CONFLICT AND COMPROMISE
For thirty years after the Constitution was established, slavery falls
into the background of the national history. Other and absorbing
interests were to the front. First, the strife of Federalist and
Democrat: Should the central government be strengthened, or should the
common people be more fully trusted? Twelve years of conservative
ascendency under Washington and Adams; then a complete and lasting
triumph for the popular party led by Jefferson. Mixed with and
succeeding this came an exasperating and perplexing struggle for
commercial rights, invaded equally by England and France in their
gigantic grapple; an ineffectual defense by Jefferson, who in executive
office proved an unskillful pilot; a half-hearted war under Madison, a
closet statesman out of place in the Presidential chair; a temporary
alienation of New England, exasperated by the loss of her commerce and
suspicious of the Jeffersonian influence; a participation in the general
peace which followed 1815, and a revival of industry. Under this surface
tide of events went on a steady, quiet advance of the democratic
movement. With Jefferson's administration disappeared the Federal party
and the old distrust of the common people. State after State gave up the
property qualification--almost universal in the first period--and
adopted manhood suffrage. Slavery disappeared from the North; in New
Hampshire it was abolished by judicial decision, as in Massachusetts;
Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania passed gradual emancipation
laws, and a little later New York and New Jersey did the same. In
Kentucky, settled by hardy pioneers from Virginia, there had been a
vigorous campaign to establish a free State; the Baptist preachers,
strong leaders in morals and religion, had championed the cause of
freedom; the victory seemed decisively won, by three to one it was said,
in the election of May, 1798; but a torrent of excitement over the alien
and sedition laws submerged other issues, and the convention sanctioned
slavery as it existed. The African slave trade was made piracy by act of
Congress in 1808, though the extreme penalty was not inflicted for sixty
years, and a considerable traffic still went on. In furtherance of
emancipation, a colonization society was started in Pennsylvania, and in
a few years it had transported 20,000 freed negroes to Africa, and
established the feeble colony of Liberia. Meanwhile the first French
republic had freed half a million slaves in the West Indies; and Chili,
Buenos Ayres, Columbia, and Mexico, as they gained their independence
from Spain, had abolished slavery. The European reaction against the
French republic and empire had largely spent itself; the English
tradition of constitutional freedom had survived and promised to spread;
the Spanish colonies in America had won their independence.
The stiller and deeper current of industrial progress had moved on apace
in the United States. A new New England was being swiftly built in the
Northwest. The Southwest, too, was growing fast. The acquisition of the
Louisiana territory,--through an exigency of Napoleon's politics, and
the wise inconsistency of Jefferson--had opened another vast domain. At
the North, commerce, set free again, spread rapidly, and a new era of
manufactures was opening. The South--more diffusely settled, with less
social activity, with a debased labor class--caught less of the spirit
of advance. But on one line it gained. Following the English inventions
in spinning and weaving, and the utilization of the stationary
steam-engine, a Connecticut man, Eli Whitney, had invented a cotton-gin,
for separating the seed from the fibre, and the cotton plant came to the
front of the scene. The crop rose in value in twenty years from
$6,000,000 to $20,000,000. The value of slaves was trebled, and the
border States began to do a thriving trade in exporting them to the
cotton States--it was said a little later the yearly export reached
50,000.
As new States were organized and admitted, those from the Northwest came
in without slavery, which had been kept out by the ordinance of 1787,
and those from the Southwest, where slaves had been carried by the
emigrants from the seaboard, were allowed without question to retain the
institution. Of the old thirteen, New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York New Jersey, Pennsylvania (spite of a
few slaves lingering in the last three) were counted as free
States--seven in all; Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, the two Carolinas,
Georgia, were claimed as slave States--six. Speedily were added Vermont
to the one column, and Kentucky and Tennessee to the other, making the
numbers equal. The following acquisitions were free and slave States
alternately: Ohio and Louisiana, Indiana and Mississippi, Illinois and
Alabama, a total, so far, of eleven free and eleven slave. Of the new
Southwestern domain, Arkansas had been organized as a territory, early
in 1819, and a motion that slavery be excluded had been defeated in the
House by the casting vote of the speaker, Henry Clay.
