The Rolling Stones were right: You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you jus ...
The Rolling Stones were right: You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. Historians unanimously agree that the famous Stones track was a cryptic reference to the Compromise of 1850, where nobody got what they wanted but the nation got what it needed. Kind of. One thing's for sure: there just can't be any compromises when it comes to slavery. It's immoral, brutal, and—since 1865— illegal in the U.S. But rewind back to mid-19th-century America, and Congress was scrambling to do just that: put together a compromise that would satisfy both the free states of the North and the slave states of the South. The threat of secession over the issue of slavery was always on everyone's mind, and it was up to Congress to find a way to hold the Union together. Every time the U.S. acquired new territory, even way back in 1803 with the ginormous Louisiana Purchase, the same question came up: would any new states carved out of that territory be slave states or free states? Since the founding of the nation, the government had seen to it that, for every slave state admitted to the Union, a free state would be admitted to keep things balanced. Then in 1850, oops, it happened again, when California, having been ceded to the U.S. by Mexico in 1848, petitioned to be admitted as a free state, potentially upsetting the delicate balance because there were no new slave states on the horizon. We can't over-emphasize just how big of an issue this was in the antebellum (pre-Civil War) period. Every time the question came up, it was like the Montagues and Capulets. Or Pawnee and Eagleton. So when it became clear that the U.S. was going to get another big chunk of land as a result of the Mexican War, the slave vs. free showdown began. It lasted about four years. There were numerous attempts to solve the problem in one way or another, chopping up the territories this way and that, but they were all defeated. Finally, veteran senator Henry Clay came up with a complicated compromise bill. It was debated in Congress from early February to August of 1850, when it was defeated in the Senate. Clay tried to include something for everyone, and he ended up with nothing. Wait, it was defeated? Then what are we doing here? Does this mean we can go back to hate-watching Gossip Girls? Not yet. Stephen Douglas, the young senator from Illinois, took the reins after the bill's defeat. He split Clay's omnibus (all-in-one) bill up into its different parts, and got them passed individually instead of in one giant gulp. The five bills, all part of Clay's original biggie, were passed in this order: Texas boundaries were set, with Texas agreeing to give up claims to some territory in New Mexico in exchange for $10 million bucks and lifetime HBO for all its residents. California was admitted as a free state. A territorial government was created in Utah. The Fugitive Slave Act 2.0 was passed, including a provision that even northerners had to agree to chase down runaway slaves or pay a fine. Buying and selling slaves was outlawed in Washington, D.C. Turns out politicians are fine helping a compromise pass so long as they aren't seen voting for things they don't believe in. The Compromise of 1850 kept the peace (relatively) for a decade, but at the same time, it fanned the flames of sectionalism. The new Fugitive Slave Act was especially shocking to the North. The Compromise encompassed all the hot-button issues of the antebellum period that would eventually lead to the Civil War, all in one rather complicated package.
