: Now.

00:03:43
Speaker 3: This debate was certainly nothing new in 1819, when Missouri, the first state to be organized from the Louisiana Purchase, applied for statehood into the country. Even then, the thought of admitting Missouri almost drove this nation apart. The Missouri Compromise was worked out, which settled things down for a few years, but things had become so heated during the Missouri debates that Thomas Jefferson—an aged Thomas Jefferson—famously declared that this compromise frightened him like a fire bell in the night. “I considered it at once the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.” And just as he predicted, it was only a reprieve, one which ended in a big way. In 1846, right after the nation went to war with Mexico, when Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania introduced a proviso to an appropriations bill, and that proviso said any territory—any territory—to be gained from Mexico, will not have slavery.

00:04:58
Speaker 2: That proviso said, off…

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Speaker 3: A firestorm, not only in Congress, but across the nation. Wilmot’s proviso was brought up every single year in Congress in 1846, 1847, 1848, 1849, and every single year it passed the House of Representatives.

00:05:20
Speaker 2: But not the Senate.

00:05:22
Speaker 3: And that is an important point that needs to be made. Going hand in hand with this debate over the expansion of slavery, was this very delicate balance of power in Washington, D.C. As I noted earlier, in 1850, there were 30 states, 15 North and 15 South. There were 60 senators, 30 from northern states, 30 from southern states. What happens if one more state is added? That balance of power will shift. It will shift the House. The House of Representatives was dominated by Northerners. The population of the North was much larger than it was of the South, and that would have been much bigger in the House if it were not for that three to fifth clause.

00:06:14
Speaker 2: The three-fifths…

00:06:15
Speaker 3: Clause of the Constitution gave the South 60 additional members of the House of Representatives in 1850, okay, representing their so-called constituents who were enslaved. It was in the Senate where this balance of power was threatened, and as John Calhoun—as John Calhoun said—”the day that the balance of power between the two sections of the country is destroyed is a day that will not be far removed from political revolution, anarchy, civil war, and widespread disaster.” While things were coming to a head,

00:06:55
Speaker 2: So, what can be worked out?

00:06:57
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Gettysburg National Park Service Ranger John Hooptech. It’s the civil war that almost happened before the Civil War. He describes that and describes the circumstances. We had had the Missouri Compromise right after the Louisiana Purchase, and then comes these new states after the Mexican War. And what will this do to the balance of power, particularly in the U.S. Senate? When we come back, the fateful Compromise of 1850. That story continues here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here again. Our American Stories tries to tell the stories of America’s past and present to Americans, and we want to hear your stories too. They’re some of our favorites. Send them to us. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the ‘Your Stories’ tab. Again, please go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the ‘Your Stories’ tab. And we returned to Our American Stories and the story of the Compromise of 1850. When we last left off, America was teetering on the edge of a full-blown civil war over the expansion of slavery. It was up to the Thirty-First Congress to try to solve the issues and save the country. Let’s get back to the story. Here again is Gettysburg National Park Service Ranger John Hooptech.

