Missouri Compromise

“ I have an abiding confidence that the sober reflection and sound patriotism of the people of all the States will bring them to the conclusion that the dictate of wisdom is to follow the example of those who have gone before us, and settle this dangerous question on the Missouri compromise, or some other equitable compromise which would respect the rights of all and prove satisfactory to the different portions of the Union. ”

“ Southern men knew that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise gave them a privilege which they had not before enjoyed,—the privilege of settling with their slaves on the rich plains and in the fertile valleys that stretched westward from the Missouri River. ”

“ This was the essence of the famous Missouri Compromise, and after long and acrimonious debates and several more votes in the House for restriction and in the Senate against it, this compromise was adopted. By it the slave power obtained the present tangible object it contended for; free labor won a contingent advantage in the future. The South was strongly bound together by a material interest; it obeyed a common impulse and an intolerant will, presenting a solid and determined front. The Northern anti-slavery men were held together, not by a well understood common interest, but by a sentiment ”

“ It was an element in the Missouri Compromise that it should apply to future as well as to existing territory.
Does not the gentleman assert that under the laws as they now stand, we have the right to go north of the compromise line with our slaves? What, then, is our position? Under the decision of the Supreme Court we are entitled to participate in all the territory of the United States. We are offering to give up the great part and the best part of it, and in payment we are to take the naked chance of getting a little piece of the worthless territory south of the proposed line! ”

“ Slavery and the Territories—the Missouri Compromise (1820) .—Though men continually talked about "taking slavery out of politics," it could not be done. By 1818 slavery had become so entrenched and the anti-slavery sentiment so strong, that Missouri's quest for admission brought both houses of Congress into a deadlock that was broken only by compromise. The South, having half the Senators, could prevent the admission of Missouri stripped of slavery; and the North, powerful in the House of Representatives, could keep Missouri with slavery out of the union indefinitely. ”

“ Lincoln had claimed to be a Republican, and a leader of the Republicans, he had, in a speech at Bloomington, Illinois, asserted that, "the conclusion of it all is that we must restore the Missouri Compromise."
Now the adoption of the Missouri Compromise was the hardest blow ever inflicted on the cause of free soil in America. It did more to encourage the supporters of slavery and to discourage its opponents than anything else that ever happened. ”

“ The bill now provided for two Territories west of the Missouri River, for the formal repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and for the adoption of the old Cass doctrine of popular sovereignty, whereby the settlers in the new communities were to determine for themselves whether they would have slaves or not. ”

“ The struggle over the question was a long and bitter one, but finally both the North and the South agreed to give up a part of what they wanted; that is, they agreed upon a compromise. It was this: Missouri was to enter the Union as a slave State, but slavery was not to be allowed 235in any part of the Louisiana Purchase which lay north or west of Missouri. This was called the Missouri Compromise (1820) .
It was brought about largely through the eloquence and power of Henry Clay, and because of his part in it he was called “the Great Peacemaker.” ”

“ The statement to which they seem to attach the most importance, and which they have repeated oftener, perhaps, than any other, is, that, pending the compromise measures of 1850, no man in or out of Congress ever dreamed of abrogating the Missouri compromise ”

“ The Missouri Compromise provided that Missouri should be a slave state; this was to satisfy the South. On the other hand, it declared that all the western territory north of the line which formed the southern boundary of Missouri, should forever be free; this was to appease the North. ”

“ And, secondly, that the act of 1820, known as the Missouri compromise, violates the most leading feature of the Constitution a feature on which the Union depends, and which secures to the respective States and their citizens and entire EQUALITY of rights, privileges, and immunities. ”

“ While failing to satisfy the more radical men of the South, it was utterly abhorrent to a much larger body at the North. It seemed to the latter to be but another great step taken by the slave-power in its attempt to gain possession of the whole land. The first had been the Missouri Compromise, in which slavery, surrendering what it never owned—viz., the territory north of 36° 30′, called Mason and Dixon’s line—gained Missouri and a quasi right to all territory south of that line. ”

