Though little discussed in history classes even at the
collegiate level, two conventions of southern supporters of slavery took place
in Nashville, Tennessee in 1850 that put the lie to the claim that the
secessions of 1860-1861 were not about slavery.
Wilmot Proviso
In August 1846, Congressman David Wilmot, a Democrat from
Pennsylvania, attached a rider to an appropriations in the House of
Representatives that if passed would ban slavery from all territories that
might acquired from Mexico at the end of the Mexican-American War. Even though a treaty have not even been
signed much less adopted.
This measure became known as the Wilmot Proviso. The measure passed in the House but failed in
the Senate, where representation by states gave the slave-owners of the South
held a majority. When brought up again
in February 1847, it again passed in the House, where the North’s greater
population gave it a majority since representation there was based on that, but
it once again failed in the Senate.
After the Treaty of Hidalgo was signed in February 1848 and
went to the Senate for approval, anti-slavery Senators attached the Wilmot
Proviso to it, but its inclusion failed once again, this time with help from northern
Democratic Senators who had previously supported it, including Stephen Douglas
of Illinois.
The Wilmot Proviso made an appearance once again in 1850.
Mississippi Convention
Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina initiated a drive
for a convention of southern states to discuss ways to defend against “northern
aggression”, code for attempts to limit the spread of slavery by restricting it
from new territories. This led to the bipartisan
(Democrat and Whig) Mississippi Convention in October 1849, held in the state
capital of Jackson.
The Mississippi Convention adopted resolutions condemning
the Wilmot Proviso and calling on slave-owners to migrate into the
recently-acquired territories of the New Southwest to “spread their voice” in
order to protect “states’ rights” and the rights of “property”. The “property” in question meant
Afro-American slaves; “states’ rights” meant the ability of states to base
their economy upon that “property”.
Its main accomplishment, however, was an agreement to hold a
convention of southern states to devise a strategy for resisting “northern
aggression”, to take place in Nashville, Tennessee, in June of the following
year.
First Nashville Convention
Legislatures of eight southern states (South Carolina,
Mississippi, Virginia, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, and Florida) appointed
delegates to the convention. Tennessee
sent delegates too, but since its own legislature took little interest,
counties appointed their own delegates.
Out of the 176 who showed, 101 were from Tennessee.
Again, attendance was bipartisan. Whigs and moderate Democrats outnumbered the
Fire-Eaters, who were already calling for secession. In addition to calling for a subsequent
convention in November to resolve matters further, the delegates adopted the
following resolutions, presented here in full.
Resolutions of the first Nashville Convention
1. Resolved, that the territories of the United States
belong to the people of the several states of the Union as their common
property. That the citizens of the several states have equal rights to migrate
with their property to these territories, and are equally entitled to the
protection of the federal government in the enjoyment of that property so long
as the territories remain under the charge of that government.
2. Resolved, that Congress has no power to exclude from the territory of the
United States any property lawfully held in the states of the Union, and any
act which may be passed by Congress to effect this result is a plain violation
of the Constitution of the United States.
3. Resolved, that it is the duty of Congress to provide proper governments for
the territories, since the spirit of American Institutions forbids the
maintenance of military governments in time of peace, and as all laws
heretofore existing in territories once belonging to foreign powers which
interfere with the full enjoyment of religion, the freedom of the press, the
trial by jury, and all other rights of persons and property as secured or
recognized in the Constitution of the United States, are necessarily void 50
soon as such territories become American territories, it is the duty of the federal
government to make early provision for the enactment of those laws which may be
expedient and necessary to secure to the inhabitants of and emigrants to such
territories the full benefit of the constitutional rights we assert.
4. Resolved, that to protect property existing in the several states of the
Union, the people of these states invested the federal government with the
powers of war and negotiation and of sustaining armies and navies, and
prohibited to state authorities the exercise of the same powers. They made no
discrimination in the protection to be afforded or the description of the
property to be defended, nor was it allowed to the federal government to
determine what should be held as property. Whatever the states deal with as
property the federal government is bound to recognize and defend as such.
