SECTIONAL DISCORD OVER TERRITORY
Before the addition of Louisiana, the American settlements west of the
Alleghenies extended in a thin wedge to the Mississippi, having the
British Canadians on the north and the Spanish in the Floridas to the
southward. After Louisiana was added, these settlements constituted
the ligament which bound the older to the newer part. Both British and
Spanish had formerly been on the advance line; now they were on the
American flank. Invasion from each direction had to be guarded against
during the war. The strength of Britain and the fidelity of the
Canadians prevented the conquest and addition of Canada during
hostilities. But the disintegrating power of Spain in the New World
held out hope that eventually the Floridas might be acquired and the
American possessions be rounded out on the Gulf at least. It is safe
to say that from the moment of taking possession of Louisiana the
retention of the Floridas by any foreign power was felt to be an
incongruity.
The Floridas, or the western portion at least, would have been annexed
to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1804 if the
Jeffersonians had been expansionists at heart. Livingston, whose
antecedents were more Federalistic than the majority of Jefferson's
appointees, advised taking immediate possession of the Floridas upon
the assumption that they were part of Louisiana. In this opinion Monroe
concurred, although less ardently. Considering the uncertain boundaries
of "Louisiana," and that such action might offend Britain or Spain in
the critical situation of foreign affairs, Jefferson preferred to await
the process of time and the restless nature of his countrymen.
"It is probable," said he, "that the inhabitants of Louisiana on the
left bank of the Mississippi and inland eastwardly to a considerable
extent will very soon be received under our jurisdiction, and that this
end of West Florida will thus be peaceably gotten possession of. For
Mobile and the eastern end, we must await favorable conjunctures."
Never was prophecy more accurately fulfilled. Spanish power in the New
World disintegrated rapidly after Napoleon dispossessed King Ferdinand.
Americans settled with impunity between the Pearl and the Mississippi
south of the line of thirty-one, which had been agreed upon in 1795
as the boundary between the United States and the Spanish Floridas.
Soon the invaders were in dispute with the Spanish commandant at Baton
Rouge over smuggling and the runaway slaves. Complaints reached Congress
that the commandant at Mobile was collecting toll and harassing American
vessels carrying goods to and from the Tombigbee and Alabama rivers
north of the boundary. The old controversy over the navigation of the
Mississippi had come again on Mobile Bay. In 1810, the American settlers
west of the Pearl set up an independent government at Buhler's Plains
with John Mills and Dr. Steele as officials. The Spanish commandant
and governor were soon after driven out, a petition sent to Congress,
and by proclamation of October 27, 1810, President Madison extended
the authority of the United States over the indefinite region known
as West Florida. The action was based on the Louisiana claim, which
had not been relinquished since the purchase, and on the danger to the
adjacent parts of the United States in the present crisis.
A secret resolution of Congress at the same time authorised the President
to take possession of the remaining Floridas, if England showed a
disposition to seize the land as an aggressive act. Since Spain had come
under the control of France, this action was not an improbability. But
aside from temporarily occupying Pensacola, the British made no attempt to
take the Floridas during the War of 1812, although rumours of that kind
were frequent. Simultaneous with the end of the war came the restoration
of Spanish authority in the Old World and its threatened restoration in
the New. In this chaotic condition of Spanish affairs, President Monroe
ordered a band of freebooters to be driven out of Amelia Island, in East
Florida, at the mouth of the St. Mary's River, near the Georgia boundary.
The troops employed in this work remained on the island, notwithstanding
Spanish protest. General Jackson, being ordered to subdue the Seminole
Indians in Florida, who were harbouring fugitive slaves, invaded the
Spanish territory, cleaned it up in the true Jacksonian manner, hanged two
Englishmen, and "omitted nothing that characterises a haughty conqueror,"
as Onis, the Spanish Minister at Washington, protested. The embarrassed
Administration, through its spokesman, John Quincy Adams, explained that
Jackson intended only to restore order where Spanish authority had failed.
At the same time Adams reopened negotiations by which Spain eventually
ceded the troublesome Floridas to the United States for a money
consideration.
The additions of territory to the national domain, strong Union-making
elements as they are, have had a curious connection one with another.
