The Wilmot proviso was never a law, but it politicized slavery once and for all. David Wilmot, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, favored expansion, and he said that the new territories acquired should be free. Calhoun devised a thesis to counter the proviso. The Calhoun resolutions, which never came to a vote, argued that since the territories were the common possessions of the states, Congress had no right to prevent any citizen from taking slaves into them. Calhoun took that basic guarantee of liberty, the Bill of Rights, specifically the Fifth Amendment, and turned it into a basic guarantee of slavery. President Polk didn’t run again in 1848, and General Zachary Taylor ran for presidency, once again the party adopted no platform at all.

The antislavery impulse was not easily squelched. Free soil, rather than abolition became the rallying pint, and also the name of a new party. Three major groups entered the free soil coalition: rebellious Democrats, antislavery Whigs, and members of the Liberty party, which dated from 1840. The democrats were divided into the “Barnburners�

In the pacific, American diplomacy scored important achievements. In 1844 the U.S. and China signed the Treaty of Waughsia, which opened four ports. In 1854 Japan agreed to an American consulate in the Treaty of Kanagawa, promised good treatment to castaways, and permitted visits in certain ports for suppliers and repairs.

Although Taylor wanted to give statehood to California and New Mexico, these two territories got ahead of him, and had free-states government in operation. On December 4, 1849, Taylor endorsed immediate statehood for California.

Later President Buchanan decided to support the Lecompton Constitution, a proslavery constitution for Kansas. In 1858, Kansas’s voters rejected Lecompton. Kansas became an antislavery state, ending its role in the sectional controversy.

In 1856 James Buchanan (Democrat) was elected president, few presidents before him had a broader experience in politics and diplomacy. His political beliefs consisted in saving the Union, depending on the concessions to the South. During Buchanan’s first six months in 1857 he encountered the Dred Scott Decision, new troubles in Kansas and a business panic. Dred Scott was a slave that after its master death tried to buy his freedom. A jury decided in his favor, but the state Supreme Court ruled against him. Scott’s appeal consisted that he lived with his master in Illinois and in the Wisconsin territory, and made him free. The resolution by the Supreme Court would mean a new edge concerning slavery, because it would be a landmark concerning blacks rights. The Supreme Court resolution only fanned the flames of dissension.

Antislavery forces found their more persuasive appeal not in the Fugitive Slave Act but in the fictional drama of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Slavery, through Stowe’s eyes, subjected its victims either to callous brutality or, at the hands of spendthrift masters, to the indignity of bankruptcy.

A financial crisis broke in august 1857, followed by a depression from which the country did not emerge until 1859.

The mining frontier was the most exceptional and unstable. Few miners were interested in permanent settlement. This provided an atmosphere of crime throughout the state. Women were rare, and the primary forms of entertainment were gambling and alcohol.

Many Republicans were willing to go as far as needed to save the Union, including Lincoln. An amendment passed the Senate without a vote to spare, by 24 to 12, on the dawn of inauguration day. It would have become the Thirteenth Amendment, with the first use of the word “slavery” in the Constitution, but the states never ratified it. When a Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in 1865, it did not guarantee slavery –it abolished it.

Some topics in this essay:
Gold Rush, Fugitive Slave, Douglas Senate, America Buchanan, Carolina Butler, Democrat Pennsylvania, Ferry Virginia, California January, Waldo Emerson, Zachary Taylor, republican party, slave act, fugitive slave act, fugitive slave, liberty party, supreme court, south carolina, free soil, slave trade, whigs liberty party, statehood california, ralph waldo emerson, president pierce, martin van buren,