Therefore it is the sense of this Convention that all acts of the federal
government which tend to denationalize property of any description recognized
in the Constitution and laws of the states, or that discriminate in the degree
and efficiency of the protection to be afforded to it, or which weaken or
destroy the title of any citizen upon American territories, are plain and
palpable violations of the fundamental law under which it exists.
5. Resolved, that the slaveholding states cannot and will not submit to the
enactment by Congress of any law imposing onerous conditions or restraints upon
the rights of masters to remove with their property into the territories of the
United States, or to any law making discrimination in favor of the proprietors
of other property against them.
6. Resolved, that it is the duty of the federal government plainly to recognize
and firmly to maintain the equal rights of the citizens of the several states
in the territories of the United States, and to repudiate the power to make a
discrimination between the proprietors of different species of property in
federal legislation. The fulfillment of this duty by the federal government
would greatly tend to restore the peace of the country and to allay the
exasperation and excitement which now exist between the different sections of
the Union. For it is the deliberate opinion of this Convention that the
tolerance Congress has given to the notion that federal authority might be
employed incidentally and indirectly to subvert or weaken the institutions
existing in the states confessedly beyond federal jurisdiction and control is a
main cause of the discord which menaces the existence of the Union, and which
has well-nigh destroyed the efficient action of the federal government
itself
7. Resolved, that the performance of this duty is required by the fundamental
law of the Union. The equality of the people of the several states composing
the Union cannot be disturbed without disturbing the frame of the American
institutions. This principle is violated in the denial of the citizens of the
slaveholding states of power to enter into the territories with the property
lawfully acquired in the states. The warfare against this right is a war upon
the Constitution. The defenders of this right are defenders of the
Constitution. Those who deny or impair its exercise are unfaithful to the
Constitution; and, if disunion follows the destruction of the right, they are
the disunionists.
8. Resolved, that the performance of its duties, upon the principle we declare,
would enable Congress to remove the embarrassments in which the country is now
involved. The vacant territories of the United States, no longer regarded as
prizes for sectional rapacity and ambition, would be gradually occupied by
inhabitants drawn to them by their interests and feelings. The institutions
fitted to them would be naturally applied by governments formed on American
ideas and approved by the deliberate choice of their constituents. The
community would be educated and disciplined under a republican administration
in habits of self-government and fitted for an association as a state, and to
the enjoyment of aplace in the confederacy. A community so formed and organized
might well claim admission to the Union and none would dispute the validity of
the claim.
9. Resolved, that a recognition of this principle would deprive the questions
between Texas and the United States of their sectional character and would
leave them for adjustment, without disturbance from sectional prejudices and
passions, upon considerations of magnanimity and justice.
10. Resolved, that a recognition of tints principle would infuse a spirit of
conciliation in the discussion and adjustment of all the subjects of sectional
dispute which would afford a guarantee of an early and satisfactory
determination.
11. Resolved, that in the event a dominant majority shall refuse to recognize
the "neat constitutional rights we assert and shall continue to deny the
obligations of the federal government to maintain them, it is the sense of this
Convention that the territories should be treated as property and divided
between the sections of the Union, so that the rights of both sections be
adequately secured in their respective shares. That we are aware this course is
open to grave objections, but we are ready to acquiesce in the adoption of the
line of 36" 30' north latitude, extending to the Pacific Ocean, as a
extreme concession, upon consideration of what is due to the stability of our
institution.
12. Resolved, that it is the opinion of this Convention that
this controversy should be ended, either by a recognition of the constitutional
rights of the Southern people or by equitable partition of the territories;
that the spectacle of a confederacy of states involved in quarrels over the
fruits of a war which the American arms were crowned with glory is humiliating;
that the incorporation of the Wilmot Proviso in the offer of settlement, a
proposition which fourteen states regard as disparaging and dishonorable, is
degrading to the country. A termination to this controversy by the disruption
of the confederacy or by the abandonment of the territories to prevent such a
result would be a climax to the shame which attaches to the controversy which
it is the paramount duty of Congress to avoid.
