The territory now covered by the States of Tennessee, Alabama, and
Mississippi, was ceded to the United States by North Carolina and
Georgia prior to 1803, and accepted by the United States, on the
condition that Congress should extend over it a government, and
ultimately divide it into States, on the principles of the ordinance of
1787, _except as to slavery_, and territorial governments were
afterwards organized over it as slave territory. While, therefore,
Congress had in 1787 assumed, by a compact of the original States, to
prohibit slavery north-west of the Ohio River, it had also within twelve
years after the adoption of the ordinance of 1787 and the Constitution,
by express contract agreed not to prohibit it in all territory south of
the Ohio, and by the admission of Kentucky and Tennessee as Slave States
prior to 1800, could not prohibit it there.
Up then to the time of the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, the Ohio River
was the compromise line between free and slave territory--_a line of
agreement_, rather than arbitrary legislation.
Louisiana was all slave territory, and by the 3d article of the treaty
for its acquisition, its inhabitants were to come into the Union as soon
as possible on equal terms with other citizens, and in the meantime
their rights of religion, liberty and property were to be maintained and
protected.
In this territory, the boundaries of which were subsequently defined by
treaties with Spain and Great Britain, were included the present States
of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon, and the
territories of Kansas, Nebraska, &c.
Soon after this acquisition, territorial governments were organized over
the southern portion of the territory, without prohibition of slavery.
In 1812, Louisiana was admitted as a Slave State, and Arkansas and
Missouri were subsequently organized as territories without prohibition
of slavery.
In 1819, Florida was acquired by treaty with Spain, with the same
stipulation, as in the treaty in regard to Louisiana, that the
inhabitants were to have the rights and privileges of citizens of the
United States and be admitted into the Union; and soon after the
territory of Florida was organized without prohibition of slavery.
From 1787 until the Missouri question came up, no successful attempt was
made by Congress to prohibit slavery in any territory of the United
States. In 1817, Missouri applied for admission to the Union. Her
admission as a Slave State was strenuously contested, and to the act
authorizing her to form a State Constitution was appended a provision
applying the 6th or anti-slavery section of the ordinance of 1787 to all
the territory ceded by Louisiana, outside of the limits of Missouri, and
north of 36 deg. 30 min. north latitude, or the southern boundary of
Missouri. The adoption of this act, fixing a geographical line between
Free States and Slave States, has been called a compromise. The
proposition was beyond doubt made in the spirit of compromise, and
received the support of compromise men, but the North who insisted upon
the exclusion of Missouri with a slave constitution, generally voted
against the act in its final passage, and the South, for the sake of
getting Missouri in with a slave constitution, as generally voted for
it. The compromise was not acceptable to either side, and when Missouri
presented her Constitution in 1821 for the approval of Congress, her
admission was again opposed by Northern men, and made conditional upon
her declaration by solemn act of her legislature, that a clause of her
Constitution relating to free negroes and mulattoes, should not be
construed to authorize any law violating the privileges and immunities
of any citizen of either of the States of the Union, under the
Constitution of the United States. Missouri made the declaration
required, and by proclamation of the President, became a State on August
10th, 1821. The resolution of Congress of 2d March, 1821, was beyond
doubt the real condition or compromise upon which Missouri was admitted,
and it was in this compromise and not in that of 1820, that Henry Clay
took part. Strange as it may seem; it is nevertheless true, that
notwithstanding the alleged compromise of 1820, an attempt was made in
1821 by Northern men in Congress to override that compromise,--that
"sacred compact," that "plighted faith," that "landmark of
freedom,"--and to keep Missouri out of the Union, because she had
adopted in her Constitution a provision to prevent free negroes or
mulattoes from coming to or settling in the State--a provision which is
contained in the present Constitutions of Indiana and Illinois, and has
been enforced in Constitutions or legislation of other Northern States,
and was sanctioned by the people of Indiana in 1851, when submitted to
them as a distinct proposition, by a vote of 100,976 for it, to 21,066
against it. By that vote, Indiana as late as 1851 affirmed that Missouri
was right and Congress wrong in the great conflict of 1821.
The high and sacred character of a national compact has been claimed for
the Missouri act of 6th March, 1820. No man who will calmly and
intelligently and without prejudice examine its history, can fail to see
that however expedient it might have been at the time, there is no
compact--no sacred character about it. Looking on the whole question as
one of constitutional power and policy, I am free to say I think the
South and not the North were in the right in the Missouri controversy.
