70-533: The Slave Power , or Slavocracy , referred to the perceived political power held by American slaveholders in the federal government of the United States during the Antebellum period . Antislavery campaigners charged that this small group of wealthy slaveholders had seized political control of their states and were trying to take over the federal government illegitimately to expand and protect slavery . The claim
140-547: A Liberty party organizer from New York; John Greenleaf Whittier , a Massachusetts poet, journalist, and Liberty activist; Charles Henry Langston , an Ohio African-American educator; Owen Lovejoy , a congressman from Illinois, whose brother Elijah was killed by a pro-slavery mob; Sherman Booth , a journalist and Liberty organizer in Wisconsin; Jane Grey Swisshelm , a journalist in Pennsylvania and Minnesota; George W. Julian ,
210-480: A Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania , and a group of other Barnburner Democrats including Preston King and Timothy Jenkins of New York , Hannibal Hamlin of Maine , Gideon Welles of Connecticut , and Jacob Brinkerhoff of Ohio , had already been meeting in early August strategy meetings. Wilmot had a strong record of supporting the Polk Administration and was close to many Southerners. With
280-715: A congressman from Indiana; David Wilmot , a congressman from Pennsylvania, whose Wilmot proviso tried to stop the expansion of slavery in the Southwest; Benjamin Wade and Edward Wade , a senator and a congressman, respectively, from Ohio; and Jessie Benton Frémont of Missouri and California, wife of the Republican 1856 presidential nominee John C. Frémont . The Democrats who rallied to Martin Van Buren 's Free Soil Party in 1848 have been studied by Earle (2003). Their views on race occupied
350-554: A convention rule, last used in 1832, requiring that the nominee had to receive two-thirds of the delegate votes. Many in the North were also upset with the Walker tariff which reduced the tariff rates; others were opposed to Polk's veto of a popular river and harbor improvements bill, and still others were upset over the Oregon settlement with Great Britain where it appeared that Polk did not pursue
420-648: A generally anti-slavery North in favor and a pro-slavery South against, foreshadowing coming conflicts. It failed in the Senate, where the South had greater representation. The proviso was reintroduced in February 1847 and again passed the House and failed in the Senate. In 1848, an attempt to make it part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo also failed. Sectional political disputes over slavery in
490-555: A matter of fact, during the domination of the slave power, Massachusetts appealed to this protecting principle as often and almost as loudly as South Carolina . The existence of a Slave Power was dismissed by Southerners then and rejected by many historians of the 1920s and 1930s, who stressed the internal divisions in the South before 1850. Historian Allan Nevins contends that "nearly all groups ... steadily substituted emotion for reason.... Fear fed hatred, and hatred fed fear." The idea that
560-571: A plot to nationalize slavery, as allegedly proven by the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision of 1857. Other Republicans pointed to the violence in Kansas , the brutal assault on Senator Sumner , attacks upon the abolitionist press , and efforts to take over Cuba ( Ostend Manifesto ) as evidence that the Slave Power was violent, aggressive, and expansive. The only solution, Republicans insisted,
630-536: A purely sectional issue as extremists that were well outside the normal scope of traditional politics. However, midway through Polk 's term, Democratic dissatisfaction with the administration was growing within the Martin Van Buren , or Barnburner , wing of the Democratic Party over other issues. Many felt that Van Buren had been unfairly denied the party's nomination in 1844 when southern delegates resurrected
700-602: A sin or promising to guarantee its protection in the Deep South ) could unite to attack the slavocracy . The "Free Soil" element emphasized that rich enslavers would move into new territory, use their cash to buy up all the good lands, then use enslaved people to work the lands, leaving little opportunity room for free farmers. By 1854, the Free Soil Party had largely merged into the new Republican Party . The problem posed by slavery , according to many Northern politicians,
770-506: A small European settler population relying on a predominantly West African chattel slave population as well as smaller numbers of indentured servants , both European and non-European in origin. In the Caribbean , the slaves were primarily used to produce sugar , while in North America the slaves were primarily used to produce cotton . These proslavery societies attempted to resist
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#1732844200835840-474: A third party movement in the state failed. Southerner Whigs looked hopefully to slaveholder and war hero General Zachary Taylor as the solution to the widening sectional divide even though he took no public stance on the Wilmot Proviso. However, Taylor, once nominated and elected, showed that he had his own plans. Taylor hoped to create a new non-partisan coalition that would once again remove slavery from