24. Resolved, that slavery exists in the United States independent of the
Constitution. That it is recognized by the Constitution in a threefold aspect:
first, as property; second, as a domestic relation of service or labor under
the law of a state; and, last, as a basis of political power. And, viewed on
any or all of these lights, Congress has no power under the Constitution to
create or destroy it anywhere; nor can such power be derived from foreign laws,
conquest, cession, treaty, or the laws of nations, nor from any other source
but an amendment of the Constitution itself.
25. Resolved, that the Constitution confers no power upon Congress to regulate
or prohibit the sale and transfer of slaves between the states.
26. Resolved, that the reception or consideration by Congress of resolutions,
memorials, or petitions from the states in which domestic slavery does not
exist, or from the people of said states, in relation to the institution of
slavery where it does exist, with a view of effecting its abolition, or to
impair the rights of those interested in it, to its-peaceful and secure
enjoyment is a gross abuse and an entire perversion of the rights of petition
as secured by the federal Constitution: and, if persisted in, must and will
lead to the most dangerous and lamentable consequences--that the right of
petition for a redress of grievances as provided for by the Constitution was
designed to enable the citizens of the United States to manifest and make known
to Congress the existence of evils under which they were suffering, whether
effecting them personally, locally, or generally; and to cause such evils to be
redressed by the proper and competent authority, but was never designed or
intended as a means of inflicting injury on others, or jeopardizing the
peaceful and secure enjoyment of their rights. whether existing under the
Constitution or under the sovereignty and authority of the several
states.
Compromise of 1850
Crafted by Representative Henry Clay of Kentucky and Senator
Stephen Douglas, this package of five bills passed in September 1850 enacted
the following measures.
The State of Texas surrendered its claim over New Mexico Territory
(which initially included the later Arizona).
Prior to the Compromise, it had been threatening war.
The Territory of California was admitted to the Union as a
free state.
The Wilmot Proviso once again failed to pass.
The slavery question in Utah Territory and New Mexico Territory
would be decided by the populations of those polities.
The slave trade, though not slavery itself, was banned in
Washington City, District of Columbia.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (there was one earlier, in
1793) was enacted.
Second Nashville Convention
With the passage of the Compromise of 1850, the more
moderate delegates felt less threatened, and with tensions considerably eased,
only the Fire-Eaters, the most rabidly uncompromising secessionists, showed for
the convention in November. Most notable
of these, given later history, was Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi.
Below are the preamble and resolutions adopted by the
Fire-Eaters. Take particular note of the
white supremacism expressed in the statements of the preamble.
Resolutions of the second Nashville Convention
We, the delegates assembled from a portion of the states of
this confederacy, make this exposition of the causes which have brought us
together, and of the rights which the states we represent are entitled to under
the compact of Union.
We have amongst us two races, marked by such distinctions of
color and physical and moral qualities as for ever forbid their living together
on terms of social and political equality.
The black race have been slaves from the earliest settlement
of our country, and our relations of master and slave have grown up from that
time. A change in those relations must end in convulsion, and the entire ruin
of one or of both races.
When the Constitution was adopted this relation of master
and slave, as it exists, was expressly recognised and guarded in that
instrument. It was a great and vital interest, involving our very existence as
a separate people then as well as now.
The states of this confederacy acceded to that compact, each
one for itself, and ratified it as states.
If the non-slaveholding states, who are parties to that
compact, disregard its provisions and endanger our peace and existence by
united and deliberate action, we have a right, as states, there being no common
arbiter, to secede.
The object of those who are urging on the federal government
in its aggressive policy upon our domestic institutions is, beyond all doubt, finally
to overthrow them, and abolish the existing relation between the master and
slave. We feel authorized to assert this from their own declarations, and from
the history of events in this country for the last few years.
To abolish slavery or the slave trade in the District of
Columbia—to regulate the sale and transfer of slaves between the states—to
exclude slaveholders with their property from the territories—to admit
California under the circumstances of the case, we hold to be all parts of the
same system of measures, and subordinate the end they have in view, which is
openly avowed to be, the total overthrow of the institution.
