THE COMPROMISE OF 1850.
No legislative body ever assembled with more momentous measures before
it than the thirty-first Congress of the United States. An immense area
of unsettled public domain had been wrested from Mexico. The Territories
of California, Utah, and New Mexico, amounting to several hundred
thousand square miles, remained undisposed of. They comprised what Mr.
Calhoun had termed the "Forbidden Fruit," and the trouble which
beclouded their annexation threatened to surpass the storms of conquest.
Congress felt that it was absolutely without light to guide it. It had
declined to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean.
Henry Clay had pronounced such division of public domain between the
sections a "Utopian dream," and Zachary Taylor had condemned the
principle in the only message he ever delivered to Congress. What Mr.
Lincoln afterward embodied in his famous expression that the Union could
never exist "half slave, half free," had been actually anticipated. The
whole territorial question came up as a new problem. But if the crisis
was now momentous the body of statesmen which considered it was a great
one. The men and the hour seemed to meet in that supreme moment. The
Senate consisted of sixty members, and for the last time that great trio
of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster met upon its floor. Commencing their
careers a generation before; with eventful lives and illustrious
performance, they lingered one moment in this arena before passing
forever from the scenes of their earthly efforts. All three had given up
ambition for the Presidency, none of them had commenced to break in
mental power, and each one was animated by patriotism to serve and save
his country. William H. Seward had entered the Senate from New York;
James M. Mason and Robert M. T. Hunter represented Virginia; Wm. C.
Dawson had joined Mr. Berrien from Georgia; Salmon P. Chase appeared
from Ohio; Jefferson Davis and Henry S. Foote illustrated Mississippi;
Stephen A. Douglas had been promoted from the House in Illinois, and
Samuel Houston was there from Texas. The House was unusually strong and
divided with the Senate the stormy scenes and surpassing struggles over
the compromise measures of 1850. It was the time of breaking up of party
lines, and many believed that the hour of disunion had arrived.
The Whig caucus, which assembled to nominate a candidate for Speaker of
the House, sustained a serious split. Robert Toombs offered a resolution
that Congress should place no restriction upon slavery in the
Territories. The Northern Whigs scouted the idea and Toombs led the
Southern members out of the meeting. The organization of the House was
delayed three weeks, and finally, under a plurality resolution, the
Democrats elected Howell Cobb of Georgia Speaker over Robert C. Winthrop
of Massachusetts. In the midst of these stormy scenes Mr. Toombs forced
the fighting. He declared with impetuous manner that he believed the
interests of his people were in danger and he was unwilling to surrender
the great power of the Speaker's chair without security for the future.
"It seems," he said, "that we are to be intimidated by eulogies of the
Union and denunciations of those who are not ready to sacrifice national
honor, essential interests, and constitutional rights upon its altar.
Sir, I have as much attachment to the Union of these States, under the
Constitution of our fathers, as any freeman ought to have. I am ready to
concede and sacrifice for it whatever a just and honorable man ought to
sacrifice. I will do no more. I have not heeded the expression of those
who did not understand or desired to misrepresent my conduct or opinions
in relation to these questions, which, in my judgment, so vitally
affect it. The time has come when I shall not only utter them, but make
them the basis of my political actions here. I do not then hesitate to
avow before this House and the country, and in the presence of the
living God, that if by your legislation you seek to drive us from the
Territories purchased by the common blood and treasure of the people,
and to abolish slavery in the District, thereby attempting to fix a
national degradation upon half the States of this confederacy, I am for
disunion, and if my physical courage be equal to the maintenance of my
convictions of right and duty I will devote all I am and all I have on
earth to its consummation.
"Give me securities that the power of organization which you seek will
not be used to the injury of my constituents; then you can have my
cooperation, but not till then. Grant them, and you prevent the
disgraceful scenes of the last twenty-four hours and restore
tranquillity to the country. Refuse them, and, as far as I am concerned,
let discord reign forever."
This speech fell like a clap of thunder. The Wilmot Proviso waved like a
black flag over the heads of Southern men. No one had spoken outright
until Mr. Toombs in his bold, dashing, Mirabeau style accepted the issue
in the words just given. The House was filled with storms of applause
and jeers, and, as can be imagined, Mr. Toombs' speech did not soothe
the bitterness or alter the determination of either side.
