The Missouri
Compromise
In 1817, the Missouri territorial assembly applied for
statehood. Since there were two to three thousand slaves already in the
territory and the petition made no provision for their emancipation or for
curbing further introduction of slaves, it was clear that Missouri would enter
the Union as a slave state unless Congress took special action. Missouri was
slated to be the first state, other than Louisiana, to be carved out of the
Louisiana Purchase, and resolution of the status of slavery there would have
implications for the rest of the trans-Mississippi West.
When the question came before Congress in early 1819,
sectional fears and anxieties bubbled to the surface. Many Northerners resented
southern control of the presidency and the fact that the three-fifths clause of
the Constitution, by which every five slaves were counted as three persons in
figuring the state’s population, gave the South’s free population added weight
in the House of Representatives and the electoral college. The South, on the
other hand, feared for the future of what is regarded as a necessary balance of
power between the sections. Up until 1819, a strict equality had been
maintained by alternately admitting slave and free states; in that year there
were eleven of each. But northern population was growing more rapidly than
southern, and the North had built up a decisive majority in the House of
Representatives. Hence the South saw its equal vote in the Senate as essential
for preservation of the balance.
In February 1819,
Congressman James Tallmadge of New York introduced an amendment to the
statehood bill, banning further introduction of slaves into Missouri and
requiring steps toward the gradual elimination of slavery within the state.
After a heated debate, the House approved the Tallmadge amendment by a narrow
margin. The Senate, however, voted it down.
The issue remained unresolved until a new Congress convened in December
1819. In the great debate that ensued in the Senate, Federalist leader Rufus
King of New York argued that Congress was within its rights to require
restriction of slavery before Missouri could become a state. Southern senators
protested that denying Missouri’s freedom in this matter was an attack on the
principle of equality among the states and showed that Northerners were
conspiring to upset the balance of power between the sections. They were also
concerned about the future of African American slavery and the white racial
privilege that went with it.
A statehood petition from the people of Maine, who were
seeking to be separated from Massachusetts, suggested a way out of the impasse.
In February 1820, the Senate passed the Missouri Compromise, voting to couple
the admission of Missouri as a slave state with the admission of Maine as a
free state. A further amendment was also passed prohibiting slavery in the rest
of the Louisiana Purchase north of the southern border of Missouri, or above
the latitude of 36 degrees 30’, and allowing it below that line. The Senate’s
compromise then went to the House, where it was initially rejected. Through the adroit maneuvering of Henry
Clay—who broke the proposal into three separate bills—it eventually won House
approval. The measure authorizing Missouri to frame a constitution and apply
for admission as a slave state passed by a razor-thin margin of 90 to 87, with
most northern representatives remaining opposed.
A major sectional crisis had been resolved. But the Missouri
affair had ominous overtones for the future of North-South relations. Thomas
Jefferson described the controversy as “a fire bell in the night,” threatening
the peace of the Union. In 1821, he wrote prophetically of future dangers:
“All, I fear, do not see the speck on our horizon which is to burst on us as a
tornado, sooner or later. The line of division lately marked out between the
different portions of our confederacy is such as will never, I fear, be
obliterated.” The congressional furor had shown that when the issue of slavery
or its extension came directly before the people’s representatives, regional
loyalties took precedence over party or other considerations. An emotional
rhetoric of morality and fundamental rights issued from both sides, and votes
followed sectional lines much more closely than on any other issue. If the
United States were to acquire any new territories in which the status of
slavery had to be determined by Congress, renewed sectional strife would be
unavoidable.
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