THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE (1819-1821)
In the dark period of the commercial crisis of 1819, while Congress
was considering the admission of Missouri, the slavery issue flamed
out, and revealed with startling distinctness the political
significance of the institution, fateful and ominous for the nation,
transcending in importance the temporary financial and industrial
ills.
The advance of settlement in the United States made the slavery
contest a struggle for power between sections, marching in parallel
columns into the west, each carrying its own system of labor.
[Footnote: For previous questions of slavery, see Channing,
Jeffersonian System (Am. Nation, XII.), chap. viii.] By 1819 the
various states of the north, under favorable conditions of climate
and industrial life, had either completely extinguished slavery or
were in the process of emancipation [Footnote: See map, p. 6.] and
by the Ordinance of 1787 the old Congress had excluded the
institution in the territory north of the Ohio River. Thus Mason and
Dixon's line and the Ohio made a boundary between the slave-holding
and the free streams of population that flowed into the Mississippi
Valley. Not that this line was a complete barrier: the Ordinance of
1787 was not construed to free the slaves already in the old French
towns of the territory; and many southern masters brought their
slaves into Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois by virtue of laws which
provided for them under the fiction of indented servants. [Footnote:
Harris, Negro Servitude in Ill., 10; Durm, Indiana, chaps. ix., x.]
Indeed, several efforts were made in the territory of Indiana at the
beginning of the nineteenth century to rescind the prohibition of
1787; but to this petition Congress, under the strange leadership of
John Randolph, gave a negative; [Footnote: Ibid., chap, xii.;
Hinsdale, Old Northwest, chap, xviii.] and, after a struggle between
the southern slavery and antislavery elements by which the state had
been settled, Indiana entered the Union in 1816 as a free state,
under an agreement not to violate the Ordinance of 1787.
Illinois, on her admission in 1818, also guaranteed the provisions
of the Ordinance of 1787, and, not without a contest, included in
her constitution an article preventing the introduction of slavery,
but so worded that the system of indenture of Negro servants was
continued in a modified form. The issue of slavery still continued
to influence Illinois elections, and, as the inhabitants saw well-
to-do planters pass with their slaves across the state to recruit
the property and population of Missouri, a movement (1823-1824) in
favor of revising their constitution so as to admit slavery required
the most vigorous opposition to hold the state to freedom. The
leader of the antislavery forces in Illinois was a Virginian,
Governor Coles (once private secretary to President Madison), who
had migrated to free his slaves after he became convinced that it
was hopeless to make the fight which Jefferson advised him to carry
on in favor of gradual emancipation in his native state. [Footnote:
Harris, Negro Servitude in III., chap. iv.; Washburne, Coles, chaps,
iii., v.] In both Indiana and Illinois, the strength of the
opposition to slavery and indented servitude came from the poorer
whites, particularly from the Quaker and Baptist elements of the
southern stock, and from the northern settlers.
In Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, ever since the decline of
the tobacco culture, a strong opposition to slavery had existed,
shown in the votes of those states on the Ordinance of 1787, and in
the fact that as late as 1827 the great majority of the abolition
societies of the United States were to be found in this region.
[Footnote: Dunn, Indiana, 190; Bassettin Johns Hopkins Univ.
Studies, XVI., No. vi.; cf. Hart, Slavery and Abolition (Am. Nation,
XVI.), chap. xi.] But the problem of dealing with the free Negro
weighed upon the south. Even in the north these people were
unwelcome. They frequently became a charge upon the community, and
they were placed under numerous disabilities. [Footnote: McMaster,
United States, IV., 558; Gordy, Political Hist, of U. S., II., 405.]
The idea of deporting freedmen from the United States found support
both among the humanitarians, who saw in it a step towards general
emancipation, and among the slave-holders who viewed the increase of
the free Negroes with apprehension. To promote this solution of the
problem, the Colonization Society [Footnote: McPherson, Liberia;
McMaster, United States, IV., 556 et seq.] was incorporated in 1816,
and it found support, not only from antislavery agitators like
Lundy, who edited the "Genius of Universal Emancipation" at
Baltimore, but also from slave-holders like Jefferson, Clay, and
Randolph. It was the design of this society to found on the coast of
Africa a colony of free blacks, brought from the United States.
