Chapter 10-1
Reminder:

 1820 Missouri Compromise: attempt to maintain
balance of power of North and South
 Maine = free state
 Missouri = slave state
 Above 36°30’ = free state
 Below 36°30’ = slave state

 North:
 Industry: railroads distributed raw materials, manufactured
goods & settlers
 Immigrants: opposed slavery
 Thought paid workers would have to compete with slave
labor
 Thought it’d reduce status of white workers who couldn’t
compete with slaves
 South:
 Agriculture: relied on staple crops
 Slavery: African American majority in population
Regional Division

 Wilmot Proviso: California, New Mexico, and Utah
territories would never be slave-owning territories
 Divided Congress along regional lines
 Southerners: Calhoun threatened secession
 slaves = property & property protected by Constitution
 Forever put Congressional power in Northerners’ hands
 California entered Union as free state
 Southerners thought California would be a slave state

 Secession: the formal withdrawal of a state from the Union
 “I hear with pain, and anguish, and distress, the word
secession, especially when it falls from the lips of those who are
eminently patriotic…Secession! Peaceable secession!...There
can be no such thing as peaceable secession…Is the great
Constitution under which we live…to be thawed and melted
away by secession…No, sir! I will not state what might
produce the disruption of the states;…[What] that disruption
might produce [would be] such a war as I will not describe.” –
Daniel Webster Seventh of March speech
Compromise of 1850

 Henry Clay’s plan to please Northerners and
Southerners
 Senate rejected Clay’s proposal

 California admitted as a free state
 Utah & New Mexico territories decide about slavery
 popular sovereignty (residents of a territory vote for or
against slavery)
 Federal government paid Texas $10 million to give
up claims to New Mexico
 Sale of slaves banned in DC but slavery itself may
continue there
 Fugitive Slave Act required people in the free states
to help capture and return escaped slaves

 Stephen A. Douglas proposed each resolution one at
a time rather than bundled
 individual congressmen could vote for what they liked
and vote against what they didn’t like
 1850: President Millard Fillmore supported
Compromise = whole compromise was passed

Membership in House of
Representatives

How are Southern interests threatened?
Questions

 Why did many immigrants oppose the expansion of
slavery?
 What was the Wilmot Proviso? What was the reaction from
congressmen?
 Why did Southerners react badly to California’s request for
statehood?
 How did the Compromise of 1850 attempt to satisfy the
North and the South?
 What role did Stephen A. Douglas play in the Compromise
of 1850?
 What was popular sovereignty?