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Missouri compromise definition
Part of the more than , square miles bought from France in the Louisiana Purchase of , Missouri was known as the Louisiana Territory until , when it was renamed to avoid confusion with the newly admitted state of Louisiana.
In the North, where abolitionist sentiment was growing, many people opposed the extension of the institution of slavery into new territory, and worried that adding Missouri as a slave state would upset the balance that currently existed between slave and free states in the Union. Pro-slavery Southerners, meanwhile, argued that new states, like the original 13, should be given the freedom to choose whether to permit slavery or not.
During the debate, Rep. James Tallmadge of New York proposed an amendment to the statehood bill that would have eventually ended slavery in Missouri and set free the existing enslaved workers living there.
The amended bill passed narrowly in the House of Representatives , where Northerners held a slight edge. After this stalemate, Missouri renewed its application for statehood in late This time, Speaker of the House Henry Clay proposed that Congress admit Missouri to the Union as a state that allowed slavery, but at the same time admit Maine which at the time was part of Massachusetts as a free state.
On March 3, , the House passed the Senate version of the bill, and President James Monroe signed it into law four days later. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. Southerners who opposed the Missouri Compromise did so because it set a precedent for Congress to make laws concerning slavery, while Northerners disliked the law because it meant slavery was expanding into new territory.
That occurred only as a result of a compromise involving slavery in Missouri and in the federal territories of the American West. The admission of another slave state would increase southern power when northern politicians had already begun to regret the Constitution's Three-Fifths Compromise.
Although more than 60 percent of white Americans lived in the North, northern representatives held only a slim majority of congressional seats by The additional political representation allotted to the South as a result of the Three-Fifths Compromise gave southerners more seats in the House of Representatives than they would have had if the number was based on the free population alone. Moreover, since each state had two Senate seats, Missouri's admission as a slave state would result in more southern than northern senators.
James Tallmadge of New York offered the Tallmadge Amendment , which forbade further introduction of slaves into Missouri and mandated that all children of slave parents born in the state after its admission to be free at the age of The committee adopted the measure and incorporated it into the bill as finally passed on February 17, , by the House.
The Senate refused to concur with the amendment, and the whole measure was lost. During the following session — , the House passed a similar bill with an amendment, introduced on January 26, , by John W. Taylor of New York , allowing Missouri into the union as a slave state. The question had been complicated by the admission in December of Alabama , a slave state , which made the number of slave and free states equal. In addition, there was a bill in passage through the House January 3, to admit Maine as a free state.
The Senate decided to connect the two measures. It passed a bill for the admission of Maine with an amendment enabling the people of Missouri to form a state constitution.
Before the bill was returned to the House, a second amendment was adopted, on the motion of Jesse B. The vote in the Senate was for the compromise. The amendment and the bill passed in the Senate on February 17 and February 18, The House then approved the Senate compromise amendment, 90—87, with all of the opposition coming from representatives from the free states. The two houses were at odds on the issue of the legality of slavery but also on the parliamentary question of the inclusion of Maine and Missouri in the same bill.
The committee recommended the enactment of two laws, one for the admission of Maine and the other an enabling act for Missouri. It also recommended having no restrictions on slavery but keeping the Thomas Amendment. Both houses agreed, and the measures were passed on March 5, , and signed by President James Monroe on March 6. The question of the final admission of Missouri came up during the session of — The struggle was revived over a clause in Missouri's new constitution, written in , which required the exclusion of "free negroes and mulattoes" from the state.
The influence of Kentucky Senator Henry Clay , known as "The Great Compromiser", an act of admission was finally passed if the exclusionary clause of the Missouri constitution should "never be construed to authorize the passage of any law" impairing the privileges and immunities of any U.
That deliberately ambiguous provision is sometimes known as the Second Missouri Compromise. For decades afterward, Americans hailed the agreement as an essential compromise, almost on the sacred level of the Constitution itself. The disputes involved the competition between the southern and northern states for power in Congress and control over future territories. There were also the same factions emerging, as the Democratic-Republican Party began to lose its coherence.
In an April 22 letter to John Holmes , Thomas Jefferson wrote that the division of the country created by the Compromise Line would eventually lead to the destruction of the Union: [98]. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.
The debate over the admission of Missouri also raised the issue of sectional balance, as the country was equally divided between slave states and free states, with eleven each.