“ The debate on the bill was opened by Mr. Douglas, on the 30th of January. In justification of his proposition to leave the whole territory open to slavery, he insisted that the Missouri compromise had been repealed. One of the grounds upon which this declaration was founded, was the action of congress in 1848, after the acquisition of territory from Mexico, when the senate voted into a bill a provision to extend the Missouri compromise line westward to the Pacific ocean ”

“ If some gentleman of the North, who is considered ultra in politics — the gentleman from Massachusetts, or from New York, or from Ohio — had introduced a provision to repeal the Missouri compromise, what reception would the proposition have met in the South? There was not a man in the whole South who would not have grasped his weapon of war and rushed to the scene of combat, and been willing to have fallen upon that line in vindication of Southern rights. ”

“ By the measure it is admitted that Missouri may tolerate slavery, as to persons already in bondage there, and be nevertheless fit to be received into the Union. What sort of constitutional mandate is this which can thus be made to bend and truckle and compromise as if it were a simple rule of expediency that might admit of exceptions upon motives of countervailing expediency. There can be no such pliancy in the peremptory provisions of the Constitution. They cannot be obeyed by moieties and violated in the same ratio. ”

“ The people of Missouri had formed a constitution which provided that free colored men should not be allowed to enter the State under any pretext. Nearly the whole Northern vote in the House was cast against admitting the State with this provision. Clay brought about a compromise by which the Missourians were to agree not to deprive of his rights any citizen of another State. ”

“ Even such a man as John Quincy Adams, not only an anti-slavery man but a statesman always inclining to strong measures, approved of the compromise as “all that could be effected under the present Constitution, and from extreme unwillingness to put the Union at hazard;” and then wrote in addition: “But perhaps it would have been a wiser as well as a bolder course to have persisted in the restriction upon Missouri, till it should have terminated in a convention of the states to revise and amend the Constitution. ”

“ I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known. ”

“ You can take it to day—or take the consequences."
"What? You threaten me, suh? Do I understand you to threaten me? Gentlemen of the Council, it seems Idaho will be less free than Missouri unless we look to it." The President of the Council had risen in his indignant oratorical might, and his more and more restless friends glared admiration at him. "When was the time that Price's Left Wing surendered?" asked the orator. "Nevuh! Others have, be it said to their shame. We have not toiled these thousand miles fo' that! ”

“ Let it not be said that Southern men may be taken by surprise, if the proceeding here respectfully recommended be adopted. If the friends of Arkansas are sufficiently numerous to carry now the motion to postpone, they can arrest at any time the action of the House on the Michigan bill, until clear undubitable indications have been given that the Missouri compromise is not to be disregarded. ”

“ Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature,—opposition to it in his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism, and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise; repeal all compromises; repeal the Declaration of Independence; repeal all past history,—you still cannot repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart that slavery extension is wrong, and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth will continue to speak.... ”

“ All early excitement had died away, a new generation had arisen in Congress, and new intellects were roaming about seeking the material for agitation and display. At this juncture Missouri applied for admission to the Union. A large majority of the Northern members at once decided that they would in all future legislation bind themselves irrevocably to the free principles of the ordinance of ’87. Missouri, it was true, had at the time a large number of slaves within her borders, but upon these vested rights as the South was pleased to call them, the North did not propose to encroach. ”

“ It is seen and its force is felt throughout the Nation. So important is this regarded to the great interests of the country, that I venture to express the opinion that the whole power of the Government of the United States, if necessary, will be exerted to maintain Missouri in her present position in the Union. ”

“ They are then directed to another clause in the Constitution, which says that “Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territories;” to which a reply is given that Missouri is not to be regarded as an open, wild and uninhabited territory but a populous State, with sovereign powers, asking admission into the Union according to the original compact between the States. ”

“ Missouri has taken her position in the resolutions adopted by the Lexington Convention, and from that position she will not be likely to recede. It is based upon the Constitution—upon justice, and equality of rights among the States. What she has done, and what she is still prepared to do, is in self-defence and for self-preservation; and from these duties she will hardly be expected to shrink. With her, everything is at stake; the security of a large slave property, the prosperity of her citizens, and their exemption from perpetual agitation and border feuds ”