910-402: A way of compromise and to repress the underlying issue of slavery itself – its toleration or non-toleration by a great free Christian state – were overwhelmingly in the majority. But history showed that in crises of this sort the two sets of extremists were almost certain to grow in power, swallowing up more and more members of the conciliatory center. Combined with other slavery-related issues,
980-844: A wide spectrum, but they were able to fashion new and vital arguments against slavery and its expansion based on the Jacksonian Democracy 's long-standing commitment to egalitarianism and hostility to centralized power. Linking their antislavery stance to a land-reform agenda that pressed for free land for poor settlers—realized by the Homestead Law of 1862—in addition to land free of slavery, Free Soil Democrats forced major political realignments in New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Ohio. Democratic politicians such as Wilmot, Marcus Morton , John Parker Hale , and even former president Van Buren were transformed into antislavery leaders. Many entered
1050-486: Is accomplished in the overthrow of the Slave Power", adding that the way was now clear "for the establishment of the policy of Freedom"—something that would come only after four destructive years of Civil War . Jessie Frémont , the wife of the first Republican presidential candidate, wrote campaign poetry for the 1856 election. Grant says her poems bind the period's cult of domesticity to the new party's emerging ideology. Her poems suggested that Northerners who conciliated
1120-535: The Missouri Compromise line of latitude 36°30' simply be extended west to the Pacific . This was voted down 89–54. The vote to add the proviso to the bill was then called, and it passed by 83–64. A last-ditch effort by southerners to table the entire bill was defeated by 94–78, and then the entire bill was approved 85–80. These votes fell overwhelmingly along sectional rather than party lines. The Senate took up
1190-454: The abolitionist movement and subsequently relied on freed black and poor white sharecroppers for labor following abolition . One prominent organization largely representing and collectively funded by a number of British slavocracies was the " West India Interest ", which lobbied the British parliament on behalf of planters. It is credited with delaying the abolition of the slave trade from
1260-517: The war with Mexico , declared by the mere announcement of President Polk ; the Fugitive Slave Law ; the Dred Scott decision —all triumphs of the slave power—did far more than either tariffs or internal improvements, which in their origin were also Southern measures, to destroy the very memory of states' rights as they existed in 1789. Whenever a question arose of extending or protecting slavery,
1330-526: The 1790s until 1806–1808 and then delaying emancipation into the 1820s and 1830s, extracting reparations for the lost "property" in a policy known as "amelioration". Wilmot Proviso The Wilmot Proviso was an unsuccessful 1846 proposal in the United States Congress to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican–American War . The conflict over the Wilmot Proviso
1400-451: The 1830s by northern abolitionists as a term of disparagement and subsequently used in wider senses, including as a term for the planter class of such a society itself. Slavocracies are also sometimes known as plantocracies , after " planter " used as a term for the owners of plantations . A number of European colonies in the New World were largely slavocracies, usually consisting of
1470-537: The Democratic party, a presidential candidate had to carry the national convention by a two-thirds vote to get nominated. It was also essential for some Northerners—" Doughfaces "—to collaborate with the South, as in the debates surrounding the three-fifths clause itself in 1787, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the gag rule in the House (1836–1844), and the wider subject of the Wilmot Proviso and slavery expansion in
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#17328442008351540-410: The House 115–106. In the Senate, led by Thomas Hart Benton (Democrat), the bill was passed without the proviso. When the bill was returned to the House the Senate bill prevailed; every Northern Whig still supported the proviso, but 22 Northern Democrats voted with the South. In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ending the war was submitted to the Senate for approval. Douglas, now in the Senate,
1610-470: The House. ... To them [Free Soil Democrats] the movement to acquire Texas, and the fight over the Wilmot Proviso, marked the turning point, when aggressive slavemasters stole the heart and soul of the Democratic Party and began dictating the course of the nation's destiny. Historian William Cooper presents the exactly opposite Southern perspective: Southern Democrats, for whom slavery had always been central, had little difficulty in perceiving exactly what
