The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (16 page)

This outburst even shocked Toombs’s closest friend, thirty-seven-year-old Alexander Stephens, who was beginning his fourth full term in the House. Physically, Stephens was everything Toombs was not—small, sickly, and barely eighty pounds. But usually Stephens knew what to anticipate from his burly and overbearing friend. Never, said Stephens, had he “expected to live to see the day, when, upon this floor, he should be called upon to discuss the question of the union of these States.”
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With members threatening disunion, screaming and shouting at one another, and carrying bowie knives and revolvers, organizing the House became a major ordeal. It thus took three weeks and sixty-three ballots to elect Howell Cobb Speaker, twenty-one ballots to elect a clerk, three ballots to elect a chaplain, and eight ballots to elect a sergeant at arms. Among the losers was the mace-wielding Nathan Sargent of Vermont. The members stripped him of his office as sergeant at arms and gave it to Adam J. Glossbrenner of Pennsylvania.

The turmoil amused Joshua Giddings, an antislavery Whig from northern Ohio.
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Others, however, thought the country was about to fall apart. Among them was seventy-two-year-old Henry Clay, the silver-tongued orator from Kentucky, who had watched the Meade debate with alarm. Clay had first come to Congress in 1806. He had served as Speaker of the House longer than any other man. He had run for president three times, losing twice by substantial margins, once by a whisker. Although a major slaveholder, he looked forward to the day when Kentucky, and perhaps the Deep South, would rid itself of both slavery and free blacks. In the 1844 presidential campaign, he had even referred to slavery as a “temporary institution.”
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Now, as the senior senator from Kentucky, Clay tried to rally the forces of moderation and restraint. By January 21, he had a package of proposals. That evening he drove to the Washington home of Daniel Webster, his longtime rival as leader of the Whig Party, and got the Massachusetts leader’s tentative support. He then scheduled an appearance before the Senate on January 29. On the appointed day, every seat in the Senate gallery was taken long before Clay arrived.

To the packed house, the “Great Pacificator” presented his solution to the nation’s crisis. It consisted of eight resolutions. Looked at “together, in combination,” said Clay, “they propose an amicable arrangement of all questions in controversy between the free and the slave States, growing out of the subject of slavery.” For the North, Clay proposed outlawing the buying and selling of slaves in the District of Columbia. For the South, he would guarantee the right to hold slaves in the District and also enact a stronger law to secure the return of runaway slaves. For the North, he would admit California as a free state. For the South, he would organize the New Mexico and Utah territories without any restrictions on slavery.

Henry Clay, the “Great Pacificator,” addressing the Senate. From a steel engraving by John M. Butler and Alfred Long, 1854. Library of Congress.

The package also dealt with the Texas problem. Already the biggest state, and a slave state, Texas wanted to be a still bigger slave state. It claimed roughly half of present-day New Mexico, all the land east of the Rio Grande. It had done so for years, but had not enforced the claim. For all practical purposes, the land had been in the hands of the federal government and considered free for some time. That the land should now be Texan and slave infuriated Northerners, especially Northern Whigs who regarded the Mexican War as mainly a landgrab in behalf of aggressive slaveholders. The Texans also had another desire, however. They wanted to be rid of the heavy debts that Texas had contracted before becoming part of the United States in 1845. So, as a solution, Clay proposed that Texas relinquish its claim to New Mexico territory in exchange for the federal government’s assuming Texas’s debts.

In laying out his eight resolutions, Clay dazzled his audience. He began slowly, gained steam, and soon was at his silver-tongued best. He oozed charm. His voice was melodious. He was dramatic. He even held up a fragment from George Washington’s coffin that had been given to him a few days before and said he saw it as a “warning voice coming from the grave to the Congress now in session to beware, to pause, to reflect before they lend themselves to any purposes which shall destroy that Union which was cemented by his exertions and example.”
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Despite Clay’s brilliance, his plea for harmony didn’t work. Southerners were still furious. They still complained bitterly that the admission of California as a free state would cost the South equal representation in the Senate. And what about New Mexico? Clay’s proposal to make it a territory with no restrictions on slavery was meaningless. It could still follow California’s example and ask to be admitted as a free state. That clearly was what Zachary Taylor wanted. And that, said one Deep South senator after another, would make a bad situation worse. With California, the fifteen slave states would be outnumbered by sixteen free states, with New Mexico, by seventeen.

Such, then, was the situation when the California delegation arrived in Washington. Could William Gwin, an “extreme southern man,” overcome Southern opposition?

Gwin gave it his best effort. He shepherded California’s two aspiring House members around the city and systematically courted his old Southern friends. Most were gracious. But his mentor Calhoun, sick and dying, reproached him for his role in writing the California Constitution and told him that the admission of California as a free state would destroy the equilibrium between the North and the South in the Senate. Gwin responded that he had done what was necessary to gain a Senate seat.

What, then, about Elisha Crosby’s notion that Gwin, a Mississippi slave owner, might soften the hostility of men like Calhoun to California statehood? Was that just wishful thinking? In all likelihood, yes. Undoubtedly, Calhoun preferred Gwin over Frémont, the onetime South Carolinian who had become not only a free-soiler but also the son-in-law of Thomas Hart Benton, Calhoun’s longtime enemy. But the California issue was just too big for one man to make much of a difference. At stake, as Calhoun and his followers saw it, was the social structure of the entire South. If slavery could be excluded from California, it could be excluded from all of the future states that were certain to follow. Gone would be Southern domination of the Senate. Gone, too, would be the chance of slavery to expand. Instead, it would be reduced to a static, confined, and dying institution. To stand by and watch, they thought, was suicidal.

