Antagonisms over slavery had been brewing for several decades before 1850. The uncertain relationship of slavery with the new territories from the Mexican Cession further inflamed passions. As legislators Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas worked on compromises, President Zachary Taylor suddenly died in July of 1850. Millard Fillmore was on the spot.
Compromise of 1850
The compromise entailed these resolutions, all voted on separately: admitting California as a free state; organizing the rest of the southwest territories into New Mexico and Utah without restrictons on slavery; adjustment of the Texas/New Mexico border, with Texas receiving compensation for lost territory; prohibiting the slave trade in Washington D.C.; and a fugitive slave law punishing those who harbored runaways. Taylor wasn't sympathetic to the compromises, but Fillmore strongly backed them and they became law.
Briefly, the nation breathed easier and Fillmore was popular. Soon, however, each side regretted the concessions given up. Northerners resented the Fugitive Slave Act. Southerners viewed Fillmore as an abolitionist as Northerners viewed him as a puppet of the Slave Power. His efforts to unite his Whig party by wooing the southern wing further angered the north.
Fillmore's personal views on slavery seemed on the fence, but it favored the south, "God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil...and we must endure it and give it protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution." In the end, the politician Fillmore could not even win the nomination of his party in 1852, losing out to a soldier, Winfield Scott.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Scott didn't have a high opinion of a New Hampshire politician, his Democratic opponent Franklin Pierce. The General mocked his questionable military record from the U.S.-Mexican War and insisted he was not fit to be president. Upon Pierce's election, the New York Tribune stated that "we have fallen on great times for little men." After all, Pierce had been out of politics for ten years and was a compromise choice at the Democratic Convention.
Pierce unabashedly showed his southern colors. He tapped staunch southern rights advocate Jefferson Davis as his Secretary of War. He supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which permitted western territories to decide for themselves about slavery. Northerners felt this broke the spirit of the Missouri Compromise, prohibiting slavery north of the 36 degree 30' line.
Actions inside the Pierce State Department were also pro-southern, further alienating the north. Pierce recognized the new regime in Nicaragua led by American William Walker, who instituted slavery there. In addition, U.S. ministers of Great Britain, Spain, and France drafted a memorandum, the Ostend Manifesto, that justified armed seizure of Cuba, if it could not be purchased. By the end of his presidency, Pierce, in his final message, lashed out at northern abolitionists. Out of office, the press intercepted a letter from Pierce to Davis stating his belief that the north and south should be apart.
Dred Scott
One of those ministers, James Buchanan, as president-elect, cajoled Supreme Court justice Robert Grier of Pennsylvania to vote the southern line in the Dred Scott case. Scott, a slave of an army surgeon who briefly lived in the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin, sued for his freedom. Chief Justice Roger Taney's majority opinion was that blacks were inferior and not free citizens.
As president, Buchanan supported the pro-southern Lecompton convention to form a government in Kansas. It helped spark a civil war there. Buchanan was more interested in appeasing southern Democrats than unifying the country. Otherwise, Buchanan didn't have the stomach to tackle the slavery issue and preferred to leave it to the next president.
Why so much futility in the 1850's? Three northern presidents supported southern interests, alienating the north. They didn't have the will or the skill to unite the regions. Timesonline's first ranked president, Abraham Lincoln, ultimately confronted slavery head-on.
Sources
Bailyn, Bernard, et al eds, The Great Republic, 3rd edition, D.C. Heath: Lexington,MA, 1985.
Kunhardt, Philip B. Jr. et al, The American President, Riverhead: New York,1999.
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