Gathering of a Storm: 1850 -1860

For the peoples of the United States, the decade between 1850 and 1860 was a period of an uneasy truce between the sections of the country.. While most leaders believed that conflict between the north and the south was not inevitable, concern for the nation's future mounted with each passing year. The introduction of the Wilmont Provisio, which in effect proposed to nullify the Missouri Compromise, turn the floor of the United Congress into a platform for an extended debate over the status of slavery in the new territories won from Mexico. The question of how the new territories would be organized dominated the Congressional agenda for almost four years. Floor debate became more acrimonious and by 1850 had taken on the appearance of a rhetorical civil war between the sections of the country. Although the members of Congress had no allusion that slavery could take hold in Oregon, southern members, held up the territory's admission to the Union until 1848, determined to make clear the importance the attached to the sectional balance.

1850: President Zachary Taylor dies and James Fillmore becomes President of the United States.

The Compromise of 1850, was a major political attempt to end the sectional dispute over the future of the Mexican Cession and the expansion of slavery. In an Omnibus Bill, introduced by Henry Clay, California was admitted to the Union as a free state. In the South the land received from Mexico was broken up into two states, New Mexico and Utah. In these states the settlers could decide for themselves whether they wanted slavery or not.The slave trade was outlawed in Washington, D.C. (The people living in Washington, D.C. could still own slaves, but could not buy or sell new ones.) ' Also part of this compromise was the stringent Fugitive Slave Law which said that any slaves escaping from the south
to freedom in the north should be returned to their masters. Bounty hunters received a bounty for each slave they returned. Some free black people were captured by bounty hunters and sold as slaves. Any person who did not help a bounty hunter could be punished under the law.

In response to the new Fugitive Slave Act, a mob of angry African Americans rescued Shadrach, an accused fugitive from a Boston jail.

Levi Strauss begins manufacturing heavyweight trousers for gold miners,
made of the twilled cotton cloth known as "genes" in France. Strauss had
intended to make tents, but finding no market, made a fortune in pants instead.

California enters the Union as a free state.

The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty is signed. The United States and Britain agreed to neutrality of canal project across the Isthmus of Panama. Neither country is to occupy any part of Central America.

The first overland mail delivery west of the Missouri River is organized on a monthly basis from Independence, Mo. to Salt Lake city, Utah.

The first national convention of women advocating woman suffrage is held in Worcester, Massachusetts. In July the first woman's rights convention meetings in Seneca Falls, New York.
1852: Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, galvanizes public opinion against slavery and stiffens its defenders in the South.

Democrats and Whigs adopt party platforms accepting the Compromise of 1850.

Franklin Pierce and William R. King are elected President and Vice President respectively, on the Democratic ticket.

More than 20,000 Chinese immigrants come to America. All but 17 arrive in San Francisco to joining the search for gold. Most are part of a Cantonese emigrant labor pool that has worked throughout South Asia for generations, and they view California as but another place to practice their itinerant trade. In most cases, they arrive indebted to Chinese merchants who have paid for their passage, and this network of debt, reinforced by village and kinship loyalties, makes the immigrant Chinese community highly organized and, at the same time, keeps it insulated from mainstream American society. Thus, even in the remotest mining camp, the Chinese live within a system of obligations that links back to their home.
1853: Mexico agrees to the Gadsden Purchase, selling a strip of land running along Mexico's northern border between Texas and California for $10 million. Intended as the route for a railroad connecting the Mississippi to the Pacific, the territory goes undeveloped when the approach of the Civil War causes the project to be put aside.

Congress authorizes the coinage of three-dollar gold pieces and reduces the amount of silver in all coins except the silver dollar.