The navigation of the Mississippi, left unsettled with Spain from the
Peace of 1783, led directly to the attempt to purchase the "island"
of New Orleans, and consequently to the Louisiana acquisition. The
uncertain boundary of Louisiana caused the annexation of West Florida,
and that success made a final settlement of East Florida easier. The
readiness with which the Americans could invade her territory, unchecked
by other powers, made Spain, in her helplessness, consent to this
treaty of 1819, by which the entire Gulf territory from the Atlantic
Ocean to the Mexican province of Texas became American soil. The ethics
of the entire transaction may be questionable. It smacks of invasion,
stretching of claims, a show of force, and soothing balm of gold. What
territorial conquest in the history of the world has been entirely
free from criticism? However, the increase of national prestige and
the stimulation of national pride which resulted are the factors to
be considered in the story of the United States.
The Florida Purchase was a second instance of bringing national prestige
to the Union by the party originally afraid of giving it too much
power. The action brought in its train as many embarrassing questions
and as many demands for the fostering care of government as did the
Louisiana Purchase. Yet precedent made the questions easier to answer
in favour of centralisation and made the steps easier to take by the
scrupulous Jeffersonians.
It is worthy of notice that the people of the Floridas were promised,
in the annexation treaty of 1819, incorporation into the Union "as
soon as may be consistent with the principles of the Federal
Constitution," no time being specified. The Louisianians had found,
as stated heretofore, that the phrase "as soon as possible" in the
treaty of 1803 was capable of a very loose interpretation at the hands
of their new sovereign. They had to wait nine years before the first
portion was admitted to statehood. Perhaps to avoid a deluge of
petitions and protests, such as came from the inhabitants of the
Louisiana Purchase when given a territorial standing, John Quincy Adams
may have invented the new phrase "as soon as consistent." Under this
provision, portions of the Florida Purchase were added to adjacent
States and the residue compelled to wait twenty-five years before
statehood was given to it. The rights of man and citizenship in the
State had again been temporarily lost sight of by the party of which
these were basic principles.
Having been converted into territories, the additions to domain came
directly under the care of the National Government. Bound by national
honour as well as by a regard for the sacredness of statehood to bestow
upon this public land such protection and such improvements as might
encourage migration to it, and thus hasten the time of full rights for
its people, the Republicans might yet have pursued a parsimonious
policy, if increasing migration to the United States had not impelled
them to action to provide homes for the multitude. No such influx from
the Old World had been seen as followed the close of the Napoleonic
wars. It was small compared with the full tide of migration, which set
in about 1845. But it seemed marvellous at the time. Fifteen hundred
were counted in some weeks, mostly Irish and English, with a sprinkling
of French and German. No record was kept of the number of arrivals
until 1820, and statistics are simply approximate.
Viewing the Old World as again under the curse of monarchy, and the
new-comers as refugees from oppression, the Republican party found
itself ready to arrange for the easiest possible disposal of the public
lands. "Let them come," said one writer. "Good and wholesome laws with
the avenues to wealth and independence opened to honest industry will
tame even Mr. Peel's 'Untamably ferocious' Irishmen! as well as suppress
English mobs crying for employment and bread, without the use of the
bayonet." Descriptions of the economic unrest in Europe following the
close of the Napoleonic wars were fully circulated in American
newspapers. The number of bankruptcies, the idle custom-house clerks,
the labouring poor applying at the different sessions for certificates
to migrate to America, the British vessels anticipating desertions by
sailing for the New World with double crews, the steps taken by the
British Government to prevent artisans from leaving, the ruse of coming
through Canada to escape question and detention--all this was delightful
reading for the American public.
Many of the emigrants passed the Allegheny barrier, notwithstanding
the hardships of travel, to make homes in the new States and Territories
of the West and South-west. Birkbeck and his colony of Englishmen came
to southern Illinois. The Rappites planted the community of New Harmony
on the Wabash in Indiana. Congress granted land to a colony of refugees
in Alabama. Numerous towns were laid out on the upper Mississippi and
the Missouri in the Louisiana Purchase. Protecting garrisons were
established far up the Missouri River and at the Falls of St. Anthony,
near the headwaters of the Mississippi, "two thousand miles from the
sea." Buffalo and Erie, names not to be found upon the map before the
war, were now busy ports with a thriving lake commerce. Semi-weekly
posts were carried to Detroit, Green Bay, and far Michilimackinac.