1680-538: The Slave Power existed has partly come back at the hands of neoabolitionist historians since 1970, and there is no doubt that it was a powerful factor in the Northern anti-slavery belief system. It was standard rhetoric for all factions of the Republican Party. The Slave Power helped determine how the United States was perceived overseas for much of the 19th century. As Richard Henry Dana Jr. recalled in 1871: There
1750-512: The Slave Power was a force for centralization: Between the slave power and states' rights there was no necessary connection. The slave power, when in control, was a centralizing influence, and all the most considerable encroachments on states' rights were its acts. The acquisition and admission of Louisiana ; the Embargo ; the War of 1812 ; the annexation of Texas "by joint resolution" [rather than treaty];
1820-412: The Slave Power were spreading their own sterility, while virile men voting Republican were reproducing, through their own redemption, a future free West. The code of domesticity, according to Grant, thus helped these poems to define collective political action as building upon the strengths of free labor. Historian Henry Brooks Adams (grandson of "Slave-Power" theorist John Quincy Adams ) explained that
1890-478: The South "the rhetoric of resistance to the North escalated and spread". The potentially secessionist Nashville Convention was scheduled for June 1850. When President Taylor in his December 1849 message to Congress urged the admission of California as a free state, a state of crisis was further aggravated. Historian Allan Nevins sums up the situation which had been created by the Wilmot Proviso: Thus
1960-409: The South, and much less so in the North, where opposition took many forms. For example, Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his poll tax , arguing that the money would be used to prosecute the war and gain slave territory. On Saturday, August 8, 1846, President Polk submitted to Congress a request for $ 2,000,000 (~$ 60.7 million in 2023) in order to facilitate negotiations with Mexico over
2030-451: The South, made it clear that the South's commitment to Union was not unqualified; they fully expected the North to adhere to their part of the agreement. In regard to the territory the Proviso would have covered, California had a brief period of slavery due to slave owning settlers arriving during the 1848 California Gold Rush . Since there were no slave patrols or laws protecting slavery in
2100-729: The Southwest after the Mexican war of 1846–1848. However, the North was adding population—and House seats—much faster than the South. With the Republicans gaining every year, the secession option became more and more attractive to the South. Secession was suicidal, as some leaders realized, and as John Quincy Adams had long prophesied. Secession, argued James Henry Hammond of South Carolina, reminded him of "the Japanese who when insulted rip open their own bowels ." And yet when secession came in 1860 Hammond followed. Historian Leonard Richards concludes, "It
2170-653: The Southwest continued through the Compromise of 1850 . After an earlier attempt to acquire Texas by treaty had failed to receive the necessary two-thirds approval of the Senate , the United States annexed the Republic of Texas by a joint resolution of Congress that required simply a majority vote in each house of Congress. President John Tyler signed the bill on March 1, 1845, a few days before his term ended. As many expected,
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2240-482: The United States, by virtue of any treaty which may be negotiated between them, and to the use by the Executive of the moneys herein appropriated, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party shall first be duly convicted. William W. Wick , Democrat of Indiana , attempted to eliminate total restriction of slavery by proposing an amendment that
2310-602: The Wilmot Proviso led to the Compromise of 1850 , which helped buy another uncertain decade of peace. Radical secessionists were temporarily at bay as the Nashville Convention failed to endorse secession. Moderates rallied around the Compromise as the final solution to the sectional issues involving slavery and the territories. At the same time, however, the language of the Georgia Platform , widely accepted throughout
2380-556: The annexation led to war with Mexico . After the Capture of New Mexico and California in the first phases of the war, the political focus shifted to how much territory would be acquired from Mexico. The key to this was the determination of the future status of slavery in any new territory. Both major political parties had labored long to keep divisive slavery issues out of national politics. The Democrats had generally been successful in portraying those within their party attempting to push
2450-531: The approval of the treaty, the issue moved from one of abstraction to one involving practical matters. The nature of the Constitution, slavery, the value of free labor, political power, and ultimately political realignment were all involved in the debate. Historian Michael Morrison argues that from 1820 to 1846 a combination of "racism and veneration of the Union" had prevented a direct Northern attack on slavery. While
