In the Lead-Up to the Compromise of 1850, Jefferson Davis Criticizes the North As Caring More for Money than Slavery, Strikes at the Wilmot Proviso, Mocks Southern Whigs

“…The expressions in relation to sectional questions, and the admission of states and the veto power, are said by Southern Whigs to mean, that it wants no legislation about negroes, no territorial bills”

In August, 1847, the governor of Mississippi appointed Davis to the vacancy in the United States Senate caused by the death of Senator Speight, and he took his seat December 5, 1847. He ran for a full term in 1849. At that time, citizens of the northern portion of Mississippi felt that the plum political seats had gone to their fellow citizens in the southern portion, such as Jefferson Davis, and insisted on their share. Jacob Thompson was a Mississippi Congressman from the northern part of the state, and he sought election to the seat Davis held. William R. Cannon was a Mississippi State Legislator who also served as President of the State Democratic Convention. He was a Davis ally; when he died at the age of 54, Davis, U.S. Secretary of War at the time, said, “I lost my best friend.” The contest was a heated one, and Thompson wrote Cannon apparently claiming that Davis was not a good Democrat because of his personal relationship with (and supposed support of) Whig President Zachary Taylor. Taylor had also been Davis’ father-in-law, though Sarah Taylor Davis had died some years earlier.

Davis was an important figure in the U.S. Senate during the eventful period of 1849 and 1850, in which the country was violently agitated by the question of slavery and the debates over what became known as the Compromise of 1850. He maintained that the South should be given guarantees of equal position in the territories, of the execution of fugitive slave laws, and of protection against the abolitionists. He vehemently opposed the Compromise and measures that diluted the South’s demands.

Dabney Lipscomb was a protege of John C. Calhoun who moved with his family to Mississippi in 1832. He was elected State Senator from Lowndes County in 1845 and served until his death in 1850. At the time of this letter he was president of the Mississippi State Senate. Here he discusses his credentials as a Democrat, maintains the purity of his principles, slams the North as really caring more about money than the slavery question, strikes at the Wilmot Proviso that would disallow the spread of slavery into the territories, and mocks Southern Whigs for being weak-kneed and toothless.

Autograph Letter Signed as U.S. Senator from Mississippi, four pages, Washington, December 29, 1849, to Lipscomb, in response to Lipscpmb’s letter to him.

“I thank you for your kind and interesting letter. The conduct of Mr. Thompson is in keeping with his character, except that in writing to Mr. Cannon he committed himself to an open, honorable man, one in whom he could not expect sordid motives to have an influence. I entirely agree with you as to the policy and I will add propriety of delaying action for any test which it may be wished to apply to me before electing a Senator. I may say after the trials I have undergone that I am sure my democracy will stand any crucible, and I feel that an occasion is all which is necessary to dispel the distrust which any one may feel on that point. There were many who judging me by a standard of their own, anticipated my defection from our party in the last presidential canvass. Had my own aggrandizement been the controlling motive of my political acts, as those persons seemed instinctively to expect, the affection and personal confidence of Genl. Taylor would have led me into the path which they expected me to follow, but having opposed his election, denounced the attempt by a banner without inscription to disorganize our party, and put myself uncompromisingly in opposition to this anti-democratic administration, it is stupid as it is dishonest to attempt to impose on the public the belief that I will hereafter abandon my principles for a subordinate place in an organization with which I would not connect myself when its highest position were open to me, and its prospects as brilliant as they have become gloomy. To one with whom politics is a trade this view would seem to be conclusive; to those whose creed is a part of themselves, who would feel degraded by any office which was obtained at the sacrifice of principle, such speculations never come unbidden. My friends will but do what is due to me and themselves by meeting any wish for further scrutiny into my political course by a proposition to push it to the last extremity, say the Legislature of 1851. I am serving out the remainder of a term, and under any state of case would rather be judged at the end of my tour than the middle of it.

Before this reaches you, you will have seen the end of the long struggle in the House of Reps. for their speaker. It is less than we could desire as a result, but as much as it was possible to obtain. Our people showed an anxiety for organization in which I did not sympathize. The North would feel the want of legislation… and would have become very wary of the slave question if it endangered their appropriations. It was stated here that in New York, Philadelphia and elsewhere the excitement would soon be manifested by mass meetings, and I hope it might create a public feeling against free soilism as the cause of a failure to organize Congress. The message is as ultra Whig as I ever foretold in 1848 the no party administration would be found. The expressions in relation to sectional questions, and the admission of states and the veto power, are said by Southern Whigs to mean, that it wants no legislation about negroes, no territorial bills and will veto the Wilmot proviso. If so it is something to break the shock of a message which would be very bad if it were not utterly powerless. To recommend to the present Congress a protective tariff and a substitute for the Ind. Treasury implies a total absence of all attention to its ingredients. A motion was made yesterday to repeal the restrictions imposed on the Treasury Dept. in its disbursements for the collection of revenue showing the sincerity of Whig professions…”