Missouri Compromise

Missouri Compromise was a pivotal federal statute enacted by the 16th United States Congress and signed by President James Monroe in 1820. It temporarily resolved a fierce sectional crisis over the expansion of slavery in the United States into the western territories acquired through the Louisiana Purchase. The legislation admitted Missouri as a slave state while simultaneously admitting Maine as a free state, preserving the balance of power in the United States Senate, and established a geographic demarcation line for future slavery prohibitions.

Background and context

The acquisition of the vast Louisiana Purchase territory in 1803 opened new lands for American settlement, raising immediate questions about the status of slavery in future states. By 1819, the Missouri Territory had applied for statehood, threatening to upset the existing balance of eleven free states and eleven slave states in the United States Senate. The crisis erupted when Representative James Tallmadge Jr. of New York proposed an amendment to the Missouri enabling act, known as the Tallmadge Amendment, which would have gradually abolished slavery there. This proposal was fiercely opposed by Southern politicians like Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who viewed it as an unconstitutional attack on states' rights and the institution of slavery itself. The debate, which consumed the 15th United States Congress, highlighted the deepening sectional divide between the industrializing Northern United States and the agrarian, slave-dependent Southern United States.

Provisions of the compromise

The final compromise, largely engineered by Speaker of the House Henry Clay, who earned the nickname "the Great Compromiser," consisted of three main legislative actions. First, it authorized the admission of Missouri as a slave state under a constitution that did not prohibit slavery. Second, to maintain the Senate equilibrium, it admitted the District of Maine, which had been part of Massachusetts, as the free state of Maine. The third and most consequential provision was the prohibition of slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase lands north of the parallel 36°30′ north, with the explicit exception of Missouri. This geographic line, extending from the southern border of Missouri, became the defining feature of the agreement. The legislation was passed as two separate bills, one for the admission of Maine and the other containing the Missouri enabling act and the slavery restriction.

Immediate effects and aftermath

The immediate effect of the compromise was the defusing of the immediate political crisis, allowing both Missouri and Maine to join the United States in 1821. However, controversy flared again during the 16th United States Congress when Missouri's proposed state constitution included a clause requiring the Missouri General Assembly to prevent free African Americans from entering the state. This clause, seen as infringing on the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the United States Constitution, prompted a second congressional debate. A second compromise, sometimes called the "Missouri Question," was required, with Henry Clay again brokering a solution where Missouri's legislature would not enact the discriminatory clause. The period of calm that followed, often termed the "Era of Good Feelings," was superficial, as the underlying tensions over slavery's expansion were merely postponed.

Repeal and legacy

The geographic division established by the compromise governed federal slavery policy for over three decades but was ultimately overturned. The principle of popular sovereignty introduced by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, championed by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, explicitly repealed the Missouri Compromise's slavery restriction. This act allowed settlers in the new Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory to decide the slavery question for themselves, leading to violent conflict in "Bleeding Kansas." The Supreme Court delivered the final blow to the compromise's legal standing in the 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, where Chief Justice Roger B. Taney declared the 36°30′ restriction unconstitutional. The failure and eventual destruction of the Missouri Compromise demonstrated the impossibility of a permanent political solution to the slavery issue, directly fueling the rise of the Republican Party, the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the subsequent secession of Southern states that began the American Civil War.

Category:1820 in American law Category:History of slavery in Missouri Category:Political compromises in the United States