President Millard Fillmore Writes Daniel Webster on the Compromise of 1850

The annexation of Texas to the United States and the gain of immense new lands at the close of the Mexican War in 1848 brought to a flaming pitch the hostility between North and South concerning the extension of slavery into the territories. With the North strongly opposing the extension, the South demanded guarantees of an equal position for slavery, as well as the more active execution of fugitive slave laws. There were threats that unless the southern states were mollified, they would withdraw from the Union. To reconcile the opposing sides, in March 1850 Henry Clay proposed that a series of measures be passed as an omnibus bill; these would come to be called the Compromise of 1850. The measures included the admission of California as a free state; the organization of New Mexico and Utah territories without mention of slavery, the status of that institution to be determined by the territories themselves when they were ready to be admitted as states; the prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia; and a more stringent fugitive slave law. President Taylor opposed the compromise bills, but he died in July. Fillmore, his successor, supported the Compromise because he feared that a breakup of the Union and civil war were the alternatives. He saw his role as preventing such a catastrophe by settling the issues and ending the debate once and for all. The measures were passed and he signed them into law in late September 1850.

In the North, the laws caused a sharp division into two groups. Northern Democrats and so-called “moderate” Whigs supported Fillmore, believing that the Fugitive Slave Law and the Compromise of 1850 would preserve the Union. Included in this number were one of the Compromise’s chief architects and the North’s most powerful politician (and fellow Whig) – Daniel Webster. Webster is mainly known for his service in the U.S. Senate, but was then Fillmore’s Secretary of State. However, a substantial percentage of Whigs were horrified that the Fugitive Slave Act would require northerners to act as slave-catchers, and the more radical elements in that party called for resistance and adherence to a “higher law” of right. Their pro-Compromise opponents, who called themselves Unionists, were in turn furious that leaders were calling for citizens to disregard Federal law. So instead of calming the waters, in the North the atmosphere became explosive, the Whig Party was split, and the administration’s friends saw the immediate need to rally support to the President.

I cannot yet doubt that the law will be maintained in such a community, & that the Union is safe in such hands.

An enthusiastic Union meeting took place on October 30 in New York, and it approved the Compromise, declared the Fugitive Slave Law constitutional, promised to support the execution of it, and denounced further slavery agitation. Similar meetings elsewhere soon followed. In Boston, at the behest of Daniel Webster and his political friends, Judge Edward Loring took up a pro-Fillmore petition calling for a meeting there and obtained thousands of signatories. On November 26, that meeting was held at Faneuil Hall under the organization of such important citizens as former U.S. Senator Rufus Choate, Dr. John C. Warren of Massachusetts General Hospital, former Navy Secretary David Henshaw, former U.S. Representatives Nathan Appleton and Samuel Lawrence, and many other men of similar ilk. The meeting was, in effect, a show of stars in the Boston firmament. Choate spoke, saying “While the people sleep, politician and philanthropist, the stump, the press, will talk and write us out of our Union!” The meeting resolved that every form of resistance to the execution of law was subversive and tended to anarchy; that the citizens of Boston and its vicinity who reverence the Constitution wish to reject a spirit of disobedience to the laws of the land; and that they regard with disfavor all popular agitation of subjects that endanger the peace and harmony of the Union. The meeting made a major impact for a time, and its proceedings were published and can be read today.

Autograph Letter Signed as President, Washington, December 19, 1850, to Daniel Webster, praising  the supportive November 26 meeting, expressing trust in the participants, and saying the nation would survive with men of this caliber behind the Compromise. “Having a few moments leisure today, I unrolled that long list of names signed to the recent call for a Union Meeting in Boston. I do not know the number of persons or yards of signatures attached to the call, but it was by far the largest which I ever saw, and I was struck with the business-like appearance of the autographs. They all indicate men of intelligence and character, and I cannot yet doubt that the law will be maintained in such a community, & that the Union is safe in such hands.”

Things did not work out as Fillmore and Webster hoped. The multi-sectional Whig Party was hopelessly split and soon faded from the picture, to be replaced by the solely northern Republicans; the North would not accept the Fugitive Slave Act; and the pro- and anti-slavery agitation continued on both sides. Fillmore was not renominated, and Webster died less than two years later. The Civil War they feared was imminent.