The dying senator, moreover, had spent months preparing his troops for action. In January 1849, a full ten weeks before Gwin had set sail for California in pursuit of a Senate seat, Calhoun had gathered fourteen colleagues into a Southern political caucus to make sure that Congress imposed no bans on slavery within the land taken from Mexico. They soon had the full support of forty-six Southern Democrats and two Southern Whigs. They had been beaten repeatedly in the House, where Northern congressmen made up the vast majority, but in the Senate they had prevailed. That chamber, even though it was equally divided between slave- and free-state men, had been the bastion of Southern power. Would it continue to be so? Yes, if Calhoun and his colleagues had anything to say about it.

Calhoun had also orchestrated a Southern protest movement. At his urging, the South Carolina assembly had called for a Pan-Southern meeting but left it to Mississippi to choose a place and date. Calhoun had then contacted Colonel Collin S. Tarpley of Mississippi, who in turn circulated Calhoun’s sentiments about the state, and in May 1849 a public meeting at Jackson recommended a statewide convention. To that meeting, Calhoun urged South Carolina governor Whitemarsh Seabrook to send a representative to get the support of Mississippi’s governor. For that task, Seabrook dispatched South Carolina representative Daniel Wallace.

The meeting took place in October 1849, just as Gwin and the other delegates at the Monterey convention were putting the finishing touches on the California Constitution. Calling themselves the Mississippi States’ Rights Convention, Tarpley and his associates endorsed Calhoun’s common-property doctrine and threatened secession if slaveholders were barred from any of the territories taken from Mexico. They also called for a larger gathering, one of all the slave states, in Nashville the following June. Seven other Southern states soon began making arrangements to send delegates.
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Wallace, meanwhile, sought the support of Mississippi’s governor. He worried about the outcome, but he actually had little to worry about. The incoming governor was John A. Quitman, who in many ways was even more radical than Calhoun. A New York native, the fifty-year-old Quitman had moved to Natchez, Mississippi, when he was twenty-two. He had arrived “penniless” but had risen quickly in Mississippi thanks to his athletic prowess, his flamboyance, and a favorable marriage, which provided him with both land and slaves. He eventually owned a mansion in Natchez, four plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana, and more than four hundred slaves.

Politically, Quitman was a warrior. Not only was he pro-slavery; he was belligerently so. And having won the governorship with 70 percent of the vote, he construed his election as a mandate to be even more aggressive. Within just a few months, he threw his support behind a plan to seize Cuba with a privately armed military force.
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On January 10, 1850, the new governor gave his inaugural address. Privately, he had toyed with the idea of relocating some of his own slaves to the Far West. He also claimed that some of his Natchez neighbors had the same inclinations. In his speech, he avoided such personal remarks but made it clear that California’s stand on slavery, as well as Zachary Taylor’s actions, had infuriated him. He accused Northerners of waging “war upon slavery,” a “war of extermination” against the South’s “most valued rights.”

What, then, should the South’s elected representatives do? “The South,” said Quitman, “has long submitted to grievous wrongs. Dishonor, degradation, and ruin awaits her if she submits further. The people of Mississippi have taken their stand, and, I doubt not, their representatives will maintain it.”
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News of California’s stand on slavery, as well as Zachary Taylor’s actions, had also enraged Mississippi’s congressional delegation. All six had gone to Washington primed for battle when Congress convened in December. They were not about to help their former colleague William Gwin gain statehood for California.

On January 21, they contacted Quitman. They told him that they regarded “the proposition to admit California as a state…as an attempt to adopt the Wilmot proviso in another form.” They asked Quitman for advice—and through him for advice from the state legislature. They obviously wanted the Mississippi legislature to endorse their position.
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They expected no resistance from either Quitman or the legislature. The Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature by whopping majorities, and Democrats statewide had vociferously opposed Zachary Taylor’s plan to admit California as a free state.

In a minority report, five prominent Whigs came out foursquare behind Zachary Taylor. They made it clear that they didn’t regard the admission of California with its free-state constitution as the Wilmot Proviso under another form. They also claimed to have the support of Whigs around the state. But the Whigs were a minority, a hopeless minority, and thus no help to Gwin.
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The Mississippi congressional delegation, meanwhile, continued to treat California statehood as just another version of the Wilmot Proviso. In doing so, they weren’t alone. Several dozen Southern congressmen made the same claim. Especially forceful was Thomas Clingman, a thirty-seven-year-old non-slaveholding Whig from the hill country of North Carolina. Northerners, said Clingman, were obviously imposing the Wilmot Proviso by indirection. Indeed, had it not been for antislavery agitation, “southern slaveholders would have carried their negroes into the mines of California in such numbers…that the majority there would have made it a slaveholding State.” The free-state alternative was so outrageous, said Clingman, that Southerners who would now “consent to be thus degraded and enslaved ought to be whipped through their fields by their own negroes.”
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