Although, after unsuccessful efforts, Liberia was finally
established in the twenties, with the assistance of the general
government (but not under its jurisdiction), it never promoted state
emancipation. Nevertheless, at first it met with much sympathy in
Virginia, where in 1820 the governor proposed to the legislature the
use of one-third of the state revenue as a fund to promote the
emancipation and deportation of the Negroes. [Footnote: Jefferson,
Writings (Ford's ed.), X., 173, 178; Niles' Register, XVII., 363;
King, Life and Corresp. of King, VI., 342; Adams, Memoirs, IV.,
293.]
The unprofitableness of slavery in the border states, where outworn
fields, the decline of tobacco culture, and the competition of
western lands bore hard on the planter, [Footnote: See chap. iv.
above; Hart, Slavery and Abolition (Am. Nation, XVI.), chap. iv.]
now became an argument in favor of, permitting slavery to pass
freely into the new country of the west. Any limitation of the area
of slavery would diminish the value of the slaves and would leave
the old south to support, under increasingly hard conditions, the
redundant and unwelcome slave population in its midst. The hard
times from 1817 to 1820 rendered slave property a still greater
burden to Virginia. Moreover, the increase of the proportion of
slaves to whites, if slavery were confined to the region east of the
Mississippi, might eventually make possible a servile insurrection,
particularly if foreign war should break out. All of these
difficulties would be met, in the opinion of the south, by
scattering the existing slaves and thus mitigating the evil without
increasing the number of those in bondage.
It was seen that the struggle was not simply one of morals and of
rival social and industrial institutions, but was a question of
political power between the two great and opposing sections,
interested, on the one side, in manufacturing and in the raising of
food products under a system of free labor; and, on the other, in
the production of the great staples, cotton, tobacco, and sugar, by
the use of slave labor. Already the southern section had shown its
opposition to tariff and internal improvements, which the majority
of, the northern states vehemently favored. In other words, the
slavery issue was seen to be a struggle for sectional domination.
At the beginning of the nation in 1790, the population of the north
and the south was almost exactly balanced. Steadily, however, the
free states drew ahead, until in 1820 they possessed a population of
5,152,000 against 4,485,000 for the slave-holding states and
territories; and in the House of Representatives, by the operation
of the three-fifths ratio, the free states could muster 105 votes to
but 81 for the slave states. Thus power had passed definitely to the
north in the House of Representatives. The instinct for self-
preservation that led the planters to stand out against an
apportionment in their legislatures which would throw power into the
hands of non-slaveholders now led them to seek for some means to
protect the interests of their minority section in the nation as a
whole. The Senate offered such an opportunity: by the alternate
admission of free and slave states from 1802 to 1818, out of the
twenty-two states of the nation eleven were slave-holding and eleven
free. If the south retained this balance, the Senate could block the
action of the majority which controlled the lower House.
Such was the situation when the application of Missouri for
admission as a state in 1819 presented to Congress the whole
question of slavery beyond the Mississippi, where freedom and
slavery had found a new fighting-ground. East of the Mississippi the
Ohio was a natural dividing-line; farther west there appeared no
obvious boundary between slavery and freedom. By a natural process
of selection, the valleys of the western tributaries of the
Mississippi, as far north as the Arkansas and Missouri, in which
slaves had been allowed while it was a part of French and Spanish
Louisiana (no restraints having been imposed by Congress), received
an increasing proportion of the slave-holding planters. It would, in
the ordinary course of events, become the area of slave states.
