1850 Compromise - California 175th Admission Day Party - California State Capitol

From the time when the 1820 crisis agitating the country had been resolved in part by the admission to the Union of one slave state and one free state under the Missouri Compromise, the pattern had been set of maintaining an equal number of free states and slave states.

Consequently on the eve of the Compromise of 1850 there were fifteen free states and fifteen slave states. The resulting balance of power in the Senate had made it possible for the South to vote down any bills that it deemed hostile to the interests of slaveholders even though the South was outnumbered in the House of Representatives by the rapidly growing North.

The sudden appearance of California as a candidate for statehood when there was no other prospective new state on the immediate horizon to continue the two-by-two ceremonial, caused the country to break out in a new rash of apprehension. The admission of California to the Union would upset the delicate sectional balance.

On one hand, there were very few slaves in California in 1850 inasmuch as that territory had belonged to Mexico until 1848.

Shortly after achieving its independence in 1820, Mexico had approached its slavery problem with determination. In 1824 it had forbidden the importation of slaves into the new republic.

In 1829 slavery itself had been abolished in Mexico. Not until the 1840’s did many Americans demand the acquisition of California. Even in 1848 when the United States acquired California, New Mexico and Utah territories, California was still virtually a wilderness. But in 1850, two years after the discovery of gold in California, that territory had a population of more than 90,000. California, therefore, could not long be denied admission into the Union.

It appeared natural that California would be admitted as a free State, but events in Texas created the fear that other former Mexican
territory which the United States had acquired might be converted similarly into slave territory.

When Mexico had abolished slavery in 1829, Americans living in the Mexican province of Texas had objected so strenuously that the law had been repealed as far as that territory was concerned.

In 1830, Mexico had attempted to prevent the further importation of slaves into Texas by forbidding the further immigration of Americans.

The Texans had revolted in 1835 in order to maintain their own way of life, which, of course, included slavery. The independent Republic of Texas became slaveholding and was admitted to the Union as a slave state in 1845.

This fear led David Wilmot, a Pennsylvania Democrat, to introduce his famous Proviso in 1846.
His bill stipulated that slavery should be prohibited in any territory acquired from Mexico. The measure passed the House but was defeated in the Senate.

During the debate in the Senate Daniel Webster had declared in 1846 that it was unnecessary to pass a law prohibiting slavery in any of the territory acquired from Mexico, since it was unnecessary ‘‘to reaffirm an ordinance of nature, or reenact the
will of God.’’

Despite Webster’s assertion, the fear that California might become slave territory increased after gold had been discovered there. Indeed,
some slaveholders insisted that neither climate and topography nor the will of God was sufficient to
keep slavery out of California. It was with consternation, then, that they observed few of the ‘‘Forty-miners” from the South carrying slaves with them.

Most of the Southerners who joined the mad rush did not wish to be encumbered with slaves who were generally considered useless in goldmining. Some Southerners who realized that it was necessary to make California a slave territory in order for it to enter the Union as a slave state,
therefore undertook to encourage the shipment of slaves to California..

They began to publish advertisements in Southern newspapers urging slave owners to make known
their intention to take their slaves with them. Most of the settlers, however, were determined to keep
this new source of wealth for themselves. They even preferred contract laborers from China to Negro slaves. Thus, the anti-slavery opposition of the California settlers stemmed from their selfish interests rather than from their moral opposition to slavery.

The anti-slavery forces carried the day in the California Constitutional Convention which was called on September 1, 1849. The Constitution contained a provision that ‘‘neither slavery nor involuntary servitude unless for the punish-
ment of crime shall ever be tolerated in this State.’’

The Constitution was overwhelmingly ratified by the people by a vote of “white males” 12,066 to 811. “The will of the people” was thus added to the ordinance of nature and the will of God. California was finally admitted as a free state by the Compromise of 1850.

The balance of power in the Senate was broken in favor of the anti-slavery forces—a balance which the South was never able to re-establish.

An uneasy path toward the 1860 US Presidential election of Abraham Lincoln lead to several states succession from the Union and the establishment of the Confederate States of America.