Slavery in the US

The Missouri Compromise

Compromise seemed to be the only door through which Missouri might enter; and, by adroit management, a compromise bill was carried, March 2, 1820, by a vote of 134 against 42. John Randolph denounced it as " a dirty bargain," and the eighteen Northern men who voted for it as " dough-faces." There was an almost solid North against admitting Missouri as a slave-labor State. President Monroe consulted his cabinet concerning the constitutionality of the act.

The matter was allowed to go over until the next session, and it occupied much time during that session. At length Henry Clay moved a joint committee (February, 1821) to consider whether or not it was expedient to admit Missouri into the Union; and if not, what provision adapted to her actual condition ought to be made. The motion prevailed—101 to 55—all of the Southern members, excepting Randolph and two or three followers, voting for it.

The committee was appointed, and soon reported. The closing decision on the Missouri question was finally reached by the adoption of a compromise, Feb. 27, 1821, substantially as proposed by Taylor, of New York, in 1819—namely, that in all territory north of lat. 36° 30' N. (outside the boundary of the State of Missouri) slavery should not exist, but should be forever prohibited in the region north of that line. But Missouri was admitted as a slave-labor State. In the course of the later debates there was much angry feeling displayed, and unwise men, North and South, uttered the cry of disunion. A member from Georgia said, pathetically, in the course of the debate: " A fire has been kindled which all the waters of the ocean cannot put out, and which only seas of blood can extinguish." The " seas of blood " shed in the Civil War did alone extinguish it.

When President Monroe hesitated about signing the Missouri Compromise act, and laid the matter before his cabinet, he submitted two questions to his advisers: Has Congress the power to prohibit slavery in a Territory? and was the term " forever," in the prohibitive clause in the bill, to be understood as referring only to the territorial condition of the district to which it related, or was it an attempt to extend the prohibition of slavery to such States as might be erected therefrom? The cabinet was unanimous in the affirmative on the first question.

On the second question, John Quincy Adams (Secretary of State) thought the term meant forever, and not to be limited to the existence of the territorial condition of the district. Others limited it to the territorial condition—a territorial " forever "—and not interfering with the right of any State formed from it to establish or prohibit slavery. Calhoun wished not to have this question mooted, and at his suggestion the second question was modified into the mere inquiry, Is the provision, as it stands in the bill, constitutional or not? This was essentially a different question. To it all could answer yes, and did so answer in writing. This writing was ordered to be deposited in the archives of state, but it afterwards mysteriously disappeared. The act was then signed by the President, but with a different understanding from that which had been adopted by Congress.