The struggle began in the House of Representatives, when the
application of Missouri for statehood was met by an amendment,
introduced by Tallmadge of New York, February 13, 1819, [Footnote:
Annals of Cong., 15 Cong., 2 Sess., I., 1170.] providing that
further introduction of slavery be prohibited and that all children
born within the state after admission should be free at the age of
twenty-five years. [Footnote: See amended form in House Journal, 15
Cong., 2 Sess., 272.] Tallmadge had already showed his attitude on
this question when in 1818 he opposed the admission of Illinois
under its constitution, which seemed to him to make insufficient
barriers to slavery. Brief as was the first Missouri debate, the
whole subject was opened up by arguments to which later discussion
added but little. The speaker, Henry Clay, in spite of the fact that
early in his political career he had favored gradual emancipation in
Kentucky, led the opposition to restriction. His principal reliance
was upon the arguments that the evils of slavery would be mitigated
by diffusion, and that the proposed restriction was
unconstitutional. Tallmadge and Taylor, of New York, combated these
arguments so vigorously and with such bold challenge of the whole
system of slavery in new territories, that Cobb, of Georgia,
declared, "You have kindled a fire which all the waters of the ocean
cannot put out, which seas of blood can only extinguish." [Footnote:
Annals of Cong., 15 Coneg., 2 Sess., I., 1204.]
The first clause of Tallmadge's motion was carried (February 16,
1819) by a vote of 87 to 76, and the second by 82 to 78. [Footnote:
Ibid., 1214.] Taylor was emboldened to offer (February 18) to the
bill for the organization of Arkansas territory an amendment by
which slavery should be excluded, whereupon McLane, of Delaware,
tentatively proposed that a line should be drawn west of the
Mississippi, dividing the territories between freedom and slavery.
Thus early was the whole question presented to Congress. In the
Senate, Tallmadge's amendment was lost (February 27) by a vote of 22
to 16, several northern senators adhering to the south; and Congress
adjourned without action. [Footnote: But Arkansas was organized as a
territory without restriction.]
The issue was then transferred to the people, and in all quarters of
the Union vehement discussions took place upon the question of
imposing an anti-slavery restriction upon Missouri. Mass-meetings in
the northern states took up the agitation, and various state
legislatures, including Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Ohio,
and even the slave state of Delaware, passed resolutions with
substantial unanimity against the further introduction of slaves
into the territories of the United States, and against the admission
of new slave states. Pennsylvania, so long the trusted ally of the
south, invoked her sister states "to refuse to covenant with crime"
by spreading the "cruelties of slavery, from the banks of the
Mississippi to the shores of the Pacific." From the south came
equally insistent protests against restriction. [Footnote: Niles'
Register, XVII., 296, 307, 334, 342-344, 395. 399. 400, 416; Ames,
State Docs. on Federal Relations, No. 5, p. 4.]
No argument in the debate in 1819 was more effective than the speech
of Rufus King in the Senate, which was widely circulated as a
campaign document expressing the northern view. King's antislavery
attitude, shown as early as 1785, when he made an earnest fight to
secure the exclusion of slavery from the territories, [Footnote:
McLaughlin, Confederation and Constitution (Am. Nation, X.), chap.
vii.] was clearly stated in his constitutional argument in favor of
restriction on Missouri, and his speech may be accepted as typical.
[Footnote: Niles' Register, XVII., 215; King, Life and Corresp. of
King, VI., 690.] But it was also the speech of an old-time
Federalist, apprehensive of the growth of western power under
southern leadership. He held that, under the power of making all
needful rules and regulations respecting the territory and other
property of the United States, Congress had the right to prohibit
slavery in the Louisiana purchase, which belonged to the United
States in full dominion. Congress was further empowered, but not
required, to admit new states into the Union. Since the Constitution
contained no express provision respecting slavery in a new state,
Congress could make the perpetual prohibition of slavery a condition
of admission. In support of this argument, King appealed to the
precedent of the Ordinance of 1787, and of the states of Ohio,
Indiana, and Illinois, all admitted on the conditions expressed in
that ordinance. In admitting the state of Louisiana in 1812, a
different group of conditions had been attached, such as the
requirement of the use of the English language in judicial and
legislative proceedings.