We make no aggressive move. We stand upon the defensive. We
invoke the spirit of the Constitution, and claim its guarantees. Our rights—our
independence—the peace and existence of our families, depend upon the issue.
The federal government has within a few years acquired, by
treaty and by triumphant war, vast territories. This has been done by the
counsels and the arms of all, and the benefits and rights belong alike and
equally to all the states. The federal government is but the, common agent of
the states united, and represents their conjoined sovereignty over
subject-matter granted and defined in the compact.
The authority it exercises over all acquired territory must
in good faith be exercised for the equal benefit of all the parties. To
prohibit our citizens from settling there with the most valuable part of our
property is not only degrading to us as equals, but violates our highest
constitutional rights.
Restrictions and prohibitions against the slaveholding
states, it would appear, are to be the fixed and settled policy of the
government; and those states that are hereafter to be admitted into the Federal
Union from their extensive territories will but confirm and increase the power
of the majority; and he knows little of history who cannot read our destiny in
the future if we fail to do our duty now as free people.
We have been harassed and insulted by those who ought to
have been our brethren, in their constant agitation of a subject vital to us
and the peace of our families. We have been outraged by their gross
misrepresentations of our moral and social habits, and by the manner in which
they have denounced us before the world. We have had our property enticed off;
and the means of recovery denied us by our co-states in the territories of
the Union, which we were entitled to as political equals under the
Constitution. Our peace has been endangered by incendiary appeals.
The Union, instead of being considered a fraternal bond, has been used as
the means of striking at our vital interests.
The admission of California, under the circumstances of the
ease, confirms an unauthorized and revolutionary seizure of public domain, and
the exclusion of near half the states of the confederacy from equal rights
therein destroys the line of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, which was
originally acquiesced in as a matter of compromise and peace, and appropriates
to the northern states one hundred and twenty thousand square miles below that
line, and is so gross and palpable a violation of the principles of justice and
equality as to shake our confidence in any security to be given by that
majority who are now clothed with power to govern the future destiny of the
confederacy.
The recent purchase of territory by Congress from Texas, as
low down as thirty-two degrees on the Rio Grande, also indicates that the
boundaries of the slaveholding states are fixed and our doom prescribed so far
as it depends upon the will of a dominant majority, and nothing now can save us
from a degraded destiny but the spirit of freemen who know their rights and are
resolved to maintain them, be the consequences what they may.
We have no powers that are binding upon the states we
represent. But, in order to produce system and concerted action, we recommend
the following resolutions, viz.:
Resolved, That we have ever cherished, and do now cherish a
cordial attachment of the constitutional union of the States, and that to
preserve and perpetuate that Union unimpaired, this convention
originated and has now reassembled.
Resolved, That the union of the States is a union of equal
and independent sovereignties, and that the powers delegated to the Federal
government can be resumed by the several states, whenever it may seem to them
proper and necessary.
Resolved, That all the evils anticipated by the South, and
which occasioned this Convention to assemble have been realized, by the failure
to extend the Missouri line of compromise to the Pacific ocean;
By the admission ofCalifornia as a state. By the organization of
Territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico without
giving adequate protection for the property of the South. By the dismemberment
of Texas. By the abolition of the slave trade, and the emancipation of
slaves carried into the District of Columbia for sale.
Resolved, That we earnestly recommend to all parties in the
slaveholding States, to refuse to go into or countenance any national
convention, whose object may be to nominate candidates for the Presidency and
Vice-Presidency of the United States, under any party denomination whatever,
until our constitutional rights are secured.
Resolved, That in view of these aggressions, and of those
threatened and impending, we earnestly recommend to the slaveholding states, to
meet in a congress or convention to be held at such time and place as the
states desiring to be represented, may designate, to be composed of double the
number of their senators and representatives in the Congress of the United
States, intrusted with full power and authority to deliberate and act with a
view and intention of arresting further aggression, and if possible of
restoring the constitutional rights of the South, and if not to provide for
their safety and independence.
Resolved, That the president of this convention be requested
to forward copies of the foregoing preamble and resolutions to the governors of
each of the slave-holding States of the Union, to be laid before their
respective legislatures at their earliest assembling.
