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Stephen A. Douglas And The Compromise Of 1850

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Stephen A. Douglas was a key member of the group that created the Compromise of 1850. This compromise was a combination of five laws. The Fugitive Slave Act was to appease the south, the addition of California as a free state for the north, set a disputed boundary between New Mexico and Texas, abolished slave trade in the District of Columbia, and organized land acquired from Mexico into the new territories of New Mexico and Utah (Henretta, Edwards, & Self, 2012). Douglas also introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1954. The act was to create a transcontinental railroad for expansion west, the creation of a Nebraska territory, and he hoped, to settle the differences between the north and south. The House passed the act however the Senate refused to vote on the issue due to slavery issues (Ohio History Central, n.d. ). Douglas continued to edit the act until he finally gained enough support to get his bill to pass in the Senate, however he then ran into opposition from then President Franklin Pierce due to the bills repeal of the Missouri Compromise. This angered some southern Senators and they gave the President an ultimatum of either support the …show more content…

This conflict between northern and southern Whig’s led to the end of the party. Additionally it disrupted the Democratic Party. The Democrats that opposed the act joined Free-Soilers and abolitionists to form what is now known as the Republican Party (Henretta, Edwards, & Self, 2012). This was key as Douglas faced off against Abraham Lincoln twice in elections. Once for the Senate, which he won and the other, the 1860 presidential election. During the election, Lincoln represented the Republicans and Douglas the Northern Democrats. The Democratic Party had split with the Northern Democrats opposed to slavery and the Southern in favor (Ohio History Central, n.d. ). There was also the Constitutional Party involved in this

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This act made any official who did not turn in a runaway slave liable to pay a fine; therefore, truly enforcing the law and safeguarding southern property. This also made every Northerner responsible for turning in runaway slaves. In Stephen Douglas’ “Speech Defending the Compromise of 1850” he stated, “Congress, after a protracted session of nearly ten months, succeeded in passing a system of measures, which are believed to be just to all parts of the Republic, and ought to be satisfactory to the People. ”7 Douglas believed by making this concession, the south would remain a part of the union.

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In 1860, these issues broke the Democratic Party into two main groups. The northern faction, now calling itself the republican party, was dominant in the North, and secured most of the electoral votes. They ended up putting Abraham Lincoln in the White House with almost no southern votes. Before Lincoln got inaugurated, seven Southern states said that they would secede from the United States.

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On the other hand, Douglas, the candidate for the Democrats, was a firm supporter of Popular Sovereignty, which did not garner him many votes among the North and South, eventually leading to him only getting the support of one state during the electoral votes. The candidate's views on slavery divided the votes among the states, with the ideas that had Lincoln allowing him to collect the majority of the votes in the Northern states, while the efforts of Douglas, Bell, and Breckinrigde split the votes in the South. The division in the views on slavery culminated in the eventual election of Lincoln as our 16th president. “While historians remain divided over precisely when the Civil War became an ‘irrepressible conflict,’ the results of the election of 1860, as evidenced by the actions of seven slaveholding states, clearly shows that Lincoln's election only further aggravated existing sectional tensions. Even if the election did not directly push the nation into civil war, its results clearly hastened the South's journey toward disunion.”

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Abraham Lincoln would lead the Republican Party even though he did not win the south over in the election. He promised that he would save the Union no matter what the cost. This disconnect in policy would later lay the basis for the Civil War, which started in 1861. He never envisioned a proclamation or ending slavery but he was ultimately committed to saving the Union from the succeeding south. Lincoln gave into the antislavery Republicans toward the end of the war and finally decided to make slavery the true basis of the war.

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He tried to balance one concession of the North, with one for the South. It was a delicate balancing act where he tried to coax the Southerners to halt Slave-trading in the District of Columbia. On the other hand, the Fugitive Slave Act bound northerners to assist in capturing escaped slaves and to punish anyone assisting them. This led to widespread anger in the Northern States. Additional legislation was added in which California was added to the union as a free state.