The next question was the effect of the Louisiana treaty, by which
the United States had made this promise: "The inhabitants of the
ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United
States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the
principles of the Federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all the
rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States;
and in the mean time they shall be maintained and protected in the
free enjoyment of their liberty, property and the religion which
they profess." [Footnote: U. S. Treaties and Conventions, 332.] King
contended that, by the admission of Missouri to the Union, its
inhabitants would obtain all of the "federal" rights which citizens
of the United States derived from its Constitution, though not the
rights derived from the constitutions and laws of the various
states. In his opinion, the term PROPERTY did not describe slaves,
inasmuch as the terms of the treaty should be construed according to
diplomatic usage, and not all nations permitted slavery. In any
case, property acquired since the territory was occupied by the
United States was not included in the treaty, and, therefore, the
prohibition of the future introduction of slaves into Missouri would
not affect its guarantees.
Could Missouri, after admission, revoke the consent to the exclusion
of slavery under its powers as a sovereign state? Such action, King
declared, would be contrary to the obligations of good faith, for
even sovereigns were bound by their engagements. Moreover, the
judicial power of the United States would deliver from bondage any
person detained as a slave in a state which had agreed, as a
condition of admission, that slavery should be excluded.
Having thus set forth the constitutional principles, King next took
up the expediency of the exclusion of slavery from new states. He
struck with firm hand the chord of sectional rivalry in his argument
against the injustice to the north of creating new slave-holding
states, which would have a political representation, under the
"federal ratio," not possessed by the north. Under this provision
for counting three-fifths of the slaves, five free persons in
Virginia (so he argued) had as much power in the choice of
representatives to Congress and in the appointment of presidential
electors as seven free persons in any of the states in which slavery
did not exist. The disproportionate power and influence allowed to
the original slave-holding states was a necessary sacrifice to the
establishment of the Constitution; but the arrangement was limited
to the old thirteen states, and was not applicable to the states
made out of territory since acquired. This argument had been
familiar to New England ever since the purchase of Louisiana.
Finally, he argued that the safety of the Union demanded the
exclusion of slavery west of the Mississippi, where the exposed and
important frontier needed a barrier of free citizens against the
attacks of future assailants.
To the southern mind, King's sectional appeal unblushingly raised
the prospect of the rule of a free majority over a slave-holding
minority, the downfall of the ascendancy so long held by the south,
and the creation of a new Union, in which the western states should
be admitted on terms of subordination to the will of the majority,
whose power would thus become perpetual. [Footnote: King, Life and
Corresp. of King, VI., 205, 267, 279, 288, 329, 339-344, 501;
Jefferson, Writings (Ford's ed.), X., 162, 172, 280; Tyler, Tylers,
I., 316.]
When the next Congress met, in December, 1819, the admission of
Alabama was quickly completed; and the House also passed a bill
admitting Maine to the Union, Massachusetts having agreed to this
division of the ancient commonwealth, on condition that consent
Congress should be obtained prior to March 4, 1820. The Senate,
quick to see the opportunity afforded by the situation, combined the
bill for the admission of Maine with that for the unrestricted
admission of Missouri, a proposition carried (February 16, 1820) by
a vote of 23 to 21. Senator Thomas, who represented Illinois, which,
as we have seen, was divided in its interests on the question of
slavery, and who, as the vote showed, could produce a tie in the
Senate, moved a compromise amendment, providing for the admission of
Missouri as a slave state and for the prohibition of slavery north
of 36 degrees 30' in the rest of the Louisiana purchase; and on the
next day his amendment passed the Senate by a vote of 34 to 10.
The debate in the Senate was marked by another speech of Rufus King,
just re-elected a senator from New York by an almost unanimous vote.
With this prestige, and the knowledge that the states of
Pennsylvania and New York stood behind him, he reiterated his
arguments with such power that John Quincy Adams, who listened to
the debate, wrote in his diary that "the great slave-holders in the
House gnawed their lips and clenched their fists as they heard him."
[Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, IV., 522; see Cong. Globe, 30 Cong., 2
Sess., App. 63-67.]
