Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was an effort by the US Congress to resolve a sectional dispute between the 'free states' of the North and the 'slave states' of the South. Hoping to hinder the westward expansion of slavery – and thereby limit the undue political influence of the slave-holding South – Northern representatives had sought to deny Missouri admittance into the Union unless it limited slavery within its borders. This was hotly opposed by Southern representatives, leading to the compromise: Missouri would enter the Union as a 'slave state' in exchange for the admittance of Maine as a 'free state', as well as the prohibition of slavery in all western lands north of the 36°30′ parallel, excluding Missouri itself. While this provided a temporary solution, the question of slavery would only become more contested, eventually leading to the American Civil War (1861-1865).
Background: An Empire of Slavery
By 1815, 1.4 million men, women, and children languished in a state of perpetual and hereditary bondage in the United States, the legal property of their masters. The institution of slavery was an undoubtedly hideous blight on what President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) had once called the 'empire of liberty'; indeed, in the years that followed the American Revolution (1765-1789) many White Americans recognized that slavery was incompatible with the Enlightenment ideals upon which their country was founded, summed up by the famous phrase 'all men are created equal'. Some slaveholders, like Jefferson himself, agreed that slavery was a moral evil but were worried that a general emancipation would have grave consequences – not only would the immediate release of all slaves threaten the White supremacy from which the slave-holding class derived its power, but it could also provoke insurrection, as some of the former slaves might seek retaliatory vengeance on their erstwhile masters. Poorer White Americans were also unwilling to be taxed so that the slaveholders could be compensated for freeing their slaves.
And so, the Founders reluctantly sanctioned slavery, but with the implicit understanding that it would be gradually eradicated over time. Their commitment to this goal was manifest in several pieces of legislation – in 1787, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, which prohibited the expansion of slavery into the vast Northwest Territory, and the trans-Atlantic slave trade was abolished in 1807. The regulation of slavery in areas where it already existed was left to the states, but even here, there were great strides toward emancipation. Pennsylvania and the states of New England had already abolished slavery during the Revolution, while New York and New Jersey each began processes of gradual emancipation around the turn of the century. Diversified methods of farming in the Upper South left that region less dependent on slavery, causing an increased rate of individual slaveholders freeing their slaves in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. By the end of the 18th century, the institution of slavery was on decline everywhere in the United States except South Carolina and Georgia. Racism, of course, was still prevalent, and free Blacks were rarely regarded as equal. But there was still reason to hope that within only a few generations, slavery would have died a natural death, a bleak chapter in the otherwise glowing history of Jefferson's 'empire of liberty'.
But it was not long before this wave of emancipation came to an abrupt and screeching halt. The destruction wrought by the Napoleonic Wars (1804-1815) in Europe had disrupted international commerce for nearly a generation and had prevented the mass marketing of products like cotton. In the American South, where the climate was ideal for cotton growth, planters seized the opportunity to pick up the slack. By 1820, the United States had replaced India as the largest cotton producer in the world and would provide 68% of the world's cotton by 1850. But cotton cultivation was a labor-intensive process, even after the invention of the cotton gin; consequently, the interstate slave trade roared to life again, as planters rushed to buy slaves to toil on their cotton plantations. To justify this reversal, slaveholders no longer claimed that slavery was a moral evil. Instead, they claimed that they were paternalistic caretakers who treated their slaves better than Northern industrialists treated their wage workers.
More and more White settlers travelled west with their slaves, headed for the cotton-friendly regions of the southwestern Louisiana Purchase. In 1812, the state of Louisiana joined the Union as a 'slave state,' and just like that, the westward spread of slavery increased its momentum. Though there was not yet a clear distinction between the 'free states' of the North and the 'slave states' of the South – many Northern states were still in the process of weaning off slavery – the cultural differences between the two regions were already beginning to take shape. The industrializing North and the agrarian South had been feuding over the soul of the nation since the days of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson's arguments in President George Washington's cabinet meetings. But now, the institution of slavery festered beneath the nation's surface like a tumor, poised to spread throughout the body of the nation – the only question was whether the nation would ignore it until it was too late.
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⇒ Missouri Compromise