These evidences of the vast extent of the national domain excited both
pride and fear. Unless the distant parts could be more closely cemented,
the days of Western unrest and foreign intrigue might come again. The
demand for government aid to public improvements sprang up anew. Colonel
Johnson, attempting to take a small fleet of steamboats up the Missouri
to the Yellowstone in 1819 to open a new route for trade with China
by way of the Columbia River, was hindered by sand-bars and snags, or
"planters." Various improvements in rivers and the construction of
canals undertaken by different States were reported in Congress.
Government aid in the shape of subscriptions to stock was contemplated
in some cases. Gallatin's report of 1809, recommending the expenditure
of twenty million dollars on public works, was reprinted. The Cumberland
Road was given over three hundred thousand dollars in a single
appropriation. Two and a half million dollars were spent annually on
the navy. Various arguments were used to harmonise these expenditures
with the economic principles of the Republicans. Twenty
ships-of-the-line could be built, it was said, for much less than the
cost of drafting the militia and the losses in a single State during
one year of the recent war. Ten thousand seamen afloat would be of
more service than fifty thousand militia in preventing "a foreign enemy
ever again polluting the shores of the United States." The only danger
to this policy would be in putting such a power into the hands of the
Chief Executive; but this could be averted, it was declared, by the
ballot. National feeling ran high, as it usually does following a war,
over both national defence and home development.
In the midst of this great impetus toward nationality came a sudden
revelation of the sectional discord which it was hoped had been laid
for ever. A vast extent of territory has its advantages in wealth and
population; but it also has its dangers in the differences of climate,
products, and labour thereby engendered. The United States could not
hope to be free from this menace, common to all governments with
extensive domains, until time had proved the necessity for union, and
use had made its burdens appear lighter. Sectional jealousies had been
quieted in the Convention of 1787 by establishing "balances" in
representation and taxation. It was unfortunate to recognise the
existence of sections and to perpetuate them in this manner; but
compromise was the only way possible at the time.
[Illustration: View of the Capitol of the United States. THE CAPITOL
BURNED BY THE BRITISH ARMY. From Torrey's "American Slave Trader."
Justice looks from the sky in retribution upon a nation which permits
the slave trade to be carried on almost within the shadow of the
Capitol.]
Those who believed that compromises were curatives rather than means
of temporary relief as we now see them, must have found hope for the
future in the number of compromises in the convention caused by slavery.
As the years sped by under the Constitution, and the menace failed to
renew its formidable shape, these hopes must have brightened into a
belief that the spectre was laid for ever. The expiration of the twenty
years demanded by South Carolina and Georgia in which to get their
supply of slave labour from Africa drew nigh, and brought forth a
prohibitory law to take effect the first day of the year 1808. The
newer Gulf States in vain demanded an extension of the open door to
place them upon an equal footing with the older States. Yet the law
was never enforced, and it was always possible to get a fresh supply
of slaves even to the time of the Civil War. The blame must be shared
equally by the planters of the Gulf States, who purchased the new
slaves, and by the ship-owners of the free States, whose vessels brought
them from Africa for the profit of the trade. Cupidity will be found,
in the last analysis, to be at the bottom of much of the law-breaking
spirit so unfortunately characteristic of the American people.
The Friends kept up an unceasing petition to Congress to ameliorate
the condition of the slaves or to emancipate them. It was said by some
of the British advocates of emancipation, who began to let their voices
be heard in the States, that the destruction of the public buildings
at Washington during the War of 1812 was a judgment of God upon a
people who permitted a slave market almost within the shadow of the
Capitol. Slavery was always at base an economic question and was now
awaiting some national economic issue before it would manifest its
ugly self. The emancipation plans which had been adopted by the Northern
States were emphasising slavery as a sectional issue. It would make
even more difficult the task of balancing the two sections. So rapidly
had public sentiment accepted the inevitable in the matter of sections,
that by 1820 it was easy to repeat the fearful phrase, "preserving the
balance between the two sections."
It had been possible to preserve this balance in the Senate, where
State representation is equal, by admitting a Northern and a Southern
State contemporaneously. Thus two Senators from each section were
created. In the House of Representatives, where strength depends upon
the distribution of population, no such balance could be maintained.
