The United States in the 1840s

John Tyler was the first vice president to succeed to the office of president on the death of his predecessor. William Henry Harrison's inaugural address was the longest in history. The weather conditions were bad on the day of his address cold and rainy with sleet, and Harrison as a result contracted pneumonia and died one month later. The Constitution was somewhat ambiguous on the subject of succession in such cases until the 25th Amendment was passed. Article II, Section 1 stated: “In case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case or Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability ... ”

The precedent Tyler set—he moved into the White House and assumed the title and role of President—carried through until the 1960s. The United States has had the good fortune not to have the office of president vacated when there was no vice president, though there were numerous opportunities for that to happen. John Quincy Adams, however, was not pleased; he wrote in his diary:

Others in Congress were likewise unhappy with Tyler’s actions in assuming the vacated office. John Quincy Adams was also upset by Tyler's preemptive act in simply taking over the office. In the long run it was probably better, however, that Tyler behaved as he did; otherwise the selection of a vice president could have become messy indeed. (Six more presidents died in office after Harrison before the 25th Amendment went into effect: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Harding, Roosevelt and Kennedy.)

Tyler was probably better qualified than Harrison, having been governor of Virginia, chancellor of the College of William and Mary and a United States Senator. But Tyler was an “Old Republican.” As a “nominal” Whig only, he had broken with President Jackson over the issue of nullification. As a states’ righter, Tyler was therefore was bound to disagree with Henry Clay, leader of the Whig Party. Clay was miffed at having been denied the nomination for president and was in no mood to bow to the wishes of the new president.

Clay, who was now in the Senate, reintroduced his “American System” program shortly after Tyler took over. It called for repeal of the independent treasury, recreation of the Bank of the United States, distribution of profits from land sales and raising tariffs, which he hoped the West would back in return for roads, canals and other “internal improvements.” He also favored allowing squatters to occupy and buy public land under a “Preemption Act.”

Tyler signed several of Clay's bills, but he vetoed Clay’s bank bill, and the Senate failed to override the veto. When Tyler vetoed a second bank bill, all his cabinet members resigned except for Secretary of State Daniel Webster, who was occupied with foreign problems. Tyler called bills containing amendments on other issues “wholly incongruous” and had no hesitation to use the presidential veto on other than constitutional grounds.

Tyler, anticipating a fight with Clay’s Whigs, quickly appointed new cabinet members, and Clay tried to hold up Senate approval, but Tyler threatened to suspend government services until the Senate acted. In the end, all his appointments were approved. Whigs also introduced an impeachment resolution over the issue of Tyler’s “legislation usurpation” based on the belief, despite Jackson’s legacy, that the president may veto bills only on constitutional grounds. The argument was rooted in Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” The Covode (Impeachment) resolution failed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 127-84, meaning that if only 22 votes had gone the other way, Tyler would have been impeached. He would probably not have been convicted by the Senate however, since that requires a two-thirds majority.

In any 1842 congressional elections, the Whigs lost power to the Democrats and Tyler felt vindicated in his resistance to the Whig program. He was, however, a president without a party and had no chance of being reelected in 1844. Henry Clay resigned from the Senate to prepare for the presidential campaign of 1844, when he became the nominee of the Whig party.

Dorr’s Rebellion. The movement for more democratic government led to serious problems in the state of Rhode Island in 1842. A committee of disfranchised voters had held a meeting and passed a “People's Constitution” providing for full white manhood suffrage in December 1841. The state legislature then called a convention to revise the state Constitution but failed to extend the franchise, siding with the landowners. The separate groups held their own elections in the spring of 1842, which resulted in two acting governments within the state of Rhode Island. Supporters of extending the franchise elected Thomas W. Dorr as governor and controlled the northern part of the state. Samuel W. King was inaugurated a new port and held sway in the southern part of the state and declared the door party in the state of insurrection. Both sides appealed to President Tyler for assistance, but he announced that he would intervene only if necessary to enforce Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, which required the United States to guarantee every state a republican form of government. Dorr’s followers failed in an attempt to take the Rhode Island State Arsenal and Dorr, after fleeing the state and later returning, was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment but was granted amnesty in 1845.

