Nashville Convention

The previous year, firebrand states rights advocate John C. Calhoun had urged that a preliminary bipartisan Southern convention be held in Mississippi to address the growing issue of the Federal government placing limits on the growth of slavery.

The delegates to the October 1, 1849, Mississippi Convention denounced the controversial Wilmot Proviso, a failed proposal to ban slavery in the Mexican Cession, the land taken from Mexico at the end of the Mexican–American War.

176 delegates from Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, Tennessee and Kentucky convened at the McKendree United Methodist Church in Nashville for nine days in June 1850.

Speaking for the moderate position, the presiding officer, Judge William L. Sharkey of Mississippi, declared that the convention had not been "called to prevent but to perpetuate the Union."

Thus, the Nashville delegates, while they denounced Henry Clay's omnibus bill and reaffirmed the constitutionality of slavery in a series of 28 resolutions passed on June 10, agreed to a "concession" whereby the geographic dividing line designated by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 would be extended to the Pacific Coast.