The attractiveness of the back lands as they were opened to settlement,
the ease with which farms could be secured from the public domain, the
rapid development of water-power, and the increasing immigration from
Europe, caused a rapid growth of population in the trans-Alleghenian
region. In 1800, only one settler had crossed the mountains to fourteen
remaining on the coast-plain. Ten years later one had crossed for every
six remaining behind, and in 1820 the proportion was one to four. There
had been some alarm manifest in the older States in earlier times,
because the power and prestige which they had enjoyed must eventually
be reduced if not lost through the rapidly growing West. But whatever
danger of this nature was realised became of secondary importance by
1820 to the larger question of the unequal distribution of the migrants
in the various parts of the West. Between 1810 and 1820, for instance,
Ohio had increased in population 151.9 per cent. and Tennessee only
61.5 per cent. For every 319 people who sought homes in Illinois during
that period, only 87 had settled in Mississippi. The two States had
been admitted almost simultaneously and had equal attractions. Why
should the one gain more population and have more political strength
than the other? Although statistics for the sparsely populated
territories were not so available, there was no doubt that the Northern
section everywhere was being settled more rapidly than the Southern.
Under such conditions, the maintenance of the senatorial balance of
States between the sections would be impossible. Portions of a Northern
territory would be applying for admission before population had reached
the required number in any Southern part. An additional alarm was felt
because every Northern State admitted thus far, having been formed out
of the North-west Territory, had incorporated in its constitution the
provision of the Ordinance of 1787 that "neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes," should ever
be permitted. That kept the door of the Northern States closed against
the Southern slavery system. Although such action might be held as
mandatory on every State created out of the North-west Territory, it
could not be so held in States made out of the Louisiana Purchase.
Indeed, the treaty of 1803 promised the inhabitants "the free enjoyment
of their liberty; property, and religion." So strongly was the Southern
element entrenched in national affairs, and so slightly had the ethical
views of the Pennsylvania Friends affected the country at large, that
the word "property" was tacitly allowed to cover slaves. Louisiana,
the first trans-Mississippi State, was admitted with a constitution
not prohibiting, and hence permitting slavery. The act changing the
Territory of Louisiana, which covered the remainder of the Louisiana
Purchase, into the Missouri Territory, passed at the same time, left
the Territory open to slavery in the same manner. Slaves could be
legally held on the west of the Mississippi as far north as Canada.
This Territory of Missouri, extending from the southern boundary of
the State of Arkansas to the Canadian line, received its share of
Western migrants. It embraced the heart of the continent. It extended
indefinitely up the Missouri River and the Yellowstone, where its
traders and trappers came into competition with the outposts of the
Hudson Bay and the North-west fur-trading companies, under the
protection of a vast system of British troops and outposts. Still
farther to the north-west the Americans found the Russian Company,
under protection of its Government, taking furs presumably from the
Louisiana country to supply Euro-Asia. It is no wonder that American
traders began to demand similar protection from their Government. Other
industries arising from the rapidly increasing population also demanded
attention.
When the United States took possession of the Louisiana country, the
upper portion contained probably not more than six thousand inhabitants,
about one thousand being slaves. In 1810, it had twenty thousand. A
decade later, as the Territory of Missouri, it had grown to four times
that number and was ready for division and statehood. A petition reached
Congress in 1819, setting forth its claims. It was understood that the
new State would centre about St. Louis, a thriving city of ten thousand
inhabitants, situated just below the mouth of the Missouri, and that
both the Northern and Southern extremes of the vast territory would
be cut off. To make a proper line of demarcation, the Kentucky-Tennessee
boundary of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes was extended across
the Mississippi; and the "Arkansas country," which lay to the south
of it, was erected into a separate territory and given that name. A
northern boundary for the proposed state was projected westwardly from
near the mouth of the Des Moines River.