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Also passed an amendment to the imaginary line that marked where the Louisiana Purchase/ Territory began. A compromise was created in order to create a balance between the slave and free states. Also, it created a controversy that was not necessarily as popular or supported before. More people began to open their minds about their opinion on slavery.

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Stephen Douglas, an advocate of popular sovereignty, and Abraham Lincoln, a Republican candidate, were both running to represent Illinois in the United States Senate. These two men met in a sequence of seven debates before they battled for office of presidency in the election of 1858. Slavery eventually became the main issue discussed repeatedly in each of the debates, due to the Mexican War adding new territories left to be assessed as free soil or not. During this time, the Compromise of 1850 was a temporary fix to the sectional issues for the states that made the decision to participate in the extension of slavery. However, the Missouri Compromise of 1854 brought the issue back up again.

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Prior to the Civil War, multiple compromises were made to try to keep civility. The problems that led to the Civil War and increased sectionalism were the Missouri Compromise, The Kansas-Nebraska Act, The Compromise of 1850, and The Caning of Senator Sumner. These compromises and acts had problems with them because they had too many flaws. Before the Missouri Compromise was written in 1820, complications began to rise between the North and South.

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The Compromise of 1850 was an attempt by the U.S Congress to settle divisive issues between the North and South, including slavery expansion, apprehension in the North of fugitive slaves, and slavery in the District of Columbia. The Compromise of 1850 failed because Senator John C. Calhoun from the South and Senator William Seward from the North could not agree on what Henry Clay was putting down. Part of the compromise was to make California a slavery free state which benefits the North, and enforcing a stricter fugitive slave law which benefits the South. Both the North and South opposed what the other was benefiting from. What sparked the failure of the Compromise was the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

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In contrast, other politicians were trying to create temporary solutions to the slavery issue. One of these provisional plans was the Compromise of 1850 which was a series of bills planned by Henry Clay and later overseen by Stephen Douglas that would try to resolve the concerns of slavery in new territories. Therefore, California was admitted to the Union as a free state and the territories in the west determined the issue of slavery based on popular sovereignty. Following this, slave trade was abolished in Washington, D.C. and the new Fugitive Slave Act was passed. The Fugitive Slave Act was a portion of the Compromise of 1850 and it gave a new protection to slavery.

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P.6 Compromises seemed to be working in 1820 as a solution to political issues that America agreed to disagreed on. As seen in the Missouri Compromise, where Henry Clay made slaves free in twelve states and not free in the other twelve; in order to keep everything balanced. But between the period of 1820 to 1860, compromising took a shift and no longer seemed to be the solution. Compromises worked with Henry Clay in the Missouri compromise in 1820 but by 1860 due to a series of geographic, political, and social changes compromises were impossible.

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Emancipation was one issue that the Republican and Democratic parties were fiercely divided on. Extreme conservative Democrats believed that abolitionists had shaped the political ideology of the Republican Party". (britianan.com) They would be divided up. Causing the Copperheads to have their own will and say so what ever they wanted was their desire. "

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Douglas, was an important election that would, and did, go down in history. Lincoln had opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, created by Stephen Douglas, which lead him into becoming a Republican. Here, nobody was able to Compromise. He ran against Stephen Douglas, and won the election with getting one hundred eighty electoral votes, and Douglas getting twelve (Southern Democrat Breckinridge seventy-two, and Constitutional Union Bell getting thirty-nine) (Doc H).

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Despite being the only major political party the Democrats experienced a lot of conflict among themselves Eventfully a party known as the Whigs developed. Both the Democrats and Whigs wanted to expand the numbers of voters. They accomplished this by eliminating several voting restrictions put on white males. Like the Federalist the Whigs supported northern merchants. Besides supporting merchants, the only thing members of the Whig party really had in common was there opposition to the Democratic party.

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The candidates in the presidential campaign of the year 1868 included two men, Ulysses S. Grant and Horatio Seymour. During these times, there was only two political parties: the Democratic and Republican party. Ulysses S. Grant represented the republican party and Horatio Seymour represented the democrat party. The issues that occurred during the presidential campaign were….

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