The case for the south was best presented by William Pinkney, of
Maryland, the leader of the American bar, a man of fashion, but an
orator of the first rank. His argument, on lines that the debates
had made familiar, was stated with such eloquence, force, and
graphic power that it produced the effect of a new presentation.
Waiving the question whether Congress might refuse admission to a
state, he held that, if it were admitted, it was admitted into a
union of equals, and hence could not be subjected to any special
restriction. [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 389
et seq.] Without denying the danger of the extension of slavery, he
argued that it was not for Congress to stay the course of this dark
torrent. "If you have power," said he, "to restrict the new states
on admission, you may squeeze a new-born sovereign state to the size
of a pigmy." There would be nothing to hinder Congress "from
plundering power after power at the expense of the new states,"
until they should be left empty shadows of domestic sovereignty, in
a union between giants and dwarfs, between power and feebleness. In
vivid oratory he conjured up this vision of an unequal union, into
which the new state would enter, "shorn of its beams," a mere
servant of the majority. From the point of view of the political
theory of a confederation, his contention had force, and the hot-
tempered west was not likely to submit to an inferior status in the
Union. Nevertheless, the debates and votes in the Constitutional
Convention of 1787 seem to show that the fathers of the Constitution
intended to leave Congress free to impose limitations on the states
at admission. [Footnote: Elliot, Debates, V., 492.]
In the mean time, the House of Representatives was continuing the
discussion on the old lines. Although the arguments brought out
little that had not been stated in the first Missouri debate, they
were restated day after day with an amplitude and a bitterness of
feeling that aggravated the hostility between the rival forces. Even
under this provocation, most southern members expressed their
opinions on the morality and expediency of slavery in language that
affords a strange contrast to their later utterances: in almost
every case they lamented its existence and demanded its dispersion
throughout the west as a means of alleviating their misfortune.
Although most of the men who spoke on the point were from the
regions where cotton was least cultivated, yet even Reid, of
Georgia, likened the south to an unfortunate man who "wears a cancer
in his bosom." [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., 1 Sess., I.,
1025.] Tyler of Virginia, afterwards president of the United States,
characterized slavery as a dark cloud, and asked, "Will you permit
the lightnings of its wrath to break upon the South when by the
interposition of a wise system of legislation you may reduce it to a
summer's cloud?" [Footnote: Ibid., II., 1391.] John Randolph, the
ultra-southerner, was quoted as saying that all the misfortunes of
his life were light in the balance when compared with the single
misfortune of having been born a master of slaves.
In addition to the argument of "mitigation by diffusion," the south
urged the injustice of excluding its citizens from the territories
by making it impossible for the southern planter to migrate thither
with his property. On the side of the north, it was argued with
equal energy that the spread of slaves into the west would
inevitably increase their numbers and strengthen the institution.
Since free labor was unable to work in the midst of slave labor,
northern men would be effectively excluded from the territories
which might be given over to slavery. Economic law, it was urged,
would make it almost certain that, in order to supply the vast area
which it was proposed to devote to slavery, the African slave-trade
would be reopened. As the struggle waxed hot, as the arguments
brought out with increasing clearness the fundamental differences
between the sections, threats of disunion were freely exchanged.
[Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, V., 13, 53; Benton, Abridgment of
Debates, XIII., 607.] Even Clay predicted the existence of several
new confederacies. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, IV., 526.] Nor were
the extremists of the north unwilling to accept this alternative.
[Footnote: King, Life and Corresp. of King, VI., 274, 286, 287,
387.] But the danger of southern secession was diminished because
Monroe was ready to veto any bill which excluded slavery from
Missouri. [Footnote: Cong. Globe, 30 Cong., 2 Sess., App. 67.] While
still engaged in its own debates, the House received the compromise
proposal from the Senate. At first the majority remained firm and
refused to accept it. [Footnote: Woodburn, in Am. Hist. Assoc.,
Report 1893, p. 251-297.] March 1, 1820, the House passed its own
bill imposing the restriction on Missouri, by a vote of 91 to 82. By
the efforts of the compromisers, however, a committee of conference
was arranged, which on the very next day resulted in the surrender
of the House. The vote on striking out the restriction on Missouri
was 90 to 87. New England gave 7 ayes to 33 nays; the middle states,
8 to 46; the south cast 58 votes for striking out, and none against
it; the northwest gave all its 8 votes against striking out the
restriction; while the 17 southwestern votes were solidly in favor
of admitting Missouri as a slave state.