An attempt was made by a few radicals to apply the anti-slavery clause
from the North-west Territory Ordinance of 1787 to the Territory of
Arkansas; but it would so manifestly destroy the balance between the
sections that the project was abandoned. In time Arkansas would become
a slave State. It was presumed by many Northern statesmen that the
boundary line between Arkansas and Missouri would thus be accepted as
a continuation of the line between the two sections, which had been
extended across the continent with the movement of the people. It was
begun when Pennsylvania and all States north adopted some form of
emancipation for their slaves, and neither Maryland nor any State south
thought best to do so. Hence the boundary line between the two States,
run by the geographers, Mason and Dixon, in early days, became the
first sectional line. The Ohio River was made a prolongation of the
unfortunate line through the ordinance creating the North-west
Territory, which forbade slavery north of the river, and the ordinance,
for the South-western Territory, which forbade interference with slavery
south of the river. The westward movement of population now made it
necessary to extend the line across the Louisiana Purchase.
It had been impossible to decide the slavery question when the Territory
of Missouri was created, as was done for the land north of the Ohio,
because it extended over so many degrees of latitude, covering land
both favourable and hostile by climate to the system. It was thought
that about one-fifth of the population was composed of slaves in 1820;
but they were mostly in Arkansas Territory. From a geographical
standpoint, the southern boundary of the proposed State was within
half a degree of being a direct continuation of the Ohio River at its
mouth. It seemed to the Northern people a most reasonable line to
establish between the sections. But the Ohio pursues a south-west
instead of a due west course. By following it, the South had lost two
and a half degrees of territory. The Mason and Dixon line is about
thirty-nine degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, while the mouth
of the Ohio is at thirty-seven degrees. By extending the interstate
boundary line nearest the mouth--viz., that between Kentucky and
Tennessee at thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes--the slavery section
would lose a strip across the Louisiana Purchase as wide as the State
of Kentucky at its greatest width. Thus even the natural features of
the continent seemed to cry out against drawing sectional lines for
a united people. For this reason the Southern element demanded that
the continuation of the line between slavery and free soil should be
drawn along the northern boundary of the proposed State, which was
about one degree north of the old Mason and Dixon line.
The balance of power between the sections in the Senate, which had
been maintained without difficulty thus far, was seriously threatened
by this Missouri question. At the beginning of the Constitutional Union
seven States were clearly destined by their climate and occupation for
free labour, leaving six for slave labour. The latter thus lacked two
senatorial votes of equalling the North from the beginning. The
admission of Vermont and Kentucky, a Northern and a Southern State,
maintained the ratio. It was continued farther by the admission of
Tennessee and Ohio, Louisiana and Indiana, Mississippi and Illinois.
This balance had been thus far an accident, depending upon the time
when a portion of land had sufficient population for statehood; but
it had become such a tacit understanding, that the admission of Alabama
in 1819, it was said, made the sections exactly equal in the number
of Senators. At almost the same time Missouri and Maine were ready.
The latter because of climate must undoubtedly be admitted as a free
State. The former must be given to slavery if the balance between the
two sections was to be maintained. But the extension of the line of
thirty-six thirty would make Missouri a free State. The location of
States heretofore admitted had been so indisputably upon the one side
or the other of the slavery-freedom line that uncertainty was
impossible. Missouri, as has been shown, lay right athwart the
extension.
There had been comparatively little anti-slavery agitation thus far,
being confined to attacks upon the slave trade and an occasional
petition from the Friends; yet the sentiment that slavery was an
economic evil was firmly established in the overstocked border slave
States, and that it was both an economic and moral evil was believed
by a growing number in the Northern States. The "Lower South," or Gulf
States, were thus left as the guardians of a system which the increasing
cultivation of cotton in that region made unusually profitable and,
as they thought, indispensable. Missouri lay far to the north of them,
but the maintenance of political power in the Union was essential to
their future if they read aright the growing hostile sentiment of the
North. Immediate or gradual emancipation had been provided by every
old State in the North, and slavery had been prohibited by the
constitutions of the new Northern States. Feeling the approval of a
good conscience, it was probable that the North would eventually demand
a kindred movement in the South. There is no reformer likely to be so
intolerant as the one who has left off what he considers a bad habit.
The slavery system had been so thoroughly rooted in colonial times and
so freely recognised and protected in the Constitution, that few as
yet contemplated interfering with it in any State where it already
existed. Home rule and individual rights were too sacred for that.
Majority rule had not yet made sufficient headway against individualism.
