After becoming president, Taylor increasingly believed that California and other future states created from former Mexican lands should decide their own positions on slavery independent of Congress. Yet with the nation equally split between slave and free states, the prospect of California joining as a free state would tip the scales in abolitionists’ favor in the Senate. As the influential Kentucky Senator Henry Clay and others labored to find a legislative compromise, the crisis steadily worsened — with some Southern states even beginning to consider the prospect of secession. Behind the scenes, Fillmore voiced support for the emerging but controversial Clay bill. With Taylor’s unexpected death, Fillmore was thrust into the presidency with little time left to get the bill over the finish line to prevent all-out disunion.
Skepticism abounded that the previously quiet, deliberative-to-a-fault Vice President could defuse the legislative tinderbox. On July 12th, William Seward told Thurlow Weed, “Providence has at last led the man of hesitation and double opinions, to the crisis, where decision and singleness are indispensable.” “Whigs everywhere greeted the potential changes created by Taylor’s death with a mixture of hope and fear,” notes the historian Michael F. Holt. As a result “both Stewardites and conservatives bombarded the harried president with unsolicited and conflicting advice.”
Fillmore voiced public support for Clay’s proposed compromise, but the bill failed at the end of July. Suffering health issues, the elderly Clay temporarily withdrew from his congressional duties, and the upstart young Senator Stephen Douglas — who would later become a key rival to President Abraham Lincoln — took charge of the legislative strategy, breaking the bill into smaller parts to ease its passage.
First, California would be admitted as a free state. Second, a strict Fugitive Slave Act would be instituted that obligated free states to cooperate with slave states in returning escaped slaves. Third, the slave trade would be abolished in Washington DC. Fourth, Texas’s borders would be clarified, and New Mexico would get its own territorial government — without stipulating whether either state would allow slavery. Fifth, Utah would likewise establish a territorial government and be able to choose its position on slavery.
The five bills — known as the Compromise of 1850 — were passed by Congress and signed by Fillmore in September. “The long agony is over,” Fillmore said afterwards. “These several acts are not in all respects what I could have desired, yet I am rejoiced at their passage.” The compromise would successfully stave off immediate threats of disunion, but it would ultimately fail to halt the slow slide to Civil War 11 years later. And in the meantime, slaves continued to suffer unspeakable violence as a result of a personally anti-slavery president compromising his values.