On the 22d of December a conference was held by Whigs and Democrats, the
Southern Whigs excepted, and a resolution reported that the person
receiving the largest number of votes for Speaker, on a certain ballot,
should be declared elected, provided this number should be the majority
of a quorum, but not a majority of the House. Mr. Stanton of Tennessee
offered this "plurality resolution."
Mr. Toombs sprang to his feet and declared that the House, until it
organized, could not pass this or any other rule.
Members stood up and called Mr. Toombs to order, claiming that there was
already a question pending. Mr. Stanton contended that he had the floor.
Toombs called out: "You may cry 'order,' gentlemen, until the heavens
fall; you cannot take this place from me. I have the right to protest
against this transaction. It is not with you to say whether this right
shall be yielded or when it shall be yielded."
Mr. Stevens of Pennsylvania: "I call the gentleman to order."
Mr. Toombs: "I say that by the law of 1789 this House, until a Speaker
is elected and gentlemen have taken the oath of office, has no right to
adopt any rules whatever."
(Loud cries of "order.")
Mr. Toombs: "Gentlemen may amuse themselves crying 'order.'"
(Calls of "order.")
Mr. Toombs: "But I have the right and I intend to maintain the right
to----"
Mr. Vandyke called upon the clerk to put the preceding question. "Let us
see," he said, "whether the gentleman will disregard the order of this
House."
Mr. Toombs: "I have the floor, and the clerk cannot put the question."
"The House," he said, "has no right. Gentlemen may cry 'order' and
interrupt me. It is mere brute force, attempting by the power of lungs
to put me down."
Confusion increased. Members called out to encourage Mr. Toombs, and
others to put him down. In the midst of this babel he continued to
speak, his black hair thrown back, his face flushed, and his eyes
blazing like suns. His deep voice could be heard above the shouts like a
lion's roar. Members shouted to the clerk to call the roll for the yeas
and nays.
Toombs continued: "If you seek by violating the common law of
parliament, the laws of the land, and the Constitution of the United
States, to put me down ["order, order, call the roll"], you will find it
a vain and futile attempt. ["Order."] I am sure I am indebted to the
ignorance of my character on the part of those who are thus disgracing
themselves ["order, order"], if they suppose any such efforts as they
are now making will succeed in driving me from the position which I have
assumed. I stand upon the Constitution of my country, upon the liberty
of speech which you have treacherously violated, and upon the rights of
my constituents, and your fiendish yells may be well raised to drown an
argument which you tremble to hear. You claim and have exercised the
power to prevent all debate upon any and every subject, yet you have not
as yet shown your right to sit here at all. I will not presume that you
have any such right ["order, order"]. I will not suppose that the
American people have elected such agents to represent them. I therefore
demand that they shall comply with the Act of 1789 before I shall be
bound to submit to their authority." (Loud cries of "order.")
The Act to which Mr. Toombs referred recited that the oath must be
administered by the Speaker to all the members present, and to the
clerk, previous to entering on any other business. This he tried to
read, but cries of "order" drowned his voice.
Throwing aside his manual Mr. Toombs walked further out into the aisle
and assumed a yet more defiant position.
"You refuse," he said, "to hear either the Constitution or the law.
Perhaps you do well to listen to neither; they all speak a voice of
condemnation to your reckless proceedings. But if you will not hear them
the country will. Every freeman from the Atlantic to the Pacific shore
shall hear them, and every honest man shall consider them. You cannot
stifle the voice that shall reach their ears. The electric spark shall
proclaim to the freemen of this republic that an American Congress,
having conceived the purpose to violate the Constitution and the laws to
conceal their enormities, have disgraced the record of their proceedings
by placing upon it a resolution that their representatives shall not be
heard in their defense, and finding this illegal resolution inadequate
to secure so vile an end, have resorted to brutish yells and cries to
stifle the words of those they cannot intimidate."
