By Allen C. Guelzo, Princeton University
The relentless expansion of American settlement generated two major political conflicts that, in turn, overshadowed everything else. In February of 1819, Missouri applied for admission to the Union with a state constitution that legally recognized slavery. This had a direct bearing on the question of slavery and necessitated the Missouri statehood bill which eventually culminated with the Missouri Compromise.
A Moment of Celebration?
Missouri was the first state that lay entirely west of the Mississippi, in the Louisiana Purchase lands, to apply to Congress for statehood.
However, what was less obvious and less of a matter of celebration was that this petition for recognition as a state represented a challenge to the free states. It was so because the Union, in 1819, perfectly set the balance between 11 free states where slavery was either being phased out through gradual emancipation or had been barred by outright prohibition, and 11 slave states where slavery remained legal.
Thus, if Missouri were allowed to enter the Union as a slave state, that would add two slave senators to the Senate, and an indeterminate number of representatives to the House—a number artificially swollen, as northerners saw it, by the two-fifths rule. That, in turn, might give the South enough of an edge in Congress to disrupt the National Republican and northern campaign to protect American manufacturing, and weaken the demands of Henry Clay and the National Republicans for an American System of federally tax-supported roads, turnpikes, canals, and other internal improvements.
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The Tallmadge Restrictions
Consequently, on February 13, 1819, New York Congressman James Tallmadge rose in the House of Representatives to add an amendment to the Missouri statehood bill that would bar the further importation of slaves into Missouri, and emancipate any slave living in Missouri who reached the age of 25. Southern congressional delegations erupted in rage and panic.
However, the Tallmadge restrictions passed through the House of Representatives with representatives voting along virtually exclusive North/South lines. Only the equality of southern senators in the Senate, along with five free state allies, killed the amended Missouri bill there.
A Divided Congress
The House, however, sent the Tallmadge restrictions back to the Senate again. At that point, in March of 1819, Congress adjourned and left matters hanging.
The brief pause, that the intercession of Congress brought, did nothing to allay the fears of onlookers. For the first time, slavery and sectionalism had reared their heads in Congress as a matter of national debate, and almost immediately, Congress had divided along sectional lines in debating it.
An aging Thomas Jefferson wrote, “This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once the knell of the Union.”
To Jefferson’s relief, though, a solution quickly appeared in the form of Maine and Henry Clay. By the time Congress had settled back into Washington, another petition for admission as a state to the Union had been received from Maine, which had been governed—ever since colonial times—as a province of Massachusetts, but which now wished to be recognized as a separate state in its own right.
Henry Clay’s Solution
Henry Clay, who was then the Speaker of the House of Representatives, proposed to damp down the anxieties about upsetting the sectional balance in Congress by simultaneously admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state to the Union.
In addition, for the future, Clay called for the division of the Louisiana Purchase into two zones, divided by a line drawn along the latitude line of 36°30’, which—incidentally—also happened to be the southern boundary line of Missouri.
According to the Missouri compromise, the northern zone above the 36°30’ line would be reserved for the settlement, organization, and admission of free territory only. The southern zone below 36°30’, would be left open to the extension of slavery.
The Missouri Compromise
Therefore, adroitly sidestepping the partisans of both sections, Clay maneuvered this legislation through the House and greased its way through a joint House/Senate reconciliation committee, to the desk of President James Monroe, who signed it on March 6, 1820.
This Missouri compromise made the reputation of Henry Clay as a national reconciler, as a champion and statesman, not of a state or a section, but of the Union.
Was the Missouri Compromise Successful?
The 36°30’ line became the mutually agreed upon line of settlement, which was supposed to squelch the need for any further antagonistic debates over the extension of slavery.
Looking back on the Missouri Compromise, it’s difficult to see just what advantages slaveholders believed they had won by agreeing to this. If one looks at the map, the available purchased territory lying south of the 36°30’ line was actually fairly small. In fact, only one other slave state, Arkansas, would ever be organized from it.
The South’s acquiescence in the 36°30’ arrangement made sense only if, by 1820, it had become fairly widely assumed that the United States would also apply some bluff, bluster, and expand to the Spanish territory that lay on the other side south of the purchased boundary in Texas.
Common Questions about Slavery, Sectionalism, and the Missouri Compromise
If Missouri were allowed to enter the Union as a slave state, that would add two slave senators to the Senate, and an indeterminate number of representatives to the House, a number artificially swollen, as northerners saw it, by the two-fifths rule.
According to the Missouri compromise, the northern zone above the 36°30’ line would be reserved for the settlement, organization, and admission of free territory only. The southern zone below 36°30’, would be left open to the extension of slavery.
The Missouri compromise made the reputation of Henry Clay as a national reconciler, as a champion and statesman, not of a state or a section, but of the Union.
