11. The Compromise of 1854
“The Buchanan administration had, critically, failed to organize the western territories. When Millard Fillmore assumed the Presidency, he was faced with the breakdown of order, particularly in Oregon. There, relations between American settlers and the Cayuse people had broken down after the Whitman Massacre. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman were missionaries in modern day Tacoma who were accused of poisoning some 200 Cayuse [1] while in Marcus’s medical care. In retaliation, the Cayuse massacred the Whitmans and eleven other settlers at the Whitman mission in November of 1847. The Cayuse then took 54 missionaries as hostages and fled. The provisional legislature of Oregon, which managed the territory in the absence of a formal territorial government, responded to the Whitman massacre with a call for “immediate and prompt action.” George Abernethy, the provisional governor of Oregon, arranged for the raising of volunteer militias to fight the Cayuse.
Several years of warfare ensued, as neither Clay nor Buchanan could arrange for the organization of the territory. Cayuse warriors would steal cattle and burn homesteads, and in retaliation the Oregonian militiamen would attack Cayuse villages and kill anyone they suspected of being raiders. Despite the involvement of the U.S. army, the Cayuse War raged on until 1852, when the Cayuse surrendered five men to be tried for the Whitman massacre.
The Cayuse War ruined the economy of western Tacoma and nearly caused the total collapse of the provisional government under the strain of the war and growing infighting. President Fillmore was warned that, unless action was taken quickly, things would continue to get worse. When Congress convened in December 1853, Fillmore made it a priority to organize Oregon into a territory with a formal government that could guide the region’s recovery. However, it was a near certainty that the Oregon territory would want to prohibit slavery, which would then translate into its admittance as a free state. This fact made many southern politicians loathe to allow the formation of a formal Oregon territory without some sort of concession from the free-soilers.
Senator Jefferson Davis proposed that a free Oregon territory be balanced with the incorporation of Kansas as a slave territory. William Seward led the northern Whigs in adamantly refusing to countenance the formation of new slave territories, while Stephen Douglas proposed that the status of slavery in both Oregon and Kansas be settled by popular sovereignty. An impasse loomed, as the free-soilers refused to budge and southerners continued to insist.
Into this deadlock strode, for the final time, Henry Clay. Though his health was beginning to fail [2], he was determined to broker one last compromise. The south wanted concessions, he reasoned, and the north would obstruct any effort to extend slavery. Clay proposed, together with John Crittenden and Sam Houston, that the south receive not territory, but legislation. With the reluctant approval of President Fillmore, Clay, Crittenden, and Houston introduced the Fugitive Slave Act into the Senate. The Fugitive Slave Act guaranteed slaveowners the right to send slavecatchers north to recapture escaped slaves living in free states. Further, it mandated that northern authorities assist in the recapturing and forbade civilians from harboring escaped slaves.
Seward and Sumner denounced the Clay Compromise, but enough moderate Whigs and northern Democrats were swayed that the Fugitive Slave Act was narrowly approved by Congress. Many northern congressmen who voted for the FSA were summarily defeated in the 1854 elections, so great was the northern backlash. Throughout the second half of Fillmore’s presidency, there were several high-profile instances of slavecatchers and federal agents seizing escaped slaves in northern cities and northern civilians getting into violent confrontations with police, slavecatchers, and federal agents in efforts to protect free blacks from re-enslavement. Seward and Sumner became two of Fillmore’s most frequent critics, with Sumner claiming that Fillmore had been seduced by “the Harlot, slavery.”
The Compromise of 1854 secured for the north an additional free territory, but the Fugitive Slave Act galvanized abolitionist sentiment in the north. Fillmore’s enforcement of the act, including sending federal agents to aid in re-enslaving free blacks, made abolitionists determined to wrest control of the Whigs from Fillmore and the moderates. “The Whigs must stand on the side of free labor,” Seward declared while campaigning in 1854, “or we shall never stand again.” The ultimate showdown between the cotton and free-soil Whigs was soon at hand…”
- From THE EVOLUTION OF THE WHIGS by James Welter, published 1997
Presidential Cabinet of Millard Fillmore:
Vice President: James C. Jones
Secretary of State: Edward Everett
Secretary of the Treasury: Abbott Lawrence
Secretary of War: William A. Graham
Attorney General: Edward Bates
Postmaster General: Nathan Hall
Secretary of the Interior: Alexander H. H. Stuart
Secretary of the Navy: James Pearce
“Whenever he is remembered, Millard Fillmore is known for either his unusual name or for his tumultuous presidency. And he did have an unusual name and a tumultuous presidency. But though he is reviled for signing the Fugitive Slave Act, Fillmore did have some important accomplishments. Here are some of them:
He signed the Bill for the Benefit of the Indigent and Insane, which set aside 10 million acres of Federal land to be used for insane asylums and 2 million acres to be sold off, the proceeds distributed to the states for constructing their own asylums [3]. Every government-run mental hospital can trace its roots to this bill, and the mentally ill, deaf, mute, and blind of America all have President Fillmore to thank for it. The condition of the disabled of the United States would be much worse off without the Indigent and Insane Bill [[4].