But the Union had a kind of prenatal control which it could exercise
over States created from Territories. Here was an opportunity to
exercise it. An early attempt was made in Congress on the part of those
hostile to the extension of slavery to make Missouri a free State by
prohibiting "the further introduction of slavery or involuntary
servitude." It was met by a counter amendment from the pro-slavery
people jointly admitting Maine and Missouri with no such restrictions.
This would evidently throw Missouri open to slavery.
The ensuing debates in Congress, covering parts of two sessions, opened
all the sectional dissensions, showed how weak were the ties of unionism
thus far developed, cut sharp lines across political parties, and
shifted the old East and West sectional danger to North and South. The
phrase "Mason and Dixon line" was used to express the sectional
demarcation, transformed to that use, it is said, by John Randolph.
Recrimination and abuse were common. Northern speakers drew insulting
comparisons between the population, wealth, and prosperity of the free
and slave States. They attributed the difference to the blight of
slavery. Southern speakers explained that slavery was a thing of which
a non-resident could not judge properly; that what appeared to an
outsider as a lack of prosperity was the enjoyment of life by a people
not devoted to the sordid aspects of existence; that slavery was a
matter for home rule and did not concern the other half of the Union.
The Northern contingent replied that slavery was a menace to free
labour and that their devotion to all parts of the Union, as well as
their right of self-preservation, warranted their interference. Then
the Southern speakers taunted them with Shays's Rebellion, the whiskey
insurrection, and the Hartford Convention, as proofs of their devotion
to the Union. The people of New York were reproached with wishing to
deprive Southern people of their slave property, although they
themselves still held more than ten thousand slaves and held them under
protection of the State laws. One Southern speaker came very near the
truth when he predicted that the census for 1820 would show fully
twenty thousand slaves still held in bondage in the Northern States.
A long discussion arose over the number of troops each section had
furnished to the Revolutionary War and upon the number of distinguished
men bred in each section. The Bible was quoted freely to attack or
defend human bondage. Resolutions of State Legislatures added their
weight to either side. Some debaters in Congress deplored the "poisoning
of the national affection," seeing in it the revival of the sectional
envy and dislike dormant for the past thirty years. Other hot-blooded
speakers declared that this contest could be ended only by bloodshed.
Looking beneath the unfortunate sectionalism, which was to retard the
growth of the Union for the coming half-century, one sees that the
people faced a new question: had the United States a right to place
an anti-slavery restriction on a sovereign State at the time of
creating it from a Territory? The answer would greatly affect the
relation of the States to the Union. Few States had been admitted
without some conditions, such as the non-taxation of public lands and
the perpetual freedom of navigable waters; but those were of national
importance and different from slavery, which was claimed to be of local
concern. In admitting Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, formed from the
North-west Territory, Congress had provided that their constitutions
should not be repugnant to the Ordinance of 1787. That this did not
mean a rigid adherence to the anti-slavery provision was shown by the
admission of Illinois in 1818 with an apprentice system, which made
slavery possible in that State for twenty-two years to come. A motion
to reject the application of Illinois on this ground was overwhelmingly
defeated. The States of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama,
had been created out of the indefinite territory south of the Ohio
River in which Congress had pledged itself to make no law emancipating
slaves. No slavery conditions were placed upon their admission, which
was considered equivalent to an agreement that they were to be slave
States. Louisiana was created out of the Louisiana Purchase and Arkansas
made into a Territory with the same tacit permission, as has been said.
Precedent consequently taught everything and nothing so far as Missouri
was concerned.
The obligations of the Union toward a State were freely discussed;
whether "new states may be admitted by the Congress" meant "must" be
admitted. On a small scale the discussion rehearsed the Hayne-Webster
debate a decade later. Occasional pleas were heard for "the old
Republican doctrine which limited the general government to the
expressed powers and prevented it from encroaching on the young states
or on the free movement of personal property." Various phrases in the
Constitution were quoted both to prove and disprove the power of
Congress to prohibit slavery in a new State. "The citizens of each
state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens
in the several states," it was claimed, would permit the migration of
slaveholders to Missouri with their property. "The migration or
importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall
think proper to admit shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior
to 1808," was said to permit, conversely, such prohibition after that
date. The other side claimed that the clause was intended to refer
solely to slaves imported into the United States and not to interstate
migration. Under the clause that the Congress shall guarantee a
republican form of government to every State, the Declaration of
Independence was quoted to prove that freedom is the natural condition
of a republic and that slaves were held only pending their emancipation.