00:08:33
Speaker 3: There were five major issues facing the country, and each of those five had the power to tear the nation apart. Those five issues were as follows: California. Tens of thousands of people flocked to California. Why? Looking for gold, looking to strike it rich. And it was quite readily apparent that some kind of government was needed there. It was becoming like an outlawed territory. So they got together in 1849 and they wrote a constitution for their state, and in that territorial constitution, the people of California said unanimously, “We do not want slavery here.” Northerners: “Okay, that’s great.” “When could we get you into the country?” Southerners said, “What?” Ah, because that balance of power would be shifted. A second issue that was confronting the nation: New Mexico and Utah. Utah was a far way of way away from organizing, but New Mexico wasn’t. And the people of New Mexico said, “We do not want slavery to spread into this land.” Now, going hand in hand with this issue was another big-time problem, and this was the most incendiary, most potentially explosive problem of them all. Texas was the biggest state in the Union. It wanted to be bigger still; it was claiming a sizable portion of New Mexico. A fourth problem: slavery and the slave trade in the nation’s capital. The fact that there were foreign visitors arriving in the capital of this land of liberty and they could see a slave option taking place. People were repelled by that. And finally, the fifth major problem: widespread violations of that Fugitive Slave Law. Northerners were simply not following the law, hiding them, helping them to freedom. The Southerners claimed that there were 30,000 escaped slaves living in the North by 1850, worth 15 million dollars. Those were the five major issues that confronted the United States. But before anything could get done, the House of Representatives had to elect a Speaker of the House. Simple, right? It took 63 ballots before a Speaker was finally elected, and for the first and only time in American history, it was decided that a simple plurality of the vote would do, not a majority. Now that a Speaker had been elected, it was time to get the President Stott, and there is old, ‘Rough and Ready,’ Zachary Taylor—a war hero. He wrote his military heroics to the White House. He was, though, a political novice, and reportedly he had never cast a vote in his life. Many believed he was entirely wholly unqualified. Henry Clay wrote that his only qualifications for the presidency were sleeping 40 years in the woods and cultivating moss on the cows of his legs.

00:11:50
Speaker 2: Now.

00:11:51
Speaker 3: Zachary Taylor was honest, plain-spoken, and as it turned out, many underestimated him. His four decades in the uniform to his country had instilled him a pure patriotic love of country. He was stubborn, independent-minded, and he made clear from the very start that he was not going to be a mere rubber stamp for the southern slaveholders. In Congress, Southerners supported his bid for the presidency because he was, after all, a southern slaveholder. But Zachary Taylor called slavery a moral and political evil, and he was opposed to extending in his idea for solving the nation’s problems: “Let’s get California in.”

00:12:39
Speaker 2: And that was it.

00:12:41
Speaker 3: Southerners, of course, are already outraged with Taylor, and there were others in the Senate who felt that Zachary Taylor simply did not go far enough. Now, Henry Clay, he was watching with alarm all the drama playing out in the House. Now he felt that he and the Senate could come up with a compromise.

00:13:03
Speaker 2: He felt that.

00:13:03
Speaker 3: If peace is going to be restored to this country, it would be up to him, and he was ready to take the lead. He was beloved and lionized across the land as the Great Compromiser. He had taken the lead in that 1820 Missouri Compromise. Abraham Lincoln called him the bo ideal of a statesman. He was 73 years old and in failing health. But despite all of his accomplishments, the one thing that he coveted most had always eluded him, and that was the presidency. He sought the Whig Party nomination for president five times. He got it three times; he lost all three times. He lost his son killed in action in the Mexican War, fighting under Zachary Taylor at Buena Vista. He was a slave owner too, but he opposed it; and he would spend much of January working out ideas. And on January Jory 29th, to a packed Senate chamber, Henry Clay rose, and he presented a great national scheme of compromise and harmony. And his proposals were this: California will be coming into the Union without slavery. Congress shall pass no law prohibiting or allowing for slavery in New Mexico.

00:14:21
Speaker 2: Let the people there decide.

00:14:23
Speaker 3: Third, Texas will relinquish its claim on any New Mexico territory. In exchange, Texas will be given about 15 million bucks. The federal government would assume all of Texas’s public debts. Slavery would not be abolished in Washington, D.C., but the slave trade would. He called for a strengthening of the Fugitive Slave Act. And finally, Congress will make no law interfering with the slave trade between the slave states. He thought that he had reached out to both sides. The moderates loved him, and people across the United States applauded Henry Clay once more for seeking compromise. But it soon became very clear that Clay failed to appeal to the extremists on both sides. Frederick Douglass called him a “monster.” Jeremiah Clemens of Alabama stated that it called for the unconditional surrender of the South and its interests. There would be no compromise from those fierce firebrands in the South. And at the head of that contingent was John Calhoun, the most vocal and most prominent mouthpiece of southern slave owners in the country. About a month after Henry Clay made his pitch to the Senate, a very sick, feeble, frail, and haggard John Calhoun, 67 years of age, age, and dying. He entered the Senate, held up on either side by two fellow senators. One observer said he looked like he was so emaciated, pale, and cadaverous that he was a fugitive from the grave. But he went there that day to give his thoughts on the crisis. He did, he believed, speak for the South, but he couldn’t speak.

