Sectional Compromises
Two major compromises marked the sectional relations of the first half of the nineteenth century, the 1820 Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. The Missouri Compromise settled a controversy arising from the petition of Missouri, a part of the Louisiana Purchase, to be admitted to the Union as a slave state. The slave state of Louisiana had already been formed out of the Louisiana Purchase, but slavery had existed there before U.S. ownership. Missouri represented an area settled largely by Americans, and Northerners were loath to see slavery following the flag to areas where it was previously unknown. Anxious to see some limit placed on the spread of slavery, they moved to admit Missouri on the condition that it emancipate its slaves within a generation. Southerners were outraged at this not only because it would have assured their section the minority status in the Senate that it
Their feeling that the war should be fought, if at all, for national, rather than slave, expansion, was expressed in the Wilmot Proviso, stipulating that slavery be prohibited throughout the Mexican Cession. Southerners were again outraged. Yet the North did at least win the principle that slavery could be excluded in some of the territories, and a small area of land that might have been suitable for slavery was reserved for freedom. Introduced several times in Congress during the late 1840s, it was never passed. Though the North got California and at least a chance at the rest of the Mexican Cession, it is doubtful if slavery could have prospered in that arid region anyway. Sectional tempers had heated over the past quarter century, and many Northerners were prepared to see the war as a plot to add new slave states to the Union. The South got Congress to profess its lack of power to do two things the Constitution and laws clearly gave it power to do: abolish slavery in the District of Columbia and ban the interstate slave trade. The matter was brought to a head when California petitioned for admission to the Union as a free state. already had in the House, but also because they considered it an insult. Since the majority of the nation's unorganized land holdings had previously lain in the North and been closed to slavery, they felt the new lands added in the South should naturally be open to slavery. The resulting compromise must again be considered at least in part a sectional sellout. The Compromise of 1850 quieted the uproar over the status of slavery in the lands acquired through the Mexican War. Here the charge of "sectional sellout" is partially true. Southerners obtained Missouri as a slave state, and though the division of the remaining territory seemed favorable to the North, it actually gave the South at least half and probably two-thirds of the area suitable for the establishment of slavery in the first place.
Common topics in this essay:
Louisiana Territory,
Cession Introduced,
Slave Law,
Americans Northerners,
War Sectional,
Louisiana Purchase,
Senate House,
,
South Congress,
Mexican Cession,
sectional sellout,
missouri compromise,
slavery north,
mexican cession,
southerners outraged,
slavery lands,
louisiana purchase,
compromise 1850,
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Acceptance Essays
