The Missouri Compromise

This series has ten easy 5 minute installments. This first installment: Background.

Introduction
Slavery was the original sin of the United States of America. While opinion of America’s leaders had been divided, until Missouri statehood, they had treated it as a secondary issue.

As early as 1790 the Quaker Yearly Meeting in Pennsylvania presented a memorial asking Congress to remove the reproach of slavery from the land. The memorial was referred to a committee, upon whose report Congress resolved that the Federal Government was prohibited from interfering with the slave trade for domestic supply until 1808, although Congress could prevent such trade for foreign supply ; that Congress could neither emancipate the slaves nor regulate their treatment in the States, since it remained with the States to regulate their own institutions. This constitutional limitation of the power of Congress in the premises was ever after generally admitted. In 1793 a fugitive-slave law was enacted by Congress, and its enforcement met with little opposition. By the Ordinance of 1787 slavery was prohibited in the Northwest Territory. Unsuccessful efforts were made in 1802 and afterward to secure the repeal of this restriction. By the terms of the Louisiana treaty, in 1803, the people living in Louisiana under French law were guaranteed all the rights of person and property which they enjoyed at the time of the transfer of the territory to the United States. The right to their property included the right to their slaves. In 1812 the State of Louisiana was admitted to the Union on terms conformed to this treaty, although without specific mention of slavery.

The slave trade was prohibited by Congress to foreign carriers in 1794. By act of 1807 it was wholly outlawed after 1808; in 1815 the United States joined England (Treaty of Ghent) in an agreement to suppress it, and in 1820 declared it piracy. Meanwhile, on the subject of slavery itself, the attention of political leaders was mainly given to maintaining a certain balance between slave States and free States, by alternate admission. This was the rule from the early days of the Union, and it was carefully observed as long as slavery remained. At the assembling of Congress in 1817 the distribution of political power between the free and the slave sections was a question of paramount importance, the balance, in number of States, being then in favor of the free-State section by one, with the admission of Alabama as a slave State assured.

In 1820, with Missouri statehood before Congress, the slavery issue at last got the attention it deserved. This alone, apart from the other considerations of this event made the Missouri Compromise a premier milestone in Civil Rights history. The compromise continued in force until 1854, when it was repealed.

This selection is from The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 16 by James Albert Woodburm published in 1905. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

This is by James Albert Woodburm (1856-1943).

Time: 1820

The struggle for the restriction of African slavery in the United States is the central theme in American political history during a large part of the nineteenth century. That struggle suggests to the student of American politics a long series of contests culminating at last in one of the greatest civil wars in human history. The struggle over the admission of Missouri into the Union (1818-1821) involves the merits of the whole controversy. In attempting to interpret the significance of that struggle and to estimate the principles which it involved, it is first essential to have, if possible, a candid recital of the facts.

The Fifteenth Congress assembled at Washington, December 1, 1817. Henry Clay was chosen Speaker of the House. John Scott appeared as the delegate from the Missouri Territory. On March 16, 1818, Mr. Scott presented a petition from Missouri praying for Statehood, which together with former similar petitions was referred to a select committee. At the same time Scott presented a petition from the inhabitants of the southern part of Missouri praying for a division of the Territory. On April 18, 1818, Mr. Scott, chairman of this committee, reported to the House an enabling act to authorize Missouri Territory to form a constitution and State government and for the admission of the State into the Union on an equal footing with the other States. The bill was read twice and referred to the committee of the whole, where it slept for the remainder of the session.

The same Congress met in second session, November 16, 1818. On December 18, 1818, the Speaker presented a memorial from the Territorial Legislature of Missouri again praying to be permitted to form a constitution and State government preparatory for admission. The memorial was referred. On Saturday, February 13, 1819, the House, on motion of Mr. Scott of Missouri, went into committee of the whole on the enabling acts for Missouri and Alabama. The Missouri bill was taken up first, and James Tallmadge Jr., a representative from New York, offered the following amendment:

[In Seaton’s Annals of Congress the last clause of this amendment reads : “That all children born within the said State, after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be free at the age of twenty-five years.”]

Provided, That the further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; and that all children born within the said State after the admission thereof into the Union shall be free, but may be held to service until the age of twenty-five years.”

It is to be noticed that there were two distinct parts to this amendment: (1) Provision against the further introduction of slaves; (2) provision for gradual emancipation of the slaves already there.

Neither of these was a radical proposition. Neither proposed to interfere with the rights of property in that Territory. “The motion of Tallmadge,” says the Annals, “gave rise to an interesting and pretty wide debate.” On February 17th the House passed the bill with the Tallmadge amendment. The vote stood 87 to 76, one from the slave States favoring restriction, and ten from the free States opposing restriction. It was clearly a sectional vote.

The House bill for Missouri reached the Senate February 17, 1819, and was read twice, and referred to the committee on the memorial from Alabama. On February 21st, Senator Tait, of Georgia, chairman of this committee, reported the bill back to the Senate with an amendment striking out restriction. On February 27th the bill ” was again resumed,” and various motions gave rise to a long and animated debate. The Senate struck out the Tallmadge amendment — the latter clause, which provided for gradual emancipation, by a vote of 31 to 7 ; the first clause, which prohibited further introduction of slavery, by a vote of 22 to 16 — and on March 2, 1819, the amended bill passed the Senate.

On the return of the bill to the House, March 2nd, Tallmadge moved the indefinite postponement of the bill, a motion which was barely lost. The House then refused to concur in the Senate amendments, and the bill was returned to the Senate. A message came back immediately that the Senate still adhered to its amendment, and thereupon, by motion of Mr. Taylor, of New York, the House voted to adhere to its disagreement, and the bill was lost with the Fifteenth Congress in deadlock. This was the end of the first struggle.

The struggle for restriction in the Fifteenth Congress was not confined, in the minds of the restrictionists, to the question of the admission of the new State of Missouri. The southern portion of that Territory was cut off from the proposed new State and organized as the Territory of Arkansas. During the consideration of the bill to provide a Territorial government for the Arkansas country, Mr. Taylor, of New York, moved an amendment containing the substance of the Tallmadge amendment to the Missouri bill — to prohibit the existence of slavery in the new Territory. ” This motion,” says the Annals, ” gave rise to a wide and long-continued debate, covering part of the ground previously occupied on this subject, but differing in part, as the proposition for Arkansas was to impose a condition on a Territorial government instead of, as in the former case, to enjoin the adoption of the (prohibitive) principle in the constitution of a State.”

This distinction is important, in view of the fact that the chief argument against restriction on Missouri was based on the assumed sovereignty and equality of the States. The fact of the discussion over Arkansas is important as indicating the temper of the lower House, and that the prime motive, the uppermost de sire, of those who wished to impose conditions upon Missouri, was to limit the area of human slavery. The House first adopted one clause of the Taylor amendment, that providing for gradual emancipation in Arkansas, but by the casting vote of the Speaker, Mr. Clay, the bill was recommitted ; and in the final decision, the House determined by a majority of two votes to strike out all the antislavery restriction on the Territory of Arkansas. Territorial restriction failed only because of complication with the Missouri question. Thus, we see, the Fifteenth Congress expired with the House refusing to admit Missouri without restriction, the Senate refusing to admit her with restriction.

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