2520-410: The bill late in its Monday session. Southern Democrats hoped to reject the Wilmot Proviso and send the bill back to the House for a quick approval of the bill without the restrictions on slavery. Whig John Davis of Massachusetts attempted to forestall this effort by holding the floor until it would be too late to return the bill to the House, forcing the Senate to accept or reject the appropriation with
2590-409: The congressional and local races in 1845 and 1846 throughout the South, was the party's failure to take a strong stand favoring Texas annexation. Southern Whigs were reluctant to repeat their mistakes on Texas, but, at the same time, Whigs from both sections realized that victory and territorial acquisition would again bring out the issue of slavery and the territories. In the South in particular, there
2660-476: The contest was joined on the central issue which was to dominate all American history for the next dozen years, the disposition of the Territories. Two sets of extremists had arisen: Northerners who demanded no new slave territories under any circumstances, and Southerners who demanded free entry for slavery into all territories, the penalty for denial to be secession. For the time being, moderates who hoped to find
2730-509: The convention rejected a pro-proviso plank and selected Lewis Cass as the nominee, the Barnburners again bolted and were the nucleus of forming the Free Soil Party . Historian Leonard Richards writes of these disaffected Democrats: Overall, then, Southern Democrats during the 1840s lost the hard core of their original doughface support. No longer could they count on New England and New York Democrats to provide them with winning margins in
2800-402: The discussion of issues related to slavery. They were a small but critical number of voices who, beginning in the late 1830s, battled the institution of slavery through political activism. In the face of great odds and powerful opposition, activists insisted that emancipation and racial equality could only be achieved through the political process. Representative activists include: Alvan Stewart ,
2870-427: The final settlement of the war. The request came with no public warning after Polk had failed to arrange for approval of the bill with no Congressional debate. With Congress scheduled to adjourn that Monday, Democratic leadership arranged for the bill to be immediately considered in a special night session. The debate was to be limited to two hours with no individual speech to last more than ten minutes. David Wilmot ,
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2940-521: The likelihood that Wilmot would have no trouble gaining the floor in the House debate, he was chosen to present the amendment to the appropriations bill that would carry his name. Wilmot offered the following to the House in language modeled after the Northwest Ordinance of 1787: Provided, That, as an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico by
3010-543: The national stage. He expected to be able to accomplish this by freezing slavery at its 1849 boundaries and by immediately bypassing the territory stage and creating two new states out of the Mexican Cession. The opening salvo in a new level of sectional conflict occurred on December 13, 1848, when John G. Palfrey (Whig) of Massachusetts introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia . Throughout 1849 in
3080-509: The new Republican party after 1854, bringing along Jacksonian ideas about property and political equality, helping transform antislavery from a struggling crusade into a mass political movement that came to power in 1860. In his celebrated " House Divided " speech of June 1858, Abraham Lincoln charged that Senator Stephen A. Douglas , President James Buchanan , his predecessor, Franklin Pierce , and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney were all part of
3150-477: The northern territory with the same vigor he used to acquire Texas. Polk was seen more and more as enforcing strict party loyalty primarily to serve southern interests. The Whigs faced a different scenario. The narrow victory of James K. Polk (Democrat) over Henry Clay (Whig) in the 1844 presidential election had caught the Southern Whigs by surprise. The key element of this defeat, which carried over into
3220-437: The original Southern response to the Wilmot Proviso was measured, it soon became clear to the South that this long postponed attack on slavery had finally occurred. Rather than simply discuss the politics of the issue, historian William Freehling noted, "Most Southerners raged primarily because David Wilmot's holier-than-thou stance was so insulting." In the North, the most immediate repercussions involved Martin Van Buren and
3290-404: The original intent of the war had never been to acquire territory (a view hotly contested by his opponents), an honorable peace required territorial compensation to the United States. The Three Million Dollar Bill, as it was called, was the sole item of business in the House from February 8, 1847, until February 15. Preston King reintroduced the Wilmot Proviso, but this time the exclusion of slavery
