Behind the moral-legal battle in Congress, in the press, and in the pulpit stood a stark social reality that was forcing both North and South into ever more inflexible positions as the two sections of the country faced each other.  A big part of the problem was of course the slavery issue.  But there were other issues that were pushing the two sections of the country further and further apart – also in part related to the slavery issue but more importantly related to the way that the social-cultural dynamics of the two regions (with the young West beginning to form a third part of the social-cultural distinction) were rapidly unfolding.  Both key sections of the country were heading down very different socio-economic paths. This would only add to the inability of the two main sections of the country to understand or even just work with each other.

The American acquisition of the Western territories resulting from the Mexican-American War had sadly and even tragically merely presented another round in the North-South contention over slavery and its extension westward. Promoted strongly by former General and now President Zachary Taylor was the idea that California, New Mexico and Utah should be brought directly into union with the U.S., and not go through the stage of first being territories prior to statehood.  Furthermore all three future states had expressed the intention of being brought into the Union as Free-Soil states.  This was not going to please the South.

At the same time, Southerners were already talking about disunion.  In late 1849 Mississippi called for Southern representatives to meet the following year in Nashville.  The purpose of this meeting though unstated was obvious.  They were going to be gathering to discuss this very possibility.  Needless to say, all this created quite a stir in Washington.

When the candidacy of California was put forward for statehood at the very end of 1849 tempers in Congress flared.  California was going to be admitted as a free state, ending the tradition of maintaining a balance in the number of slave and free states.  The speeches for and against grew hotter as they took on very biting moral accusations and moral justifications concerning the central issue of slavery. One vote followed another as the two sides deadlocked over the issue.

Once again the Great Compromiser Henry Clay (but now also a very weak old man) stepped forward in the Senate³ at the end of January (1850) to offer a set of proposals that he hoped would smooth feelings on both sides, and ease the way for California to achieve full statehood.  The bill authorized the admission of California to the Union as a Free-Soil state; it set the Western boundaries of Texas, thus ending the contention Texas had with New Mexico; it designated both Utah and New Mexico as territories, with each possessing the right to determine how they would eventually enter the Union, as free or slave states; it called for the end of slave sales within the Washington, D.C. capital (though not the end of slavery itself in the nation's capital); it required Congress to drop any claim of authority to regulate the interstate trade in slaves; and it required the North to return escaped slaves to their owners in the South, a measure that was designed to calm the fears of the South about Northern Abolitionist ambitions.

As compromises typically fare, it pleased the moderates of both the North and the South but also succeeding in angering the extreme wings of the Abolitionist Northerners and increasingly independence-minded Southerners.  Particularly upset were the Northern Abolitionists to whom the idea of the forced return of slaves that had escaped to the North was an abominable idea.  They would have none of it, even if it meant defying the nation's laws.

But not everyone in the South was appeased by this compromise either.  At the beginning of March, Calhoun, too weak to deliver his speech himself to the Senate, had someone read for him the biting accusations about the rising tyranny of the North, and his call for an amendment to the Constitution that would give the nation a dual presidency and the right of each state to veto any act of Congress. Also, Southerners should be able to go anywhere in the Union without the fear of having their property confiscated.  Slavery must be protected throughout the Union.  Anything less than that would be answered with the secession of the Southern states.

The speech shocked everyone, yet had the effect of emphasizing even more the importance of compromise in order to save the Union from dissolution.⁴

Several days later it was the turn of the third elderly member of the Great Triumvirate, Daniel Webster, to address the issue in the Senate.  In his three-hour speech, he recalled the history of the slavery issue as it had taken on ever greater importance to the nation, the efforts to bring the issue to compromise, and the overriding importance of maintaining the Union.  He also projected that any move to disunion would throw America into chaos, and ultimately murderous conflict. With this he was stating what was becoming increasingly obvious to all, that if America continued to behave as it had been recently, there would be no escaping some horribly violent outcome.  The nation had to come together.

Then four days after Webster's speech, it was the turn of a rising star within the Senate, William Seward of New York, an Abolitionist Whig, to be heard.  He put forward the claim that there was a higher law than even the Constitution that he answered to, the Law of God.  That higher law would never permit him to return an escaped slave back into the arms of immoral, illegal servitude.  Southerners were furious. Even Northerners were stunned.  But Seward had laid the seeds of an argument that would gather force among the Northerners.

A Congressional committee was set up to consider Clay's proposals and finally in May these proposals were brought before Congress in the form of an omnibus⁵ bill:  all measures to be voted up or down jointly in a single vote.

Meanwhile tensions were growing between (slavery) Texas and (free) New Mexico, as Texas claimed that the eastern half of what was being designated as New Mexico territory was in fact an integral part of Texas.  Texas was willing to enforce that claim by military action if necessary.

But President Taylor weighed in against Texas and demanded immediate accession of New Mexico as a new state, and as an old soldier was willing also to enforce his viewpoint by military action if necessary. Southerners then were quick to join Texas in their outrage over this move by the president because the accession of New Mexico would mean one more free state being added to the Union.  War clouds began to gather in the West.

Then in the midst of the furor, President Taylor got sick attending a long, hot 4th of July ceremony in the capital, worsened (by the help of doctors who bled him extensively and pumped him with narcotics), and died five days later.  The nation was stunned.⁶

But this automatically elevated Vice President Millard Fillmore to the presidency. And he was willing to take a more centrist position, consulting both Clay and Webster, both well known as willing to compromise on this matter.

But at this point it was time for yet another key figure to take center-stage: Illinois Democrat Senator Stephen A. Douglas.  Though Douglas was a major slave owner (thanks to his wife's inheritance of a 2500-acre plantation in Mississippi, which he rarely visited but which was for him a constant source of revenue) he was a Democratic Party moderate on the slavery issue. He proposed that the various portions of the omnibus bill be broken out into their different parts and be considered separately.  This lowered the tension about the all-or-nothing character of the legislation.

Also with the radical pro-slavery Calhoun gone from the scene and with the death of the strongly Free-Soil Taylor also no longer in the picture, tensions eased. Talk of war subsided. Now a new mood opened the opportunity for compromise.

An exhausted Clay called on Stephen Douglas to run his measure through the Senate again.  This time the Compromise made its way successfully through Congress in September in the form of a number of pieces of legislation. Texas was willing to give up its claim on New Mexico (and adjust its territorial boundaries elsewhere as well) with the assumption of $10 million in Texas debt by the federal government.  And the part that the Abolitionists hated so fiercely, the promise of the North to return all escaped slaves to the South (coupled with massive fines slapped on anyone aiding and abetting any escape of a slave), was finally passed as the Fugitive Slave Act.

Now the thought arose that the slavery issue had been resolved once and for all. The Union was saved.  But Southerners remained skeptical.  To them, whether the Union held or not depended on how faithfully the North enforced the Fugitive Slave Act.   They were soon to find out.

³Of course both houses of Congress were debating the same issue, but the nation's eyes tended to be turned more to the Senate where debate was viewed as having more of a strategic nature, especially when it involved an address to the Senate of one or another of the Great Triumvirate of Senators Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun.

⁴John C. Calhoun died some four weeks later. With Calhoun dead, the Nashville conference got put aside, and the secessionist mood in the South subsided, for a while anyway.

⁵This was a term that Taylor came up with, unhappy at how all these measures had been thrown together, like being put in an omnibus, a large city carriage that anyone could ride for a fee. The term stuck and is now used regularly in Congressional legislation.

⁶Rumors persist to this day that Taylor may have been poisoned. In 1991 tests were made that said no, but even the tests have been contested.