But in all these thirty years the subject of slavery had little
prominence in public discussion. Now it suddenly came to the front. A
bill was brought into Congress to permit Missouri to organize as a
State. It was part of the Louisiana purchase, of which the Southern
portion had inherited and retained slavery; but Missouri was
geographically an extension of the region of the Ohio States, in which
free labor had made an established and congenial home. It was moved in
Congress that slavery should be excluded from the new State, and on this
instantly sprang up a fiery debate. On one side it was urged that
slavery was a wrong and an evil, and that Congress had full power to
exclude it from a State as a condition of admittance to the Union. On
the other side slavery was defended not only as an industrial advantage,
but as morally right and a benefit to both blacks and whites. It was
strenuously declared that the people of each incoming State had a right
to determine their own institutions; and it was also urged that to keep
the balance of power between the two sections, it was necessary that
slave States should be admitted equally with free. It was disclosed with
startling suddenness that two systems of labor and society stood face to
face, with different ideals, different interests, and in a mutual
opposition to which no limits could be foreseen. It was plain that with
the increase of profit from slavery all idea of its abolition had been
quietly dropping from the minds of the great mass of the Southern
community. It was equally plain that the sentiment against slavery in
the North had increased greatly in distinctness and intensity. There was
apparent, too, a divergence of material interests, and a keen rivalry of
political interests. The South had been losing ground in comparison.
From an equality in population, the North had gained a majority of
600,000 in a total of 10,000,000. The approaching census of 1820 would
give the North a preponderance of thirty in the House. In wealth, too,
the North had been obviously drawing ahead. Only in the Senate did the
South retain an equality of power, and, to maintain at least this, by
the accession of new slave States, was an avowed object of Southern
politicians.
The debate was so hot, the underlying causes of opposition were so
obvious, and the avowed determination of the contestants was so
resolute, that the unity and continuance of the nation was unmistakably
threatened. State Legislatures passed resolutions for one side or the
other, according to their geographical location; only the Delaware
Legislature was superior to the sectional consideration, and voted
unanimously in favor of holding Missouri for freedom. The alarm as to
the continuance of the Union was general and great. No one felt it more
keenly than Jefferson, startled in his scholarly and peaceful retirement
at Monticello, as he said, as by "a fire-bell in the night." He wrote:
"In the gloomiest movements of the Revolutionary war, I never had an
apprehension equal to that I feel from this source." It was a grave omen
that Jefferson's sympathies were with his section rather than with
freedom; he joined in the opposition to the exclusion of slavery from
Missouri. He had no love for slavery, but he was jealous for the right
of each State to choose its own way, for good or evil; a political
theory outweighed in him the sentiment of humanity.
A compromise was proposed. Let Missouri have slavery if she will, but
for the Northwest let it be "thus far and no farther"; let it be fixed
that there shall be no more slave States north of the line which marks
Missouri's southern boundary, the line of 36 degrees 30 minutes north
latitude. Present advantage to the South, future security to the North;
and meantime let Maine be admitted, which keeps the balance equal. This
was the solution accepted by both sides after a discussion lasting
through the Congressional session of 1819-20 until March. But the
smothered flame broke out again. Missouri in 1820 adopted a
constitution, and asked for admission according to promise; and one
clause in her constitution forbade the entrance of free blacks into the
State. This was too much for the North, already half disgusted with the
concession it had made, and when Congress met for the session of 1820-21
the whole question was reopened, and the dispute was hotter and more
obstinate than ever. The issue was wholly uncertain, and disunion seemed
to hover near and dark, when Henry Clay, who in the first debate had
taken no very important part, but had supported the Southern claim, now
threw his whole power, which was great, in favor of conciliation and
agreement on the original basis. Clay was a politician, and ambitious
for the Presidency, but he was a patriot and a lover of humanity. As to
slavery he was a waverer, disliking it at heart and sometimes speaking
manfully against it, but at other times respectful toward it as an
established and mighty fact, and even lending himself to its eulogy. In
the first debate he had advocated the Southern side, had extolled
slavery, and declared the black slaves of the South to be better off
than the white slaves of the North. Now he gave all his persuasive and
commanding eloquence, all the influence of his genial nature and winning
arts, to rally the lovers of the Union to the mutual concessions by
which alone it could be preserved. He justified the objection to the
exclusion of free negroes, he divested himself of sectional
partisanship, and pleaded with equal skill and fervor for the
compromise. He did not forget that he was a Presidential aspirant, but
he was a true lover of his country, and seldom have the traits of
politician and patriot worked together more effectively. Though the mass
of the Northern members, strengthened doubtless by the influence of
their constituents at home during the recess, were now opposed to the
whole compromise, and a few Southern extremists were against it, yet
the majority of both House and Senate were won to its support, and on
the last day of February, 1821, Missouri was admitted as a slave State,
on condition that she expunge her exclusion of free blacks, which she
promptly did. Maine had already been admitted. The excitement ended
almost as suddenly as it had begun.