American Foreign Relations in the Tyler Years

America has always had the luxury of not having to worry overmuch about defending its borders. The oceans provide a virtually impenetrable barrier against hostile landings, and the vast expanse of ocean makes even a concentration of sea power against U.S. shores highly difficult. Consequently America has been able to neglect its armed forces and yet pursue a blustery foreign policy without much fear of war. After the War of 1812, no foreign power placed a hostile soldier on American soil, with the exception of a few border raids across the Mexican-American border. For most of the 19th century, Americans thought little about foreign policy except as it affected trade and commerce.

Fortunately for the United States, Europe was preoccupied with internal matters from 1815 through 1860 and paid little attention to events in the New World. Great Britain tacitly supported the Monroe Doctrine, and no significant threats to America arose from European quarters until the 1830s. Relations between the United States and Great Britain were strained somewhat by animosity left over from the Revolution and the War of 1812. As the old pro-British Federalist Party was gone, Jacksonian Democrats, who tended to be anti-British, determined the atmosphere, and tension gradually arose.

Northern Americans had always hoped for Canadian independence, partly out of altruism, but partly out of land greed; occasional small rebellions in Canada were crushed by British forces, and the long, unguarded boundary made it easy for Americans to intervene in Canadian affairs. Another issue which irritated the British was the lack of copyright laws in America, resulting in American publishers sending buyers to Great British to bring back copies of popular works, which they then would publish with no royalties going to the authors. British writers petitioned Congress in 1836 without results, and some writers, including Charles Dickens, came to America to publish their works in order to protect their rights. The situation was not rectified until 1891.

Dickens was fêted in America, but then had the temerity to return home and write unkindly about what he had found on this side of the Atlantic. Other visitors found almost every aspect of American life despicable, including slave auctions, lynchings, and a general lack of law and order. English visitors saw the United States as “dirty, uncomfortable and crude,” with pigs running loose in the streets of New York City; they found fault with American habits of tobacco chewing, gambling, dueling, brawling, holding religious revivals, and other social misbehavior.

When American states and territories defaulted on debts that had arisen from heavy borrowing from England to finance internal improvements during the 1837 depression, the British press, already angry over copyright matters, called Americans a nation of swindlers and declared the American eagle "an unclean bird of the vulture tribe." Troublemakers in America stirred the pot, showing sympathy for Canadian rebels and running weapons over the border. They called the British called "bloated bondsmen." When comments of that sort were published in British and American newspapers, they made their way across the Atlantic, and it was soon said that the United States and Great Britain were “two countries separated by a common language”; each side could readily read the other’s insults.

The Caroline Affair

An 1837 rebellion in Canada was led by small group of malcontents. Given that it was a bad year for America economically, many unemployed Americans—not always the most upstanding individuals—headed for the border to volunteer, perhaps in hope of some sort of reward. Americans had sympathy for the Canadian rebels, but were also fueled by greed (the old 1812 land hunger.) They turned weapons over to the insurrectionists. A Canadian rebel leader named MacKenzie established headquarters on Navy Island on the Canadian side of the Niagara River near the Falls to recruit Americans. The Caroline, a small steamer, carried supplies from New York side.

On December 12, 1837, a British raiding party sank and burned the Caroline, sending the carcass of the ship over the falls. The British Officer-in-Charge was knighted for his actions, which outraged the Americans. The Caroline was clearly unneutral, but the British acted hastily, making no attempt to go through U.S. authorities, and in so doing they violated U.S. territory. The Caroline action was insignificant, but one American was killed (on American soil), and several others were wounded.

The American Press, always quick to defend American honor, called for the “wanton act” to be avenged by blood. President Van Buren responded calmly, but forcefully; he asked Americans to quit the rebellion and sent General Winfield Scott to the border area to mediate the crisis. The New York and Vermont militia were called into service to keep order. Protests went back and forth, but the British government in London was unresponsive. The issue rankled but was unresolved.