To admit Missouri as a slave state would tip the balance in the Senate, which is made up of two senators per state, in favor of the slave states. That made northern states want Maine admitted as a free state.
Maine was admitted in , [] and Missouri in , [] The trend of admitting a new free or slave state to balance the status of previous ones would continue up until The next state to be admitted would be Arkansas slave state in , quickly followed by Michigan free state in In , two slave states Texas and Florida were admitted, which was countered by the free states of Iowa and Wisconsin in and From the constitutional standpoint, the Missouri Compromise was important as the example of congressional exclusion of slavery from US territory acquired since the Northwest Ordinance.
Nevertheless, the Compromise was deeply disappointing to blacks in both the North and the South, as it stopped the Southern progression of gradual emancipation at Missouri's southern border, and it legitimized slavery as a southern institution. Douglas 's Kansas—Nebraska Act of The repeal of the Compromise caused outrage in the North and sparked the return to politics of Abraham Lincoln , [] who criticized slavery and excoriated Douglas's act in his " Peoria Speech " October 16, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
End of Atlantic slave trade Panic of Trial of Reuben Crandall Commonwealth v. Aves The Amistad affair Prigg v. Sandford Virginia v. John Brown. Cobb of Georgia. Journal of American History. It maintained its identity in relation to the opposition by moderate and pragmatic advocacy of strict construction of the Constitution. Because it had competition, it could maintain discipline. It responded to its constituent elements because it depended on them for support.
But eventually, its very success was its undoing. After , stirred by the nationalism of the postwar era, and with the Federals in decline, the Republicans took up Federalist positions on a number of the great public issues of the day, sweeping all before then as they did. The Federalists gave up the ghost. In the "Era of Good Feelings" that followed, everybody began to call himself a Republican, and a new theory of party amalgamation preached the doctrine that party division was bad and that a one-party system best served the national interest.
Only gradually did it become apparent that in victory, the Republican's party had lost its identity, and its usefulness. As the party of the whole nation, it ceased to be responsive to any particular elements in its constituency.
It ceased to be responsive to the North When it did [become unresponsive], and because it did, it invited the Missouri crisis of — It ceased to be responsive to the South. It underlay the Constitution and its creation of a government of limited powers In that sense, his worries proved to be warranted. The entire congressional debate of — over the Missouri Question turned on the question of federal versus state sovereignty, essentially a constitutional conflict in which Jefferson's long-standing opposition to federal power was clear and unequivocal, the Louisiana Purchase being the one exception that was now coming back to haunt him.
But just as the constitutional character of the congressional debate served only to mask the deeper moral and ideological issues at stake, Jefferson's own sense of regret at his complicity in providing the constitutional precedent for the Tallmadge amendment merely scratched that surface of his despair.
National Park Service. Retrieved July 3, Several thousand planters took their slaves in the area All were in for a shock. The Tallmadge amendment of , therefore, must also be considered the first serious challenge to the extension of slavery. The year before, he had objected to the admission of Illinois on the well-founded grounds that its constitution did not provide enough assurance that the Northwest Ordinance prohibition on slavery would be perpetuated.
He was known as a political odd duck. Nominally an ally and kin, by marriage, of De Witt Clinton, who nonetheless distrusted him, Tallmadge was disliked by the surviving New York Federalists, who detested his defense of General Andrew Jackson against attacks on Jackson's military command in East Florida.
January 23, Adirondack Almanack. Retrieved August 2, It began with congressional conflicts over slavery and related matter in the s. It reached a crisis during the first great American debate about slavery in the nineteenth century, over the admission of Missouri to the Union.
The story also offers historical paradoxes of its own, in which hardline slaveholding Southern Republicans rejected the egalitarian ideals of the slave-holder Jefferson while anti-slavery Northern Republicans upheld them—even as Jefferson himself supported slavery's expansion on purportedly antislavery grounds. The Jeffersonian rupture over slavery drew upon ideas from the Revolutionary era. It's clear he doesn't like my compromise, but he seems resigned. Within a week all Missouri will be ablaze, and the hottest place for Yankees in all Christendom.
Tornadoes occurred in Alabama, Missouri and Illinois, accompanied with extensive damage to property. He is said to be making for Kirksville, where he expects to be joined by the guerrilla bands of northwestern Missouri. From there they plan to follow Milk River to the Missouri and catch a down-stream boat. Learn More About Missouri Compromise. Holland See More Nearby Entries. Style: MLA. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary.
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