A

NASHVILLE CONVENTION RESOLUTIONS (1850)

Fearing that Congress might enact the WILMOT PROVISO, abolish the slave trade in the DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, or adopt other antislavery measures, southern separatists called for a convention of slave states to meet at Nashville in June 1850. The convention adopted resolutions asserting that: the TERRITORIES were the joint property of the people of all the states; Congress could not discriminate among owners of different kinds of property in the territories, and hence could not exclude slaves; and the federal government must protect all forms of property, including slaves, in the territories. However, the moderates who dominated the convention added that if the free states refused to recognize these principles, the slave states would accept a division of the territories by extending the MISSOURI COMPROMISE line to the Pacific, an extraordinary concession on the central constitutional issue that disgusted the radicals. A poorly attended adjourned session of the convention, dominated by radicals, met in November 1850, denounced the COMPROMISE OF 1850, advocated SECESSION, but proposed no immediate program. The resolutions of the Nashville Convention are thus significant principally as an indication of the slave states' inability to unite on a secessionist platform.