3360-480: The principle of appealing to popular sovereignty which would soon evolve as the mainstream Democratic alternative to the Wilmot Proviso: Leave it to the people, who will be affected by this question to adjust it upon their own responsibility, and in their own manner, and we shall render another tribute to the original principles of our government, and furnish another for its permanence and prosperity. With
3430-456: The proviso intact. However, before he could call the vote, due to an eight-minute difference in the official House and Senate clocks, the House had adjourned and the Congress was officially out of session. The issue resurfaced at the end of the year when Polk, in his annual message to Congress, renewed his request with the amount needed increasing to three million dollars. Polk argued that, while
3500-523: The proviso meant for them and their party. In the first place the mere existence of the proviso meant the sectional strains that had plagued the Whigs on Texas now beset the Democrats on expansion, the issue the Democrats themselves had chosen as their own. The proviso also announced to southerners that they had to face the challenge of certain northern Democrats who indicated their unwillingness to follow any longer
3570-538: The proviso or popular sovereignty, and positive federal legislation overruling Mexican anti-slavery laws in the Mexican Cession. However, the same Democratic Convention that had refused to endorse the proviso also rejected incorporating the Yancey proposal into the national platform by a 216–36 vote. Unlike the Barnburner walkout, however, only Yancey and one other Alabama delegate left the convention. Yancey's efforts to stir up
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#17328442008353640-463: The slave power, and the only evidences of public opinion at home to be found at those official seats… were all of the same character. Slavocracy A slavocracy (from slave + -ocracy ) is a society primarily ruled by a class of slaveholders , such as those in the southern United States and their confederacy during the American Civil War . The term was initially coined in
3710-411: The slaveholders became friends of centralized power, and used that dangerous weapon with a kind of frenzy. Slavery in fact required centralization in order to maintain and protect itself, but it required to control the centralized machine; it needed despotic principles of government, but it needed them exclusively for its own use. Thus, in truth, states' rights were the protection of the free states, and as
3780-434: The southern lead on slavery. That circumstance struck at the very roots of the southern conception of party. The southerners had always felt that their Northern colleagues must toe the southern line on all slavery-related issues. In Alabama , with no available candidate sufficiently opposed to the proviso, William L. Yancey secured the adoption by the state Democratic convention of the so-called " Alabama Platform ", which
3850-528: The state of New York . The Barnburners were successfully opposed by their conservative opposition, the Hunkers , in their efforts to send a pro-proviso batch of delegates to the 1848 Democratic National Convention. The Barnburners held their own separate convention and sent their own slate of delegates to the convention in Baltimore. Both delegations were seated with the state's total votes split between them. When
3920-468: The term slave power was distrust of the political power of the enslaving class. Such distrust was shared by many who were not abolitionists ; those who were motivated more by a possible threat to the political balance or the impossibility of competing with unwaged enslaved labor than by concern over the treatment of enslaved people. Those who differed on many other issues (such as viewing blacks as inferior to whites or as being equal, or denouncing slavery as
3990-403: The territory, slave escapes were quite common. Ultimately, California decided to ban slavery in their 1849 constitution and was admitted to the Union as a free state in 1850. Nevada would never have legal slavery and was admitted to the Union as a free state in 1864. The territories of Utah and New Mexico would have slavery from the time they were acquired by America in 1848 until July 1862, when
4060-581: Was a new commitment to free labor, and a deliberate effort to stop any more territorial expansion of slavery. Northern Democrats answered that it was all an exaggeration and that the Republicans were paranoid. Their Southern colleagues spoke of secession , arguing that the John Brown raid of 1859 proved that the Republicans were ready to attack their region and destroy their way of life. In congratulating President-elect Lincoln in 1860, Salmon P. Chase exclaimed, "The object of my wishes and labors for nineteen years
4130-468: Was already the realization, or perhaps fear, that the old economic issues that had defined the Second Party System were already dead. Their political goal was to avoid any sectional debate over slavery which would expose the sectional divisions within the party. The Mexican–American War was seen by many as an effort to gain more territory for the establishment of slave states . It was popular in
