1850 Compromise, Part 1

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2004-8-25

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VOICE ONE:

THE MAKING OF A NATION -- a program in Special English.

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A deep national crisis faced the
United States in the year eighteen-fifty. It threatened to split the
nation in two. It arose over the issue of slavery in the new
territories of California and New Mexico. The president of the
United States, General Zachary Taylor, had no clear policy on the
issue. Taylor tried to be neutral, hoping that the problem would
solve itself. But it did not solve itself. The split between the
north and south got wider. There was a real danger that the south
would try to leave the Union. Then, Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky
stepped forward to save the Union.

VOICE TWO:

After being away from the Senate for almost eight years, Clay was
surprised to find how bitter the two sections of the United States
-- north and south -- had grown toward each other. Clay urged his
friends in the border states between north and south to try to build
public support for the Union. He felt this would help prevent the
south from seceding. Clay also began to think about a compromise
that might settle the differences between the two sections of the
country.

VOICE ONE:

Clay was a firm believer in the
idea of compromise. He once said: "I go for honorable compromise
whenever it can be made. Life itself is but a compromise between
death and life. The struggle continues through our whole existence
until the great destroyer finally wins. All legislation, all
government, all society is formed upon the principle of mutual
concession, politeness, and courtesy. Upon these, everything is
based."

Clay was sure that a compromise between north and south was
possible. Near the end of January, Clay completed work on his plan.
Most parts of it already had been proposed as separate bills. Clay
put them together in a way that both sides could accept.

VOICE TWO:

Clay offered his plan in a Senate speech on January twenty-ninth,
eighteen-fifty. Clay proposed that California join the union as a
free state. He said territorial governments should be formed in the
other parts of the western territories, with no immediate decision
on whether slavery would be permitted.

Clay proposed that the western border of Texas be changed to give
New Mexico most of the land disputed by them. In exchange for this,
he said, the national government should agree to pay the public
debts that Texas had when it became a state.

He proposed that no more slaves be sold in the District of
Columbia for use outside the federal district, but also proposed
that slavery should not be ended in the district unless its citizens
and those of Maryland approved. Clay said a better law was needed
for the return of fugitive slaves to their owners. He also proposed
that Congress declare that it had no power to interfere with the
slave trade between states. Senator Clay believed these eight steps
would satisfy the interests of both the north and the south.

VOICE ONE:

Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi declared that Clay's
compromises did not offer anything of value to the south. He said
the south would accept nothing less than extending the Missouri
compromise line west to the Pacific Ocean. This meant that land
south of the line would be open to slavery.

Clay answered that no power on earth could force him to vote to
establish slavery where it did not exist. He said Americans had
blamed Britain for forcing African slavery on the colonists. He said
he would not have the future citizens of California and New Mexico
blaming Henry Clay for slavery there.

VOICE TWO:

Clay said he did not want to debate, but wished that the senators
would think carefully about his proposals. He said he hoped they
would decide on them only after careful study. He asked them to see
the proposals as a system of compromise...not as separate bills.
Clay expected extremists on both sides to denounce the compromise.
But he believed the more reasonable leaders of the north and south
would accept it.

One week after Clay first proposed the compromise, he rose in the
Senate to speak in its defense. The Senate hall was crowded. People
had come from as far away as Boston and New York to hear Clay speak.
Some senators said there had not been such a crowd in the capitol
building since the day Clay said goodbye to the Senate eight years
earlier.

Clay had to rest several times as he climbed the steps of the
capitol. He told a friend that he felt very tired and weak. His
friend advised Clay to rest and make his speech later. "No," Clay
said. "My country is in danger. If I can be the one to save it from
that danger, then my health and life are not important."

VOICE ONE:

Clay began his speech by talking of the serious crisis that faced
the nation. He said that never before had he spoken to a group as
troubled and worried as the one he spoke to now. Clay listed his
eight resolutions. Then he said: "No man on earth is more ready than
I am to surrender anything which I have proposed and to accept in
its place anything that is better. But I ask the honorable senators
whether their duty will be done by simply limiting themselves to
opposing any one or all of the resolutions I have offered."

"If my plan of peace and unity is not right, give us your plan.
Let us see how all the questions that have arisen out of this
unhappy subject of slavery can be better settled more fairly and
justly than the plan I have offered. Present me with such a plan,
and I will praise it with pleasure and accept it without the
slightest feeling of regret."

VOICE TWO:

Clay said the major differences separating the country could be
settled by facing facts. He said the first great fact was that laws
were not necessary to keep slavery out of California and New Mexico.
He said the people of California already had approved an
anti-slavery state constitution. And he said the nature of land in
New Mexico was such that slaves could not be used.

Clay said there was justice in the borders he proposed for Texas,
that it would still be a very large state after losing the area it
disputed with New Mexico. And he said it was right for the United
States to pay the debts of Texas, because that state no longer could
collect taxes on trade as an independent country.

VOICE ONE:

Clay said there was equal justice in his resolutions ending the
slave trade in the District of Columbia and strengthening laws on
the return of runaway slaves. He said the south, perhaps, would be
helped more than the north by his proposals. But the north, he said,
was richer and had more money and power.

To the north, slavery was a matter of feeling. But to the south,
Clay said, it was a hard social and economic fact. He said the north
could look on in safety while the actions of some of its people were
producing flames of bitterness throughout the southern states.

Then Clay attacked the south's claim that it had the right to
leave the Union. He said the Union of states was permanent…that the
men who built the Union did not do so only for themselves, but for
all future Americans.

VOICE TWO:

Clay warned that if the south seceded, there would be war within
sixty days. He said the slaves of the south would escape by the
thousands to freedom in the north. Their owners would follow them
and try to return them to slavery by force. This, he said, would
lead to war between the slave-holding and free states. He said this
would not be a war of only two or three years. History had shown, he
said, that such wars lasted many years and often destroyed both
sides.

Even if the south could secede without war, he said, it still
would not get any of the things it demanded. Secession would not
open the territories to slavery. It would not continue the slave
trade in the District of Columbia. And it would not lead to the
return of slaves who escaped to the north.

So, said Clay, the south would not help itself by leaving the
Union. Clay's two-day speech gave new hope to many that the Union
could be saved. His compromise seemed to be a way to settle the
dispute. But extremists on both sides opposed it. That will be our
story in the next program of THE MAKING OF A NATION.

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VOICE ONE:

You have been listening to the Special English program, THE
MAKING OF A NATION. Your narrators were Jack Moyles and Stuart
Spencer. Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. THE MAKING OF A
NATION can be heard Thursdays.