What are the plain facts? In 1803 the territory embracing Missouri had
been acquired as slave territory. It had been organized by Congress in
1804 as slave territory. The inhabitants under the foreign and
territorial law had acquired and held slaves, as rightfully as they were
held in any State. No prohibition of slavery had been extended over the
territory. By the treaty with France and the settled policy of the
Federal government, the territory of Missouri, when it had attained a
sufficient population, was entitled to admission as a State on an equal
footing with the original States. In 1817 Missouri asked of Congress
authority to form a State Constitution, preparatory to her admission to
the Union. Her case was in all its cardinal and essential features
precisely parallel to that of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and
Louisiana, which had already been admitted as Slave States without
question, and how was she met? Northern men in Congress, in effect said
to her, if you choose to come into the Union as a Free State, we will
let you in; if not, we will keep you out, and under our arbitrary power
of government, until you get rid of your slaves. We don't believe in
slavery, and don't mean to have any more barbarian slaveholders in our
company. Northern men in Congress, in violation of the spirit and policy
of the Constitution, which recognized slavery as a purely local
institution, endeavored to compel a full grown sovereign State to
abolish slavery. That is the whole point of the case. It is not
surprising that this position and attempt of the North should have
awakened a spirit of resistance in the South that shook the Union to
its very center. Whatever might be the opinion of Northern men as to the
power of Congress over slavery in the territories, or as to the
expediency of prohibiting it, it was too late to apply their doctrine to
Missouri. She was ripe for admission to the Union as a State, with
domestic institutions formed to suit her people, and formed, too, under
the eye and sanction of Congress, and Congress had no right to make her
State sovereignty dependent on the carrying out _as to other territory_,
of the Northern idea of prohibiting slavery. The case of Missouri should
have been decided on its own merits.
In view of all the facts, and of its proposed restraint upon the
constitutional power of new States besides Missouri, I fully believe the
Supreme Court of the United States correctly laid down the law in the
Dred Scott decision, declaring the 8th section of the act of 6th March,
1820, being the prohibition of slavery, to be unconstitutional and void,
for the simple reason that it was the right _of the people_ of those new
States to make a constitution or laws for or against slavery as they saw
fit, and not the right of the Congress, which has no power under its own
Constitution to make State Constitutions.
The principle of compromise embraced in the Missouri line, whether legal
or not, calmed the agitation of the question of slavery, which had,
during the Missouri struggle, assumed a dangerous form. It shut out
slavery in the vast region north of 36 deg. 30 min., not adapted to
slave labor, and permitted it south of that line where slavery had taken
or was likely to take root. Therefore when Arkansas applied in 1836 for
admission as a Slave State, she came in without serious controversy,
though northern opposition in Congress was not even then silent.
Between the establishment of Texan independence in 1836 and her
annexation to the United States in 1845, in view of the latter event,
the question of slavery extension became one of absorbing interest to
the nation. The Democratic party recognized it in the 7th article of
their platform in their National Convention of 1840, taking the true
ground of non-intervention by Congress. In 1843 the Liberty party, so
called, organized upon the distinct ground of opposition to slavery. In
1844 the Democratic party reaffirmed their platform of 1840, and
declared in favor of annexing Texas, and its candidates were sustained
by the people. In 1845 the Congressional agitation was resumed on the
question of annexing Texas. It resulted in the annexation, upon the
compromise of extending the Missouri compromise line of 36 deg. 30 min.
across the Texan territory, leaving a disputed boundary north of that
line, which was adjusted in 1850 by making 36 deg. 30 min. the north
boundary of Texas.
In 1846 the question of prohibition again came up in Congress on the
bill to organize a territorial government for Oregon, and was kept in
agitation until Oregon was forced, for self-protection to form a
provisional government; and after a proposition of Mr. Douglas,
sustained by the Senate, to extend the Missouri compromise line to the
Pacific, had been voted down in the House by northern votes, the Oregon
bill was finally passed in 1848, with the proviso of the ordinance of
1787 against slavery, the South voting in a body against its
passage--not because they expected slavery to go there, but because they
wanted the Missouri line of compromise extended to the Pacific.
In 1846 and 1847 the slavery agitation raged fiercely in the nation and
in Congress upon the question of applying a slavery prohibition in the
form known as the Wilmot proviso to all the territory to be acquired
from Mexico under the treaty, the negotiations for which were then
pending. The Wilmot proviso was voted down, and the treaty was
consummated Feb. 2, 1848, and Mexican territory, embracing California,
Utah and New Mexico was acquired without prohibition of slavery, but the
territory was free under the Mexican law, and all Mexican inhabitants
who should elect to become citizens of the United States, were entitled
to become so at the proper time to be judged of by Congress, and to be
incorporated into the Federal Union according to the principles of the
Constitution.
At the commencement of the session of the XXXIst Congress in 1849, the
slavery agitation had reached a degree of intensity before unknown. The
territory acquired from Mexico, in consequence of this agitation had
been left without civil government. California, full of northern
emigrants in search of gold, had in the absence of any action of
Congress, exercised her inherent right of self-government and formed a
State Constitution prohibiting slavery, and was asking admission to the
Union. Utah and New Mexico were ripe for territorial governments. The
Texan boundary was unsettled. The South was opposing the admission of
California as a Free State and insisting on its division, and demanding
the distinct legalization of slavery in the territories south of the
Missouri line of 36 deg. 30 min., and the extension of that line to the
Pacific, and demanding also a more stringent fugitive slave law, and the
North was demanding the admission of California and the establishment of
the Wilmot proviso over all the territory to be organized, and demanding
also the immediate abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.
The contest for speaker in the House continued from the 3d to the 22d
December, 1849, resulting in the election of Howell Cobb over R. C.
Winthrop. So ominous of trouble were the signs of the political sky,
that President Taylor, in his annual message, took occasion to caution
the Congress against the introduction of topics of a sectional
character, and to repeat the solemn warning of Washington against
furnishing any ground for characterizing parties by geographical
discriminations.
The history of the legislation of 1850 is too well known to need detail
here. It resulted in another compromise, by which six important measures
all involving the slavery question were adopted. These were