In late 1849, Governor Whitemarsh Seabrook, a Charleston resident well aware of the workhouse revolt, called for tighter policing of slavery throughout the state. The Compromise of 1850 served to heighten tensions, as South Carolinians feared the federal government would not only ban the extension of slavery into newly acquired territory resulting from the war with Mexico. In fact, white South Carolinians debated seceding from the United States between 1850 and 1852, deciding against it – until the time was right.

The last chapter discusses the major contentions leading up the civil war, that is, state rights and slavery. The first part focuses once again on the disagreement over the proper definition of the people. On the one hand, excerpts from John Calhoun’s writings demonstrate the Southern emphasis on state rights and his idea of the concurrent majority. On the other hand, Henry Clay’s speech on the Compromise Tariff Bill reveals his dedication to the Union and embrace of compromise as the founding principle of the United States. Daniel Webster’s Constitution and Union Speech gives insight into his controversial support of the Fugitive Slave Act in the name of constitutional obligations. The second part presents the arguments of the moral abolitionists, with excerpts from the American Anti-Slavery Society, William Lloyd Garrison, and Frederick Douglass. In turn, the Southern reactionary defense of slavery is illustrated in selections from George Fitzhugh’s Sociology for the South and Hammond’s “mudsill theory.” The last section of the chapter offers excerpts of Abraham Lincoln’s speeches, exhibiting his political pragmatism on the question of slavery and the maintenance of the Union.

The movement to abolish the slave trade in the District of Columbia continued unabated in the latter 1840s, now with the gag rule removed. Slavery placed increasing stresses on the nation as a whole, and Congress responded by passing the Compromise of 1850. One feature of this agreement was the suppression of the D.C. slave trade, which effectively shuttered William H. Williams’ Yellow House. The chapter ends by briefly recounting the careers of Williams’ slave–trading associates Rudolph Littlejohn, Ebenezer Rodbird, Joshua Staples, Nathaniel Boush, and, in greater detail, his brother Thomas Williams.

Chapter 4 details how antebellum Americans followed the spirit as well as the letter of the Constitution. Conservative Northerners embodied the “spirit of 1787,” aiding the Southern minority on matters relating to slavery when the explicit provisions of the Constitution were not sufficient. These conservative Northerners did their constitutional duty by providing sectional balance to proslavery presidential tickets, thereby giving the appearance that the South did not dominate the executive branch. In Congress, conservative Northerners also voted with Southerners on sectional bills, blocking antislavery measures and passing proslavery ones. The most important of these bills formed the grand sectional compromises: the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1833, and the Compromise of 1850. These compromises gained the aura of de facto constitutional amendments. Unfortunately, these grand sectional compromises did not solve the constitutional problems raised by slavery; they only delayed the final reckoning. On the federal bench, Northern conservatives cast votes for and occasionally wrote proslavery decisions, including most notoriously Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). Thus, all three branches of the government established by the Constitution were affected by the sectional struggle over slavery.