In 1838 the Free Canada movement started up again, and several bands of “liberators” invaded Canada. Americans burned the Sir Robert Peel—a steamboat for a steamboat—shouting “Remember the Caroline!” The British authorities captured many, some were sent to the penal colony of Australia.
President Van Buren was criticized on both sides, but he handled the crisis wisely. He published a strong proclamation to Americans to obey neutrality laws. Some U.S. insurrectionists were tried and punished, most of whom were pardoned after the 1840 election (which Van Buren lost.) General Scott personally patrolled border putting out little fires here and there, and in any case no one in the U.S. or Great Britain really wanted war. (Some Britons, in fact, wondered whether it might be time to dump Canada.)

The issue refused to die, however. In 1840 a Canadian sheriff named McLeod was arrested over the Caroline business. He claimed to have killed the American in the Caroline raid. He was arrested and tried for arson and murder in a New York State court over strong British protests. The federal government explained that New York State had sole jurisdiction, something incomprehensible to the British, who did not understand the American federal system. Washington attempted to intervene, but New York authorities stubbornly went ahead with the trial.

Lord Palmerston, British Prime Minister, admitted that the ship was destroyed under orders to stop American “pirates,” and said that conviction “would produce war, war immediate and frightful in its character because it would be a war of retaliation and vengeance.” The Canadian press grew quite belligerent—might as well fight now and get it over with. The trial was orderly. Secretary of State Webster sent a message to prevent a lynching or there would be “war within ten days.” The jury, however, acquitted McLeod—who had been drunk and merely boasting—in twenty minutes.
In 1842 Congress passed the Remedial Justice Act, which gave jurisdiction in international disputes to federal courts, but the states were still able to embarrass federal government when dealing with aliens. (For example, there was trouble with the Italian government over prosecutions of mafia members in New Orleans about 50 years later.)

Another sore spot was the Maine-Canada boundary. The so-called “Aroostook War” broke out in 1839 from a dispute over the location of the boundary line along the Aroostook River. The exact location of the boundary had been unsettled since 1783. The British were building a road through the disputed territory to connect the frozen St. Lawrence with the sea—they ran into some “Mainiacs” who challenged their rights to impinge upon their property. War fever erupted briefly, and appropriations were made. Winfield Scott was again sent to the scene, and a truce was arranged.

In 1841 the Creole affair added new tension. The British were fighting the slave trade, and captured an American ship, the Creole, that was in hands of slave mutineers; one white passenger had been killed. The mutineers took the ship to Nassau in the Bahamas, where British punished the murderers but refused to return the 130 Virginia slaves, who were granted asylum. Secretary of State Webster protested to the British and demanded return of the slaves as American property, but the British took no steps to honor Webster's demands.

The Webster-Ashburton Treaty

By 1841 tensions were still high from the Caroline affair and other issues, but in September 1841 the new British Foreign Minister, Lord Aberdeen, sent Lord Ashburton to Washington to negotiate differences. Ashburton was a good choice—he had many American social and commercial ties, as well as an American wife. Americans saw this special mission as a “gracious” act. The English in turn liked Webster, the only Harrison cabinet member to stay on under President Tyler. Webster had been in England three years earlier and had made friends in the British government, including Lord Ashburton.

The major issue to be resolved was the Maine-Canada border dispute, which eventually became known as the “Battle of the Maps”: conflicting maps were produced on both sides, including one drawn by Benjamin Franklin, and one step of the process involved scrapping of the boundaries of the Treaty of Paris of 1783. Although the United States in the initial agreement received something over half of the disputed territory, the Senate balked at the loss of land in Maine. However, historian Jared Sparks had found a map in the French archives which showed the Canada-Maine boundary marked in red. It could have been used to make the case that the British had a rightful claim to the entire area. Webster had older map which showed the same thing. The maps were used to gain consent from the senators from Maine and Massachusetts, who were in on the talks, as was President Tyler at one point.

