| The Congressional debates leading to the Compromise of 1850 represented a critical turning point in the United States' sectional crisis, and were the product of a contest between differing conceptions of national identity. This study examines the actions, motivations, ideologies, and principles of members of Congress and the executive branch to determine how their respective national ideals were reflected in their proposals for defusing the territorial crisis, and how the interactions of ideological principles and personal rivalries influenced legislation that impacted the political order of the 1850s. The study utilizes transcripts of Congressional debates, manuscript collections, newspaper articles, and voting analysis. It identifies three competing visions of nationalism in the 31st Congress, termed Unionists, transformational nationalists, and Southern nationalists, and describes how the territorial crisis was influenced by and in turn influenced the development of these visions. It also examines how personal rivalries disrupted ideological and factional alignments within these categories, with consequences that impacted the legislative process and eventual terms of the settlement. It traces the development of these competing nationalist visions from their origins in the 1810s, 1820s, and 1830s, and describes how Unionism came to dominate the political elite following the War of 1812, but was increasingly challenged by Southern nationalism and transformational nationalism during and following the Presidency of John Tyler. It assesses the strengths of these groupings within the 31st Congress, and then traces how these principles were expressed during the ensuing debates over the admission of California to the Union as a state, Henry Clay's Omnibus Bill, and the series of bills that were adopted to encompass the final Compromise of 1850. It concludes that the Compromise of 1850 failed to provide a lasting settlement to the territorial crisis due to the adoption of popular sovereignty, which ensured that territorial agitation based upon these three competing nationalist principles would persist, and that the adoption of popular sovereignty by Unionism started the period of decline and eventual extinction of that nationalist vision. |