Thus, while the southern phalanx in opposition remained firm, enough
members were won over from the northern ranks to defeat the
restrictionists. Some of these deserters [Footnote: See King, Life
and Corresp. of King, VI., 291, 329; Benton, View, I., 10; Adams,
Memoirs, V., 15, 307. Randolph applied to them the term
"doughfaces."] from the northern cause were influenced by the
knowledge that the admission of Maine would fail without this
concession; others, by the constitutional argument; others, by the
fear of disunion; and still others, by the apprehension that the
unity of the Democratic party was menaced by the new sectional
alignment, which included among its leaders men who had been
prominent in the councils of the Federalists. By the final solution,
it was agreed (134 to 42) to admit Missouri as a slave state and
Maine as a free state; while all of the rest of the territory,
possessed by the United States west of the Mississippi and north of
36 degrees 30' was pledged to freedom. Yet the fate of the measure
was uncertain, for some of Monroe's southern friends strongly urged
him still to veto the compromise. [Footnote: Cong. Globe, 30 Cong.,
2 Sess., App. 64.] The president submitted to the cabinet the
question whether Congress had the right to prohibit slavery in a
territory, and whether the section of the Missouri bill which
interdicted slavery forever in the territory north of 36 degrees 30'
was applicable only to the territorial condition, or also to states
made from the territory. John Quincy Adams notes in his diary that
"it was unanimously agreed that Congress have the power to prohibit
slavery in the Territories"; though he adds that neither Crawford,
Calhoun, nor Wirt could find any express power to that effect given
in the Constitution. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, V., 5.] In order to
avoid the difficulty arising from the fact that Adams alone believed
the word "forever" to apply to states as well as territories, the
president modified the question so that all would be able to answer
that the act was constitutional, leaving each member to construe the
section to suit himself.
Although apparently the Missouri struggle was thus brought to a
conclusion, it is necessary to take note of two succeeding episodes
in the contest, which immediately revived the whole question,
embittered the antagonism, threatened the Union, and were settled by
new compromises. In her constitution, Missouri not only incorporated
guarantees of a slavery system, but also a provision against the
admission of free Negroes to the state. Application for admission to
the Union under this constitution in the fall of 1820 brought on a
contest perhaps more heated and more dangerous to the Union than the
previous struggle. Holding that Missouri's clause against free
Negroes infringed the provision of the federal Constitution
guaranteeing the rights of citizens of the respective states,
northern leaders reopened the whole question by refusing to vote for
the admission of Missouri with the obnoxious clause. Again the north
revealed its mastery of the House, and the south its control of the
Senate, and a deadlock followed. Under the skilful management of
Clay, a new compromise was framed, by which Missouri was required,
through her legislature, to promise that the objectionable clause
should never be construed to authorize the passage of any laws by
which any citizen of either of the states of the Union should be
excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and immunities
to which such citizen was entitled under the Constitution of the
United States. This Missouri accepted, but the legislature somewhat
contemptuously added that it was without power to bind the state.
[Footnote: Niles' Register, XX., 388, cf. 300.]
While this debate was in progress, and the problem of the status of
Missouri, which had already established a constitution and claimed
to be a state, was under consideration, the question of counting the
Missouri vote in the presidential election of 1820 was raised. For
this a third compromise was framed by Clay, by which the result of
the election was stated as it would be with and without Missouri's
vote. Since Monroe had been elected by a vote all but unanimous, the
result was in either case the same; this theoretical question,
nevertheless, was fraught with dangerous possibilities. Missouri was
finally admitted by the proclamation of President Monroe, dated
August 10, 1821, more than three years from the first application
for statehood.