The four-sided negotiations (Massachusetts and Maine, which had been part of Massachusetts until 1820) puzzled Ashburton, who did not see why he could not settle the matter with Webster alone; he had become frustrated with the August heat in Washington. Webster explained that whatever treaty was negotiated by him and Ashburton would have to be approved by the Senate in order to become effective, and Webster felt that having the senators most directly concerned in on the proceedings what iron out difficulties of ratification in advance.

The British were not particularly happy with that part of the agreement either, but another map suggested that Americans might have a right to the entire area. A later map supported the U.S. claim. The two Senators helped with ratification, and the Webster-Ashburton Treaty was ratified by 39-9. The United States government sweetened the pill somewhat by paying Massachusetts and Maine $150,000. Lord Ashburton also drafted a formal explanation that in effect apologized for the Caroline affair and closed that matter once and for all.

Note: The Webster-Ashburton Treaty contains a lesson for future Presidents like Woodrow Wilson, whose goals for establishing world peace following World War I were thwarted to some extent by the fact that he failed to take any senators or Republicans with him on his mission to negotiate the Versailles Treaty and create the League of Nations.

Another issue under dispute was the exact location of the New York-Vermont boundary with Canada. Americans have been instructing the fort in that area and the British claimed it was on Canadian soil. That issue was settled by use of a 1774 map and left the fort and American territory. The remaining boundary between the United States and Canada was resolved out to the area of the Lake of the Woods in northern Minnesota and thence along the 49th parallel to the Rocky Mountains. The Oregon territory was left under dual occupancy. In the end United States lost 5000 square miles in Maine but gained 6500 square miles in Minnesota, including the rich Mesabi iron ore deposits.

Considerable disagreement also existed between the two countries over the slave trade; the British wanted the right to “visit” ships to inspect for slaves. Finally both sides agreed to keep squadrons off the African coast to enforce their own laws, but a “joint police force” never worked in practice. The Oregon boundary question was left open, and was finally settled at the 49th parallel in 1846. [The film Amistad, mentioned in the previous section, also portrays some of the tensions regarding the international slave trade.]

The Webster Ashburton Treaty was a significant achievement and helped pave the way for Ace peaceful settlement of the Oregon boundary in 1846. Although the two nations had disagreements in later years, no real threat to peaceable relations between the former colonies in the mother country arose thereafter.

The Oregon Territory lay between the 42nd parallel, the northern boundary of California, and the 54°-40’ line, the southern boundary of Alaska, including all or parts of future states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana and the Canadian province of British Columbia. Both sides had long-standing claims, the claims of the United States having originated with the Lewis and Clark expedition. Joint occupation had been decided for the area of the basin of the Columbia River, known as the “St. Lawrence of the West.”

Most easterners didn’t care about the land west of the Rockies, at least until the 1849 gold rush, but some saw it as a gateway to the Orient and trade. One campaign slogan among expansionists in 1844 election had been 54-40 or fight, meaning that America wanted the entire Oregon territory for itself. The coming of the Mexican War made it clear that president Polk was in no position to fight Great Britain, and at the same time Great Britain did not want war with the United States over a remote area with little British population.

In 1841 Congress had considered building forts along the Oregon Trail, and although Great Britain angered, John Calhoun urged restraint, arguing that the nations should let settlers solve the problem. Webster and Ashburton avoided issue while arriving at their treaty in 1842. About that time “Oregon fever” set in, a result in part of the panic of 1837 and the attractiveness of rich farmland that could be cultivated year-round. As California still belonged to Mexico, the only outlet for Americans on the west coast was Oregon, which had been occupied jointly with the British since 1818. The area in dispute in the early 1840s lay between the Columbia River and the 49th parallel.

In 1845 the Oregon issue was also tied to Texas as part of the regional balance over slavery. The president Polk asserted the U.S. claim in his inaugural address, irritating the British further. Polk offered to settle the dispute along the 49th parallel, but the British refused. Polk thereupon reverted to demanding the 54°-40’ line, but he was probably bluffing. Meanwhile internal British political upheavals caused a reevaluation, and the 49th parallel was again offered an agreed-upon. President Polk referred the matter to the Senate, which recommended acceptance. The treaty passed 41-14, a reasonable solution—with no blood shed.

