Missouri Compromise (1820)

AuthorWilliam M. Wiecek
Pages1747-1748

Page 1747

The Missouri Compromise provided a simple constitutional and geographical expedient for resolving a crisis of the Union growing out of SLAVERY'S expansion into the western TERRITORIES. Because the compromise formed the basis of a balance of the free and slave states in the Union for a generation, its abrogation in the 1850s destabilized the constitutional system and intensified the disruption of the Union.

Page 1748

In 1819, Representative James Tallmadge of New York offered an amendment to the Missouri statehood enabling bill that would prohibit the further introduction of slavery into Missouri and would free all children born to slaves after the state's admission, but hold them in servitude until age 25. Free-state congressmen supported congressional power thus to restrict the admission of Missouri by arguments derived from four constitutional sources: the new states clause of Article IV, section 3, giving Congress discretionary authority to admit new states into the Union; the territories clause of the same article and section, empowering Congress to make "Regulations respecting the Territory" of the nation; the slave trade clause of Article I, section 9, permitting congress to control the "Migration" of persons; and the GUARANTEE CLAUSE of Article IV, section 4, which required all states to have a REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT. Supporters of the Tallmadge amendment, citing the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, argued that slavery was incompatible with republican government.

Opponents of the Tallmadge amendment rejected all these arguments, insisting particularly that the logical implications of the republicanism argument would subvert slavery in the states where it already existed. The first Missouri crisis was resolved by a package of statutes that admitted Missouri without the Tallmadge restriction, admitted Maine as a free state, and prohibited the introduction of slavery into the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase territory north of Missouri's southern boundary. This compromise was subsequently supplemented by an informal process of admitting paired free and slave states, thus preserving a balance between the sections in the SENATE.

On the eve of its statehood Missouri precipitated the second crisis by adopting provisions in its new constitution that would have prohibited the abolition of slavery without the consent of slaveholders and that required the state legislature to prohibit the ingress of free...

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