California’s application for statehood in 1849 prompted another crisis over slavery. Southerners feared that admitting California as a free state would tip the balance in Congress against them. Senator Henry Clay tried to broker a compromise that would admit California as a free state but toughen the fugitive slave law. Amid vigorous congressional debate, South Carolina senator John C. Calhoun insisted that slavery be preserved. A colleague read Calhoun’s address for the aging and ill senator. Calhoun’s death a few weeks later helped pave the way for final passage of the Compromise of 1850.
How can the Union be saved? To this I answer, there is but one way by which it can be, and that is, by adopting such measures as will satisfy the States belonging to the Southern section that they can remain in the Union consistently with their honor and their safety. . . .
. . . The South asks for justice, simple justice, and less she ought not to take. She has no compromise to offer but the Constitution, and no concession or surrender to make. She has already surrendered so much that she has little left to surrender. Such a settlement would go to the root of the evil, and remove all cause of discontent, by satisfying the South that she could remain honorably and safely in the Union, and thereby restore the harmony and fraternal feelings between the sections which existed anterior to the Missouri agitation. . . .
But can this be done? Yes, easily; not by the weaker party, for it can of itself do nothing—not even protect itself—but by the stronger. The North has only to will it to accomplish it—to do justice by conceding to the South an equal right in the acquired territory, and to do her duty by causing the stipulations relative to fugitive slaves to be faithfully fulfilled—to cease the agitation of the slave question, and to provide for the insertion of a provision in the Constitution, by an amendment, which will restore to the South in substance the power she possessed of protecting herself, before the equilibrium between the sections was destroyed by the action of this Government. There will be no difficulty in devising such a provision—one that will protect the South, and which at the same time will improve and strengthen the Government, instead of impairing and weakening it.
Source: The Congressional Globe, 31st Cong., 2nd Sess. (1850), 453, 455.
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