Our speaker, Dick Swanson said that if you focus on just the years 1861 to 1865 you are missing a lot about the history of the period and the causes of the war. “If you think politics is a mess today . . . you would be shocked with all that was going on back then,” he said. e story begins with the Missouri Compromise of 1820 where Missouri was allowed to enter the Union as a slave state and Maine, split off from Massachusetts, entered as a free state, thus preserving the balance between free and slave states. e source of Dick’s talk is the book, America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise at Preserved the Union by Fergus Bordewich (2012). e big guns in politics between 1820 and 1850 were Henry Clay of Kentucky, John Calhoun of South Carolina and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts. Stephen Douglas and Jefferson Davis in�uenced events in the 1850s and 1860s. In 1819 there was a threat of secession because of the differences about slavery and tariffs. e south felt that the north would not �ght over a secession movement and the north felt the south was just bluffing about leaving the Union. Missouri came in as a slave state but north of the border that had been previously agreed to where slavery would not be allowed. is did not sit well with the north. In 1824, Andrew Jackson was selected by the House of Representatives as the next president over John Quincy Adams, because neither had received a majority of the electoral votes in the election. Henry Clay as the Speaker of the House, swung the votes to Jackson. He was soon appointed as Secretary of State, an office that is often a stepping stone to becoming president. From 1828 to 1832 Jackson had to deal with the nulli�cation crisis, whereby some states, notably South Carolina, insisted they would just ignore federal laws with which they did not agree. Calhoun threatened to secede but Jackson made him back down, even though Jackson was a southern slaveholder. e south felt their in�uence in national affairs was waning, although they had dominated national politics thanks to the three-�fths rule. Slaves could be counted as part of a state’s population, but could not vote. So slaveholding states had disproportionate representation. For example, in 1833, they had 98 representatives in Congress but would have had only 73 without the three-�fths rule. One historian estimated that if the south did not have this advantage, omas Jefferson would not have been elected and slavery would have been excluded from Missouri. e Compromise of 1850 was a package of �ve bills, passed

e Compromise of 1850 forestalled the Civil War

SEPTEMBER 2012

www.centralmassroundtable.org

Worcester County Spotlight

Union and Confederate armies are marching to Worcester’s Green Hill Park for a

Living History ReenactmentOctober 13 and 14, 2012

Hosted by the New England Brigade and the Liberty Greys.

Website: greenhillcivilwar.tripod.com

Continued on page 3.

Test Thyself.See Page 2

Next Meeting - Sept. 26, 7 PM, Holden Senior Center

Special Guest, battle�eld nurse and founder of the Red Cross, Oxford

Massachusetts native, Clara Barton

Dick Swanson of Holden, an avid historian of the Civil War and a voracious reader, has been an active member of the CWRT of CM for over 20 years. Dick’s father served in the military during WWI and WWII. After serving in New Guinea he was discharged as a major and resumed his job as an industrial arts teacher.

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Our June meeting ended with a Civil War trivia quiz. is year, our treasurer Ed Norris created a slide show of people and places of the Civil War. Each photo was displayed for 20 seconds. Most of the photos are below with the answers in the lower right. Can you beat the top score of 22 correct answers? By the way, Ed will be collecting the yearly dues, which remain at $20.00 for the year.

in September 1850, which defused a four-year confrontation regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). e compromise, drafted by Whig Senator Henry Clay and brokered by Clay and Democrat Stephen Douglas, avoided secession or civil war and reduced sectional con�ict for four years. e Compromise was greeted with relief, although each side disliked speci�c provisions.

1. Texas surrendered its claim to New Mexico, which it had threatened war over, as well as its claims north of the Missouri Compromise Line, transferred its crushing public debt to the federal government.

2. California’s application for admission as a free state with its current boundaries was approved and a Southern proposal to split California at parallel 35° north to provide a Southern territory was not approved.

3. e South avoided adoption of the symbolically signi�cant Wilmot Proviso and the new New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory could in principle decide in the future to become slave states (popular sovereignty), even though Utah and a northern fringe of New Mexico were north of the Missouri Compromise Line where slavery had previously been banned in territories. In practice, these lands were generally unsuited to plantation agriculture and their existing settlers were non-Southerners uninterested in slavery. e unsettled southern parts of New

Mexico Territory, where Southern hopes for expansion had been centered, remained a part of New Mexico instead of becoming a separate territory.

4. e most concrete Southern gains were a stronger Fugitive Slave Act, the enforcement of which outraged Northern public opinion, and preservation of slavery in the national capital.

5. e slave trade was banned in Washington D.C.

e Compromise became possible after the sudden death of President Zachary Taylor, who, although a slaveowner, had favored excluding slavery from the Southwest. Whig leader Henry Clay designed a compromise, which failed to pass in early 1850, due to the opposition of both pro-slavery southern Democrats, led by John C. Calhoun, and anti-slavery

northern Whigs. Upon Clay’s instruction, Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas (Illinois) then divided Clay’s bill into several smaller pieces and narrowly won their passage over the opposition of those with stronger With all the con�icts going on, by 1850 the south may have been successful with a secession movement. e north was not as riled up and lacked a strong leader like Abraham Lincoln. e Compromise was an elusive truce, a balancing act, and delayed the open con�ict of the civil war 10 years.