The clerk continued to call the roll, and Mr. Toombs with splendid
audacity turned upon him. Pointing his finger at the _locum tenens_, he
cried with scorn: "I ask by what authority that man stands there and
calls these names. By what authority does HE interfere with the rights
of a member of this House. [The clerk continued to call.] He is an
intruder, and how dares he to interrupt members in the exercise of
their constitutional rights. Gentlemen, has the sense of shame departed
with your sense of right, that you permit a creature, an interloper, in
no wise connected with you, to stand at that desk and interrupt your
order?"
Mr. Toombs continued, amid these boisterous scenes, his alternate role
of argument, of appeal, of denunciation. He contended that a power
delegated to the House must be used by a majority of the House. He
concluded:
"I therefore demand of you before the country, in the name of the
Constitution and the people, to repeal your illegal rule, reject the one
on your table, and proceed to the discharge of your high duties, which
the people have confided to you, according to the unvarying precedents
of your people and the law of the land."
This performance was denounced by Northern restrictionists as menacing
and insolent. Mr. Stephens, in his "War Between the States," contended
that it should rather be considered in the light of a wonderful
exhibition of physical as well as intellectual prowess--in this, that a
single man should have been able, thus successfully, to speak to a
tumultuous crowd and, by declamatory denunciations combined with solid
argument, to silence an infuriated assembly.
The noise during the delivery of this speech gradually ceased. The
clerk stopped calling the roll, all interruptions were suspended and
"every eye," says Mr. Stephens, "was fixed upon the speaker." It was a
picture worthy of ranking with Lamartine's great speech to the
revolutionists in France.
On the 29th of February Mr. Toombs addressed the House upon the general
territorial question. He said:
"We had our institutions when you sought our allegiance. We were content
with them then, and we are content with them now. We have not sought to
thrust them upon you, nor to interfere with yours. If you believe what
you say, that yours are so much the best to promote the happiness and
good government of society, why do you fear our equal competition with
you in the Territories? We only ask that our common government shall
protect us both, equally, until the Territories shall be admitted as
States into the Union, then to leave their citizens free to adopt any
domestic policy in reference to this subject which in their judgment may
best promote their interest and their happiness. The demand is just.
Grant it, and you place your prosperity and ours upon a solid
foundation; you perpetuate the Union so necessary to your prosperity;
you solve the problem of republican government. If it be demonstrated
that the Constitution is powerless for our protection, it will then be
not only the right but the duty of the slaveholding States to resume the
powers which they have conferred upon this government and to seek new
safeguards for their future protection.... We took the Constitution and
the Union together. We will have both or we will have neither. This cry
of Union is the masked battery behind which the rights of the South are
to be assaulted. Let the South mark the man who is for the Union at
every hazard and to the last extremity; when the day of her peril comes
he will be the imitator of that character, the base Judas, who for
thirty pieces of silver threw away a pearl richer than all his tribe."
On the 15th of June, 1850, while the compromise measures were shifting
from House to House, the question was put to some of the advocates of
the admission of California, whether they would under any circumstances
admit a slave State into the Union. They declined to say.
Mr. Toombs arose and declared that the South did not deny the right of a
people framing a State constitution to admit or exclude slavery. The
South had uniformly maintained this right.
"The evidence is complete," he said. "The North repudiated this
principle."
"I intend to drag off the mask before the consummation of the act. We do
not oppose California on account of the antislavery clause in her
constitution. It was her right, and I am not even prepared to say she
acted unwisely in its exercise--that is her business: but I stand upon
the great principle that the South has the right to an equal
participation in the Territories of the United States. I claim the right
for her to enter them with all her property and security to enjoy it.
She will divide with you if you wish it: but the right to enter all, or
divide, I will never surrender. In my judgment this right, involving, as
it does, political equality, is worth a dozen such Unions as we have,
even if each were a thousand times more valuable than this. I speak not
for others, but for myself. Deprive us of this right, and appropriate
this common property to yourselves; it is then your government, not
mine. Then I am its enemy, and I will then, if I can, bring my children
and my constituents to the altar of liberty, and like Hamilcar, I will
swear them to eternal hostility to your foul domination. Give us our
just rights, and we are ready, as ever heretofore, to stand by the
Union, every part of it, and its every interest. Refuse it, and, for
one, I will strike for independence."
Mr. Stephens declared that this speech produced the greatest sensation
he had ever seen in the House. "It created a perfect commotion."
