The Missouri Compromise Postpones Crisis
The First Major American Sectional Dispute is Diffused
Aug 8, 2009
The Missouri Compromise resolved the first major dispute between North and South in American history. There had been sectional disagreements since the country’s founding, but this was the most acrimonious dispute up to that time.
Dispute over Acquired Territory
Sectional mistrust was intensified with the purchase of the Louisiana Territory. This doubled the size of the country and prompted debate between the slave and non-slave factions in Congress concerning the regulation of slavery in the new territory. By 1819, there was a delicate balance of 11 slave and 11 non-slave states represented in Congress. When Missouri (a portion of the Louisiana Territory) requested entry into the Union as a slave state, that balance threatened to be disrupted.
A House bill was introduced admitting Missouri into the Union. Fearing that Missouri’s admission would shift the balance of power to the South, New York Representative James Tallmadge offered an amendment prohibiting slavery in the new state. Since Missouri already allowed slavery, the amendment was defeated. A fierce debate ensued until a second House bill proposed admitting Maine into the Union as a non-slave state. Kentucky Senator Henry Clay seized the opportunity for compromise.
Pacifying Both Sides
Clay persuaded the debating factions in Congress to accept both Maine and Missouri into the Union, thus adding one slave and one non-slave state and maintaining the balance of congressional representation. Furthermore, an amendment to the Missouri admission bill would prohibit slavery north of Missouri’s southern border in the remainder of the Louisiana Territory. Both sides agreed to these proposals.
President James Monroe signed the bills into law admitting Maine and Missouri into the Union, and these became known as the Missouri Compromise. While this compromise pacified most slave and non-slave factions, some were dissatisfied. Former President Thomas Jefferson expressed serious concerns that a compromise that did not come to a definitive resolution would only lead to the destruction of the Union.
The Missouri Compromise marked the first time that Congress excluded slavery from a territory. This regulated the extension of slavery and helped maintain relative peace between the slave and non-slave factions in Congress for the next two decades. However the Mexican-American War would prompt a new sectional crisis.
Missouri Compromise Repealed
While territory acquired from Mexico was not subject to the terms of the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was. This created the Kansas and Nebraska Territories, and although both were north of the slavery boundary line, the act allowed the people in those territories to decide for themselves whether or not to permit slavery. This effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise.
Then the Supreme Court officially declared that the Missouri Compromise was illegal in the controversial Dred Scott v. Sandford decision. The Court ruled that Congress had no authority to regulate slavery in the territories, which it had attempted to do under the compromise. This effectively opened all territory to slavery expansion, thus irreparably dividing North and South and helping drive the country toward civil war.
Sources:
Davis, Kenneth C.: Don’t Know Much About the Civil War (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1996).
Woods Jr., Thomas E: The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2004)
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