In a large view of American history, the significance of this great
struggle cannot be too highly emphasized. Although the danger passed
by and the ocean became placid, yet the storm in many ways changed
the coast-line of American politics and broke new channels for the
progress of the nation. The future had been revealed to far-sighted
statesmen, who realized that this was but the beginning, not the
end, of the struggle. "This momentous question," wrote Jefferson,
"like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.
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. 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." [Footnote: Jefferson, Writings
(Ford's ed.), X., 157.]
John Quincy Adams relates a contemporaneous conversation with
Calhoun, in which the latter took the ground that, if a dissolution
of the Union should follow, the south would be compelled to form an
alliance, offensive and defensive, with Great Britain, though he
admitted that it would be returning pretty much to the colonial
state. When Adams, with unconscious prophecy of Sherman's march
through Georgia, pressed Calhoun with the question whether the
north, cut off from its natural outlet upon the ocean, "would fall
back upon its rocks bound hand and foot, to starve, or whether it
would not retain its powers of locomotion to move southward by
land," Calhoun answered that the southern states would find it
necessary to make their communities military. [Footnote: Adams,
Memoirs, IV., 530, 531.]
To Adams himself the present question was but a "title page to a
great tragic volume." He believed that, if dissolution of the Union
should result from the slavery question, it would be followed by
universal emancipation of the slaves, and he was ready to
contemplate such a dissolution of the Union, upon a point involving
slavery and no other, believing that "the Union might then be
reorganized on the fundamental principle of emancipation." "This
object," wrote he, "is vast in its compass, awful in its prospects,
sublime and beautiful in its issue. A life devoted to it would be
nobly spent or sacrificed." [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, IV., 531.]
Looking forward to civil war, he declared: "So glorious would be its
final issue, that as God shall judge me I do not say that it is not
to be desired." [Footnote: Ibid., V., 210.] But as yet he confided
these thoughts to his diary. The south was far from contented with
the compromise, and her leading statesmen, Calhoun especially, came
bitterly to regret both the concession in the matter of admitting
federal control over slavery in the territories, and the division of
the Louisiana purchase into spheres of influence which left to the
slave-holding section that small apex of the triangle practically
embraced in Arkansas. While the north received an area capable of
being organized into many free states, the south could expect from
the remaining territory awarded her only one state.
Among the immediate effects of the contest was its influence upon
Monroe, who was the more ready to relinquish the American claim to
Texas in the negotiations over Florida, because he feared that the
acquisition of this southern province would revive the antagonism of
the northern antislavery forces. [Footnote: Monroe, Writings, VI.,
127; cf. Adams, Memoirs, V., 25, 54, 68.]
The south learned also the lesson that slavery needed defense
against the power of the majority, and that it must shape its
political doctrine and its policy to this end. But it would be a
mistake to emphasize too strongly the immediate effect in this
respect. Slavery was not yet accepted as the foundation of southern
social and economic life. The institution was still mentioned with
regret by southern leaders, and there were still efforts in the
border states to put it in the process of extinction. South Carolina
leaders were still friendly to national power, and for several years
the ruling party in that state deprecated appeals to state
sovereignty. [Footnote: See chap, xviii. below.] In the next few
years other questions, of an economic and judicial nature, were even
more influential, as a direct issue, than the slavery question. But
the economic life of the south was based on slavery, and the section
became increasingly conscious that the current of national
legislation was shaped by the majority against their interests.
Their political alliances in the north had failed them in the time
of test, and the Missouri question disclosed the possibility of a
new organization of parties threatening that southern domination
which had swayed the Union for the past twenty years. [Footnote:
Adams, Memoirs, IV., 529; King, Life and Corresp. of King, VI., 501;
Jefferson, Writings, X., 175, 193 n.; cf. chap. xi. below; Hart,
Slavery and Abolition (Am. Nation, XVI.), chap, xviii.]
The slavery struggle derived its national significance from the
west, into which expanding sections carried warring institutions.