These heated arguments of Mr. Toombs were delivered under the menace of
the Wilmot Proviso, or slavery restriction. When this principle was
abandoned and the compromise measures passed, Mr. Toombs uttered, as we
shall see, far different sentiments.
In the Senate Mr. Clay, the Great Pacificator, had introduced his
compromise resolutions to admit California under the government already
formed, prohibiting slavery; to organize territorial governments for
Utah and New Mexico without slavery restrictions; to pass a
fugitive-slave law, and to abolish the slave trade in the District of
Columbia. On the 7th of March, 1850, Mr. Webster delivered his great
Union speech, in which for the first time he took strong grounds against
congressional restriction in the Territories. It created a profound
sensation. It was on the 4th of March that Senator Mason read for Mr.
Calhoun the last speech that the latter ever prepared. It was a
memorable moment when the great Carolinian, with the stamp of death
already upon him, reiterated his love for the Union under the
Constitution, but declared, with the prescience of a seer, that the only
danger threatening the government arose from its centralizing tendency.
It was "the sunset of life which gave him mystical lore."
Debate continued through the spring and summer with increasing
bitterness. On the 31st of July Mr. Clay's "Omnibus Bill," as it was
called, "went to pieces," but the Senate took up the separate
propositions, passed them, and transmitted them to the House.
Here the great sectional contest was renewed. Mr. Toombs offered an
amendment that the Constitution of the United States, and such statutes
thereof as may not be locally inapplicable, and the common law, as it
existed in the British colonies of America until July 4, 1776, shall be
the exclusive laws of said Territory upon the subject of African
slavery, until altered by the proper authority. This was rejected by the
House. On September 6 the Texas and New Mexico bill, with the Boyd
amendment, passed by a vote of 108 to 97--and the anti-restrictionists,
as Mr. Stephens said, won the day at last. This was the great compromise
of that year, and the point established was that, since the principle of
division of territory between the North and South had been abandoned,
the principle of congressional restriction should also be abandoned, and
that all new States, whether north or south of 36 deg. 30', should be
admitted into the Union "either with or without slavery as their
constitution might prescribe at the time of their admission."
During this memorable contest Mr. Toombs was in active consultation with
Northern statesmen, trying to effect the compromise. He insisted that
there should be no congressional exclusion of slavery from the public
domain, but that in organizing territorial governments the people should
be allowed to authorize or restrict, as they pleased. Until these
principles were settled, however, he would fight the admission of
California. Into this conference Mr. Stephens and Howell Cobb were
admitted, and at a meeting at the house of the latter an agreement was
reached between the three Georgians and the representatives from
Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois, that California should be admitted: that
the Territories should be organized without restriction, and that their
joint efforts should be used to bring this about as well as to defeat
any attempt to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. Here was the
essence of the compromise, built upon the great measures of Henry Clay,
and finally ripening into the legislation of that session. Here was the
agreement of that compact which formed the great "Constitutional Union
Party" in Georgia, and which erected a bulwark against disunion, not
only in Georgia, but on the whole Southern seaboard. The disunion
movement failed in 1850. "At the head of the States which had the merit
of stopping it," said Thomas H. Benton, "was Georgia, the greatest of
the South Atlantic States." And that Georgia stood steadfast in her
place, and declined every overture for secession, was because of the
united prestige and splendid abilities of Howell Cobb, Alexander H.
Stephens, and Robert Toombs.
* * * * *
During this stormy session Mr. Toombs' heart continually yearned for
home. He was a model husband and a remarkable domestic character. The
fiery scenes of the forum did not ween him from his family. On the 29th
of August, 1850, he wrote to his wife:
We have before us the whole of the territorial questions,
and shall probably pass or reject them in a few days or at
most in a week. I am greatly in hopes that we will not pass
over them without final action of some sort, and if we can
get rid of them I shall have nothing to prevent my coming
home at the time appointed. I begin to be more anxious to
see you than to save the republic. Such is a sweet woman's
fascination for men's hearts. The old Roman Antony threw
away an empire rather than abandon his lovely Cleopatra,
and the world has called him a fool for it. I begin to
think that he was the wiser man, and that the world was
well lost for love.