Clayton Compromise... Had Pass No War...

5fish

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This is a compromise that ever became law but maybe if it had there may never have been a civil war. It put the burden of the slavery question in the hands of the SCOTUS. It passed the Senate but was table by a select few Southern congressmen, led by Alexander H. Stephens, the future V.P. of the Confederacy...

The Clayton Compromise was a plan drawn up in 1848 by a bipartisan United States Senate committee headed by John M. Clayton for organizing the Oregon Territory and the Southwest. Clayton first attempted to form a special committee of eight members, equally divided by region and party, two northern and two Southern men from each of the two great parties, with Clayton of Delaware himself acting as chairman, to consider the questions relating to the extension of slavery.[


It passed the Senate July 27, 1848, but it was tabled in the United States House of Representatives by a coalition of Southern Whigs led by future Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens. Stephens believed that the compromise would completely surrender Constitutional rights in the territories, as he was certain that the Supreme Court would rule against slavery in the territories.[2]

Snip...

The Clayton Compromise validated the provisional laws of Oregon-which excluded slavery-so far as not incompatible with the constitution of the US or with the bill itself, subject to the action of its territorial legislature; but prohibited the territorial legislature of New Mexico and California from passing laws relative to slavery, and provided for appeals from the territorial courts to the Supreme Court of the United States that would finally decide the question as to the status of slavery in the
territories.

Thomas Ewing stated that the compromise bill (would have forever ended the quarrel between the North and the South)


To put it simply, the compromise stated that the congress should organize territorial governments for the country acquired from Mexico, neither admitting nor excluding the introduction of slavery into any portion of it. It would leave slavery to spread itself all over again. Whether these laws did or did not abolish it, or if they did, whether they were still in force were questions under the Clayton Compromise left to the decision of the Supreme Court.

Mostly Southern Democrats and Whigs supported the compromise, Northers from both parties and whigs mainly opposed the compromise. If Georgia Alexander Stephens and seven other southern whigs voted like other Southerners, the Clayton Compromise would have survived and passed.[4]

Maybe Stephens's fear of SCOTUS is why we had a civil war... If passed it would have allowed Congress to pass the buck to SCOTUS and maybe there would not have had all that acrimony of the 1850's...

Alexander Stephens was a small man...

Link: https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/alexander-h-stephens

A frail and sickly man who weighed less than 100 pounds, Stephens was nevertheless a political force, and by the mid-1840s he became a leading Southern statesman. In 1848 he was attacked and stabbed multiple times by Francis H. Cone, a Democratic judge who was enraged by Stephens’ opposition to the Clayton Compromise, a bill that addressed the legality of slavery in territories won in the Mexican-American War (1846-48).

While Stephens vehemently supported the institution of slavery, he was also committed to preserving the Union. Among other moderate measures, he was a supporter of the Compromise of 1850, a package of bills that helped stave off Southern secession. At the same time, Stephens worked to maintain a balance between free and slave states as new territories were introduced into the Union. One of his greatest victories in this respect came in 1854, when Stephens helped pass Senator Stephen A. Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act. This allowed settlers in these new territories to choose whether or not to permit slavery.


Humm. wanted to preserve the Union but joined the Confederacy... Funny thing is the Kansas-Nebraska Act gave rise to the Republican Party and Lincoln and one can say lite the fuse for the civil war... In the end what he supported led to what he was trying to stop...



 

jgoodguy

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Interesting idea. IMHO a Southern dominate SCOTUS would have had a Dred Scott moment mandating slavery in the territories a few years earlier which would have festered with the same results.
 

5fish

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which would have festered with the same results
I disagree... If slavery would have been allowed in the territories, Congress would have hide behind the SCOTUS ruling the same way Congress was able to avoid the abortion issues for decades.
 

jgoodguy

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I disagree... If slavery would have been allowed in the territories, Congress would have hide behind the SCOTUS ruling the same way Congress was able to avoid the abortion issues for decades.
However, after Dred Scot, which was kicking the can from Congress to SCOTUS, the North filled congress with Republicans so I don't think it would have changed much.
 
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