Missouri Compromise of 1820

 

Since 1776, slavery had been the bullet that every politician was eager to dodge-- after all election year was just around the corner. The Founding Father's were aware that the promises of equality and liberty in the Declaration of Independence were totally hypocritical to a nation that owned slaves. But if anyone even thought of mentioning abolition, threats of secession were thrown around. The Constitution almost didn't pass because early drafts abolished slavery, it wasn't until the 3/5ths compromise was included that the slaveholding states agreed to sign. Until the Civil War slavery just hung in the air like a guillotine blade. Nobody wanted to look up and see what was coming.

 

To keep everyone happy new states were admitted alternately; free, slave, free, slave. By 1820, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois had joined the Union as free states. Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana had joined as slave states. The balance was a nice 11 to 11 ratio.

 

Then the Louisiana Purchase created a whole new crisis. In 1803, the size of the country doubled literally with the swipe of a pen. It would take Americans another 20 years to move into the lands between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River and by 1819, enough pioneering people had crossed over the Mississippi River to give Missouri the population it needed to apply for statehood.

 

In Congress, northern representatives wanted to keep slavery out of the western territories. Southern representatives saw the North growing in population and wealth. They were already outnumbered in the House of Representatives, which was determined by population. It was only a matter of time before the south was outnumbered in the Senate as well. The fears of the pro-slavery forces were confirmed when New York Congressman James Tallmadge introduced an amendment that agreed to allow Missouri into the country as a slave state only if slavery was gradually abolished in that state. Under the Tallmadge Amendment, no new slaves could be brought into Missouri and children of slaves would be considered to be free. If this amendment passed, Missouri would be a free state in a generation. The Senate, with an equal number of slave and free state representatives, refused to allow Missouri into the Union if the Tallmadge Amendment was a part of the deal.

 

In 1820, a compromise was reached (snappily called the Missouri Compromise) which drew an imaginary line across the western territories at the 36 parallel (line of latitude). North of that line would be closed to slavery, south of the line would be open to slavery. Well, anyone with a map could see that the northern territories were much, much larger than the southern ones.

 

In 1821, Missouri became the newest slave state; and in 1820, Maine--which was carved out of Massachusetts (which really ticked off the people there) became the newest free state. No new states would be admitted until 1836 and 1837 when Michigan and Arkansas would join the union.  Texas and Iowa would follow in 1845 and 1846.

 

 

 

Fight Over California- 1850

 

The American win in the Mexican War brought new territory that would one day include all or part of the states we call California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico. The U.S. had acquired a chunk of desert real estate the size of Western Europe. Immediately, would-be settlers began wondering ‘when do I move in?’ And the bigger question on the mind of southerners was ‘...and can I bring my slaves?’

 

But by far this new land was a vast wilderness sparsely populated by Indians and a few Spanish missions. That is until James Marshall found gold one January day in 1848 at a little place called Sutter's Mill. This sparked one of the biggest land rushes in human history as tens of thousands of people, some from as far away as China, came to catch the gold fever. By 1850, so many people had moved to California that it applied-- and was accepted into the Union-- as a free state.

 

New problems arose over the California "issue". Technically, most of the state lay south of the 34th parallel laid down in the Missouri Compromise- by law it should be a slave state. But the Missouri Compromise only applied to lands within the Louisiana Purchase. No one knew quite what to do about balancing slavery in the new territories gained from Mexico.

 

Admitting California to the Union as a free state would not threaten slavery as many southerners claimed. The current president, Zachary Taylor, was a southern slave owner; half of the Supreme Court justices were from the South and sympathetic to slavery. Even though southern politicians were outnumbered in the House they still had an even number in the Senate. If any constitutional amendment had been written to abolish slavery in the United States it would have been defeated by the Senate and vetoed by the President.

 

California was a symbolic struggle. California was about the Southerner's feelings that their way of life was under attack. Slavery was dying out around the world. Great Britain banned the practice in 1807. By 1850, Mexico, Canada, most of South America, and most of Europe had outlawed slavery. In 1804, Haitian slaves rose up and violently gained freedom from their French masters.  The South felt that it was only a matter of time before their old way of life came to an end but they weren't giving in without a fight. Radical conservatives in the South, called fire eaters stirred the flames. Southern states like Tennessee and South Carolina were threatening to secede from the Union if California came in as a free state.