4200-551: Was among those who joined with the South to defeat an effort to attach the Wilmot Proviso to the treaty. In the prior year's debate in the House, Douglas had argued that all of the debate over slavery in the territories was premature; the time to deal with that issue was when the territory was actually organized by Congress. Lewis Cass (Democrat) in December 1847, in his famous letter to A. O. P. Nicholson in Tennessee , further underlined
4270-402: Was derived from a combination of factors. The " three-fifths clause " (counting 100 slaves as 60 people for seats in the House and thus for electoral votes) gave the South disproportionate representation at the national level. Parity in the Senate was critical, whereby a new slave state was admitted in tandem with a new free state. Regional unity across party lines was essential for key votes. In
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#17328442008354340-557: Was economically inefficient, compared to free labor, and was a deterrent to the long-term modernization of America. Worse, said the Republicans, the Slave Power, deeply entrenched in the South, was systematically seizing control of the White House , the Congress , and the Supreme Court . Senator and governor Salmon P. Chase of Ohio was an articulate enemy of the Slave Power, as was Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts . Southern power
4410-458: Was endorsed by the legislatures of Alabama and Georgia and by Democratic state conventions in Florida and Virginia . The platform called for no federal restrictions of slavery in the territories, no restrictions on slavery by territorial governments until the point where they were drafting a state constitution in order to petition Congress for statehood, opposition to any candidates supporting either
4480-399: Was expanded beyond merely the Mexican territory to include "any territory on the continent of America which shall hereafter be acquired". This time Representative Stephen Douglas , Democrat of Illinois, reintroduced the proposal to simply extend the Missouri Compromise line to the west coast, and this was again defeated 109–82. The Three Million Dollar Bill with the proviso was then passed by
4550-489: Was later used by the Republican Party that formed in 1854–55 to oppose the expansion of slavery. The term was popularized by antislavery writers including Frederick Douglass , John Gorham Palfrey , Josiah Quincy III , Horace Bushnell , James Shepherd Pike , and Horace Greeley . Politicians who emphasized the theme included John Quincy Adams , Henry Wilson and William Pitt Fessenden . The main issue expressed by
4620-669: Was men like Hammond who finally destroyed the Slave Power. Thanks to their leading the South out of the Union, seventy-two years of slaveholder domination came to an end." From the point of view of many Northerners, the supposedly definitive Compromise of 1850 was followed by a series of maneuvers (such as the Kansas–Nebraska Act , the Dred Scott decision, etc.) in which the North gave up previously agreed gains without receiving anything in return, accompanied by ever-escalating and more extreme Southern demands. Many northerners who had no particular concern for blacks concluded that slavery
4690-517: Was not so much the mistreatment of slaves (a theme that abolitionists emphasized), but rather the political threat to American republicanism , especially as embraced in Northern free states . The Free Soil Party first raised this warning in 1848, arguing that the annexation of Texas as a slave state was a terrible mistake. The Free Soilers' rhetoric was taken up by the Republican party as it emerged in 1854. The Republicans also argued that slavery
4760-572: Was not worth preserving if its protection required destroying or seriously compromising democracy among whites. Such perceptions led to the Anti-Nebraska movement of 1854–1855, followed by the organized Republican Party . Historian Frederick J. Blue (2006) explores the motives and actions of those who played supportive but not central roles in antislavery politics—those who undertook the humdrum work of organizing local parties, holding conventions, editing newspapers, and generally animating and agitating
4830-531: Was one of the major events leading to the American Civil War . Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania first introduced the proviso in the House of Representatives on August 8, 1846 , as a rider on a $ 2,000,000 appropriations bill intended for the final negotiations to resolve the Mexican–American War (this was only three months into the two-year war). It passed the House largely on sectional lines between
4900-648: Was scarce an American consul or political agent in any quarter of the globe, or on any island of the seas, who was not a supporter of the slave power.… Each embassy and consulate, the world over, was a centre of influences for slavery and against freedom. We ought to take this into account when we blame foreign nations for not accepting at once the United States as an antislavery power, bent on the destruction of slavery, as soon as our civil war broke out. For twenty years foreign merchants, shipmasters, or travellers had seen in American officials only trained and devoted supporters of
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