Henry Clay and Douglas Draft Compromise
Congress convened on December 3, 1849. On January 29, 1850, Whig Senator Henry Clay gave a speech which called for compromise on the issues dividing the Union. However, Clay's specific proposals for achieving a compromise, including his idea for Texas' boundary, were not adopted in a single bill. Upon Clay's urging, senator Stephen A. Douglas, Democrat of Illinois, divided Clay's bill into several smaller bills, and passed each separately. When he instructed Douglas, Clay was nearly dead and unable to guide the congressional debate any further. The Compromise came to coalesce around a plan dividing Texas at its present-day boundaries, creating territorial governments with "popular sovereignty" (without the Wilmot Proviso) for New Mexico and Utah, admitting California as a free state, abolishing the slave auctions in the District of Columbia, and enacting a new fugitive slave law.
Read more about this topic: Compromise Of 1850
Famous quotes containing the words clay, douglas, draft and/or compromise:
“Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)
“How can I live among this gentle
absolescent breed of heroes, and not weep?
Unicorns, almost,
for they are falling into two legends
in which their stupidity and chivalry
are celebrated. Each, fool and herb, will be an immortal.”
—Keith Douglas (1920–1944)
“News is the first rough draft of history.”
—Philip L. Graham (1915–1963)
“To win this war, we have been forced into a strategic compromise which will most certainly offend the Russians.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)