00:16:24
Speaker 2: He was too weak.

00:16:25
Speaker 3: So he gave his speech to James Mason of Virginia, and Calhoun sat there, stone-faced, haggard, a heavy black cloak over his shoulders while Mason read Calhoun’s prepared remarks. Now, Calhoun, of course, we know, had always been very serious. The joke about John Calhoun is that he attempted to write a poem only once in his life, and it began with the word “Whereas.” He was highly intelligent, a graduate of Yale, with those gaunt cheeks and a long iron-gray mane. And John Calhoun believed he was 100 percent right, 100 percent of the time. He stated that the South faced the situation; the South face was critical, and he expressed his doubt that the two sides North or South—quote—”so different and hostile,” could exist in one common Union. “The impression is now very general and is on the increase, that disunion is the only alternative left to the South. I have believed from the first that the agitation over slavery could…”

00:17:29
Speaker 2: End in disunion.

00:17:30
Speaker 3: He said the country was in danger, and it was the North’s fault.

00:17:34
Speaker 1: And when we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story of the Compromise of 1850, here on Our American Stories. And we returned to Our American Stories and the story of the Compromise of 1850. When we last left off, John C. Calhoun, former Vice President, John C. Calhoun had taken the floor of the Senate to give a speech against the compromises proposed by Henry Clay. Let’s return to Calhoun’s speech. Here again is Gettysburg National Park Service Ranger John Hooptech.

00:18:32
Speaker 3: Now, Calhoun also expressed his fear that the North was becoming too powerful. The population was growing too big, the House was dominated by Northerners, and they are soon going to take the Electoral College. Now he forgot the fact that during the first 62 years of the country’s history, a slave owner was president for 50 of them, that Chief Justices of the Supreme Court were slave owners for 52 of those 62 years. Nevertheless, he felt that the government legislation to outlaws slavery from…

00:19:03
Speaker 2: The territories was too much.

00:19:05
Speaker 3: Slavery, he said, was essential and natural. It was the North who had to come up with a solution, and the North must rigorously enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. He then suggested the way to go about this is a constitutional for amendment that would forever guaranteed sectional balance in the government, and he even put forward a thought of a dual presidency, a Northern president and a Southern president each had veto power. Calhoun died just a month later. News of his death was announced in the Senate, and there were the eulogies spoken. Clay and Daniel Webster. They spoke out favorably with Calhoun, but not Senator Thomas Hart Benton. Thomas Benton of Missouri declared that “Calhoun is not dead. There may be no vitality in his body, but there is in his doctrines. Calhoun died with treason in his heart and on his lips, and his disciples are now disseminating his poison.” Calhoun believed that the country was indeed headed toward a civil war, and it would come soon, that it would be as a result of a presidential election.

00:20:16
Speaker 2: And he was right.

00:20:18
Speaker 3: But was the war inevitable? Daniel Webster hoped not. Now, after John Calhoun gave his thoughts, all attention turned to the great Daniel Webster—the “Godlike Daniel” of Massachusetts—as he was called. He was the very definition of an American statesman, the mouthpiece not for the North or for the South—the mouthpiece of America. And he had this great physical magnetism, the deep-set eyes, a very large head, and people claim that his head grew larger every single year. He had a deep, melodious, operatic voice, and whenever he spoke it was an av. He was a very gifted orator, but he drank heavily, and maybe it was because of a history of personal tragedy. His firstborn child died in 1817 at age 7. He lost another son at age 3. His wife, Grace, died in 1828 at age 47. A beloved brother died the following year, and in 1848, his son Edward died in Mexica…