He signed several internal improvement bills, subsidizing the Illinois Central Railroad on a Chicago to Mobile route and the construction of the first Soo Locks in Michigan’s upper peninsula [5]. He also tried, but failed, to fund a transcontinental railroad, as sectional tensions sank any chance of the bill’s passage. It would take Douglas and Seward to realize that vision, but Fillmore must be given credit for attempting the project.
While Fillmore’s signing and enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act undoubtedly deserves criticism, the FSA had one important upside: it prevented the south from gaining another slave state in Kansas. Without the Fugitive Slave Act, Kansas would likely have been incorporated as a slave territory and admitted as a state, which would have strengthened the south’s power. Legislation is temporary, but the free-slave balance in the antebellum United States would have left a lasting mark [6].
James Buchanan gave thinly veiled support to pro-slavery filibusterers, including allowing Narciso Lopez to hire a small army and sail to Cuba. Millard Fillmore strongly disapproved of these foreign pro-slavery adventures and worked to stop them. He removed William Walker as the governor of Colorado Territory for funding an 1855 filibuster expedition to Cuba, and prevented John Quitman, the leader of the filibuster, from sailing out of New Orleans [7]. Fillmore was more popular in the south than in the north, so for him to shut down a filibuster, which were widely supported by southerners, was a courageous act [8]. In times of crisis, it is easy for someone to abandon his principles and seek survival at all costs. But Millard Fillmore refused to sanction the filibusters, even though it cost him the support of his southern supporters.
Was Fillmore a great president? Certainly not – he was no Henry Clay. But we should not draw a caricature of the man. We should not emphasize his faults at the expense of his successes. He did his best to maintain the union and prevent the south from gaining the upper hand in the sectional struggle.”
-From IN DEFENSE OF FILLMORE by Herman Gamble, published 1998
“Henry Clay returned home to his Ashland plantation after the passage of the Compromise of 1854, utterly exhausted. Already of an advanced age and in frail health, the tense negotiations sapped his strength. Back at Ashland, his illnesses grew worse, and his health entered its final decline. Climbing stairs left him fatigued, and in March of 1855 he fell ill with a cold. He experienced chills, among other symptoms.
Throughout April, Clay continued to worsen, and he resigned from the Senate to focus on settling his remaining affairs. Dozens of colleagues, past and present, made the journey from Washington to visit him, along with his children. In July, after a final visit with John Crittenden, Clay was given last rites by his doctor and died several weeks later in the company of his servants and sons Henry Jr. He was 78 years old.
As the Senate chamber was packed with eulogizers, the nation went into mourning over the death of a true statesman. He was buried in a Lexington cemetery, his headstone proclaiming, “I know no North—no South—no East—no West.” Rarely out of government since 1797, Henry Clay left his mark on the United States in a way that few others before or since have done. Whether people agreed with Clay or not, William Seward declared, “they are nevertheless unanimous in acknowledging that he was at once the greatest, the most faithful, and the most reliable of statesmen. The footprint of Clay upon this nation is wide and deep.””
-From THE CLAY ERA: TRANSFORMING A NATION by Edmund Sellers, published 2017
[1] Apparently, it was measles that killed the Cayuse.
[2] TTL, Clay doesn’t get tuberculosis, so he lives for two more years.
[3] A similar bill passed both houses of Congress OTL but was vetoed by President Pierce.
[4] This author is attributing a lot to this legislation, but it is a biased piece.
[5] Fillmore did these things OTL, but I doubt that Buchanan would have signed internal improvement bills.
[6] An overstatement, but again, biased source.
[7] OTL, John Quitman declined an invitation by Narciso Lopez to join his filibuster. TTL, while he still doesn’t go on Lopez’s expedition, once Quitman leaves office he tries to launch his own Cuban filibuster.
[8] Not an incorrect statement, as TTL this costs Fillmore some support with southern Whigs. This in-universe author is exaggerating it, however.