Such sentiments drew a sharp rebuke from the opposing side. Slaves
might even then be in the gallery, it was said, to overhear such
revolutionary doctrine.
So persistent were members in hunting up and interpreting various
phrases of the Constitution, each to suit his own views, that one
disgusted Republican protested against "a species of special pleading
which hunts for powers in words and sentences taken here and there
from the instrument and patched together forming something like a
pretext for the exercise of power palpably interdicted by the plain
sense and intention of the instrument." The cry of "home rule" for the
State of Missouri on the slavery question was the forerunner of
"squatter sovereignty" two decades later. Calhoun's later plea that
any citizen had the right to migrate to any part of the co-operative
public lands and to carry with him all his property found a first
hearing in this debate on the admission of Missouri.
The equilibrium maintained so carefully in the Senate had long since
disappeared in the House because of the varying distribution of
population. Of the 180 members who considered the Missouri question
in the more popular branch, 104 came from the free States and only 76
from the slave States. The vote of 87 to 76 by which the House finally
forbade slavery in the new State was indicative to some extent of this
proportion, although party lines influenced a few votes. Virginia stood
solidly for slavery, and New York, with one exception, against it. Of
the nineteen votes from Pennsylvania, only one was cast for slavery
in Missouri. Massachusetts was almost as unanimous. North and South
Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi, the future champions of the system,
unanimously opposed placing such restriction on the new State. The
Senate, more nearly balanced, refused to agree with the restrictive
vote of the House. A counter-measure was proposed by the Southern
interests to admit Maine and Missouri jointly, allowing home rule to
each on the slavery question. The majority in the House opposed this
method of evidently opening the new State to slavery. A deadlock between
the two branches was imminent.
Meanwhile a bill had appeared in the Senate to draw the dividing-line
between slavery and freedom across the Louisiana Purchase along
thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, a continuation
of the Kentucky-Tennessee boundary. This would make Missouri a free
State. Considering the triangular shape of the purchase, with the bulk
of land lying to the north of the proposed line, the division was
manifestly unequal. Roughly estimated, the proportions would be about
one to seven. That would mean in time fourteen Northern and two Southern
Senators. It would mean seven times the chances of population for
representation in the House. At last, Henry Clay, Speaker of the House,
who had favoured slavery in Missouri, was able to effect a compromise
whereby thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes was accepted as the
dividing-line; but the State of Missouri, which lay to the north of
it, was made an exception and admitted without any restriction and,
consequently, open to slavery. In all the remainder of the vast tract
north of the line slavery was forbidden, as it had been in the Northwest
Territory.
This extension of the slavery-freedom line ran up the Mississippi from
the mouth of the Ohio, passed about the State of Missouri, returned
to her southern boundary, and ran thence to the summit of the Rocky
Mountains. There were now twelve free and twelve slave States in the
Union. The South had gained her point in throwing Missouri open to
slavery and so maintaining the balance of power in the Senate. But she
had paid a heavy penalty for it. That she would remain content with
this unequal distribution; that the next generation would abide by the
compromise when new States were created; that the free migration of
the people with their property could be checked by a parallel of
latitude; that the question of territorial slavery had been settled
by a drawn battle, few could hope or expect.
This dissension over the simple matter of admitting a State to the
Union was a temporary check to the national feeling engendered by the
War of 1812. The spectre of sectionalism was disclosed at the banquet
table. Jefferson compared it to an alarm-bell in the night, when writing
from Monticello to John Adams. "The Missouri question," replied the
retired statesman of Braintree, "I hope, will follow the other waves
under the ship and do no harm." Yet he appreciated the dangers of
sectionalism under unscrupulous leaders. "I am Cassandra enough to
dream," he added, "that another Hamilton, another Burr, might rend
this mighty fabric in twain ... and a few more choice spirits of the
same stamp might produce as many nations in North America as there are
in Europe." The third ex-President, Madison, deplored the "angry and
unfortunate discussion" about Missouri. "Should a state of parties
arise," he said, "founded on geographical boundaries and other physical
and permanent distinctions which happen to coincide with them, what
is to control those great repulsive masses from awful shocks against
each other?" Time alone was needed to bring a sad answer to the inquiry.