Prologue to Conflict : The Crisis and Compromise of 1850

This account of the failed Compromise of 1850 a decade before the Civil War "has all the suspense of a novel . . . incisive and provocative" ( The Journal of American History ). In 1850, America was expanding rapidly westward as countless citizens went in search of land, opportunity--and, thanks to the gold rush in California, fortune. With settlements growing into towns and towns growing into cities, there was an urgent need for state and local government. But the simmering tension over slavery that existed between North and South would boil over as the effort to draw boundaries and establish civil administration proceeded. The slave states were concerned about the delicate balance of power tipping in the North's favor, while the free states were wary about an expansion of slavery. The debate in the United States Senate lasted for months, and the nation waited anxiously for a resolution. This book tells the story of these events and analyzes their political complexities--and how they served as a dramatic prologue to the civil war that would erupt a decade later.

With a new introduction by Michael F. Holt The crisis facing the United States in 1850 was a dramatic prologue to the conflict that came a decade later. The rapid opening of western lands demanded the speedy establishment of local civil administration for these vast regions. Outraged partisans, however, cried of coercion: Southerners saw a threat to the precarious sectional balance, and Northerners feared an extension of slavery. In this definitive study, Holman Hamilton analyzes the complex events of the anxious months from December, 1849, when the Senate debates began, until September, 1850, when Congress passed the measures.

**This account of the failed Compromise of 1850 a decade before the Civil War "has all the suspense of a novel . . . incisive and provocative" (__The Journal of American History__).** "Bibliographical essay": p. [209]-216. Bibliographical footnotes.