On the Brink of Civil War: The Compromise of 1850 and How It Changed the Course of American History

A byzantine legislative package arising out of the squabble between North and South over the spoils of the Mexican War, the Compromise of 1850 admitted California as a free state, referred the explosive issue of slavery in the former Mexican territories to an ill-defined formula of""popular sovereignty,"" and instituted a harsh and bitterly divisive Fugitive Slave Law. Intended to settle sectional strife, the Compromise unraveled during the subsequent decade; it served mainly to map the fault lines that would split the country in the Civil War. The crisis receives an engaging exposition in this colorful study, part of the American Crisis Series focusing on the Civil War era. Journalist and historian Waugh (Reelecting Lincoln: The Battle for the 1864 Presidency) gives a lucid account of the interminable Congressional wrangling between Northern abolitionists, Southern secessionists and uneasy moderates of both sections, which grew so intense that at one point pistols were drawn on the Senate floor. He concentrates on the personalities and rhetoric of the main legislative protagonists, especially Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, the Senatorial orators who dominated the nation's politics in the first half of the century by patching together one legislative fix after another to paper over the widening sectional divide. Waugh's book is something of an elegy to, and a subtle condemnation of, the era of patriotic compromise embodied by this""great trio,"" whose sonorous reverence for the Union and the Constitution proved so unequal to the moral issues posed by slavery. Photos.