Polk’s Legacy. President James Polk had four major goals for his administration to accomplish:

All those goals were achieved—in terms of his own intentions, Polk was a very successful president. He also prosecuted the Mexican War successfully despite considerable domestic opposition. Yet the Whig party was still strong, and there was much discontent in parts of the country over Texas, the Mexican Cession, and other issues.

The 1848 Election. As the slavery issue still rankled, the Democratic Party threatened to split apart along North and South lines. The North rejected the extension of the Missouri Compromise line as too beneficial to southern interests, but many supported popular sovereignty. President Polk, whose health was declining, kept his promise not to run for an additional term, even though his record was solid. The Democrats finally nominated Lewis Cass of Michigan, who had coined the phrase “squatter sovereignty” or “popular sovereignty,” an idea that avoided a direct confrontation over the issue of slavery in the territories by leaving it up to the settlers themselves to decide.

The Barnburners—Democrats discontented over the slavery issue—walked out and formed the Free-Soil Party, which nominated Martin Van Buren—who favored the Wilmot Proviso,—and Charles Francis Adams, son of John Quincy Adams. The old liberty party of 1844 joined the Free-Soilers. Popular sovereignty found support among antislavery forces, who assumed that the territorial settlers would have a chance to prohibit slavery before it could get established, but it was unacceptable to those who wanted a definite limit placed on the expansion of slavery.

Daniel Webster was the natural choice of the Whigs, but a military hero was too appealing—it had worked for the Whigs in 1840 with Benjamin Harrison. The Whigs, who had no platform, nominated “Old Rough and Ready,” General Zachary Taylor, who had no discernible political positions on almost any public issue. He did, however, promise there would be no executive interference with any proposed congressional legislation. With the discontented Democrats, now Free-Soilers, again taking votes in key states, General Taylor, won the election, thus realizing president Polk's fears of the Whig general winning the White House with a minority of the popular vote.

When gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in 1848, thousands of Americans began flocking to California’s gold fields in 1849, creating demand for a territorial government. There were few slaves in California, though more than in New Mexico and Utah combined. But slavery was not an admission issue, though California passed “sojourner” laws that allowed slaveholders to bring slaves and keep them for a time. With slavery recognized and protected in the Constitution, the issue of slavery in states where it already existed was, for all but staunch abolitionists, not a serious issue. The issue of slavery in territories not yet states was a very big issue, however. When Californians submitted an antislavery constitution with their request for admission, southerners were outraged because the admission of California would give the free states majority control of the Senate.

President Zachary Taylor proposed to settle the controversy by admitting California and New Mexico as states without the prior organization of a territorial government, even though New Mexico had too few people to be a state. A California convention and had adopted a constitution that prohibits slavery, and in December 1849 President Taylor proposed admitting California immediately. The white South reacted angrily and called for a convention of the slave holding states to meet at Nashville to discuss the issue of slavery, with some more radical elements prepared to consider secession. Only nine states sent representatives to the meetings, which took place in 1850, but since what became known as the 1850 Compromise was already being debated in Congress, nothing was formally decided; yet the Nashville Convention was a harbinger of greater problems ahead.

Clay’s proposals generated a great debate. Calhoun argued for a federal guarantee for slavery in all the territories. Webster backed Clay’s proposals, and abolitionist Senator William Seward cited a "higher (moral) law" that bound him to oppose slavery. The death of President Taylor broke the deadlock. Senator Stephen Douglas maneuvered the proposals through Congress, including the Fugitive Slave Act that compelled northerners to cooperate in the identification, capture, and return of runaway slaves. The proposals passed one by one. For the time, the Compromise of 1850 preserved the Union.

Nashville Convention of 1850: Southern states (only 9 send representatives) gather to discuss future of slavery, territories, etc. [See resolutions.]