CHAPTER VII

WAS THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE VIOLATED BY THE SOUTH?

At this point it is proper to inquire as to the truth of the alleged violation of faith by the South.

As has been stated, the opposition to the non-intervention provisos of the Kansas and Nebraska bill relied greatly on the Missouri compromise. They charged that the bill was a breach of faith, a violation of a solemn compromise between two sections. The speech of Mr. Seward, which was made in opposition to the bill, and from which quotations have been made, had for its motto on the title page, "Freedom and Public Faith."

Whoever shall desire to understand this matter fully should read carefully the great speech of Mr. Douglas delivered in the Senate on the 4th day of March, 1854.1 We have space only to notice a few salient points in this great speech.

Mr. Douglas showed that under the alleged compromise of 1820, in which slavery was prohibited north of 36° 30', Missouri was never admitted into the Union; that the North, after having obtained the enactment of that prohibition, refused to admit her as a State on the ground hereinbefore stated, that is, that the first alleged compromise was expressly repudiated by the North in the vote on Mr. Mallory's amendment requiring the State to abolish slavery in her Constitution; that on this the North, by a vote of 61 to 33, nearly two to one, refused admission to Missouri on the terms of the alleged compromise; that a new compromise, gotten up under the auspices of Mr. Clay, was found necessary; that under this the admission was secured; that the State of New York, after the passage of the alleged compromise of 1820, renewed 'Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 1st Session, 33d Congress, P. 325 et seq.

the resolution of instructions to her Senators to vote against the admission of Missouri, and that those former resolutions instructed her Senators to oppose admission as a State into the Union of slave territory not confined within the original boundaries of the United States, without making the prohibition of slavery therein an indispensable condition of admission.1

He also showed that in 1848 he proposed the compromise line of 36° 30' to the Oregon bill, and it was voted down in the House; that in 1850 a proposition was made to make 36° 30' the southern boundary of Utah, with no reference to slavery, however; but that John P. Hale, the leader of the Free Soilers in the Senate, opposed it in these words: "I wish to say a word why I shall vote against the amendment. I shall vote against 36° 30′ because I think there is an implication in it. I will vote for 37° or 36° either, just as it is convenient, but it is idle to shut our eyes to the fact that here is an attempt in the bill-I will not say it is the intention of the mover-to pledge the Senate and Congress to the imaginary line of 36° 30' because there are some historical recollections connected with it in regard to this controversy about slavery. I will content myself with saying that I never will, by vote or speech, admit or submit to anything that may bind the action of our legislation here to make the parallel of 36° 30′, the boundary line between slave and free territory."

Mr. Douglas also showed that in 1836, when Arkansas applied for admission into the Union, it was opposed by Northern men, forty-nine of them voting against admission; that one of them, Mr. Hand, of New York, said: "I am aware it will be, as it has already been, contended that by the Missouri compromise, as it has been preposterously termed, Congress has parted with its right to prohibit the introduction of slavery into the territory south of 36° 30′ north latitude. There are, in my mind, insuperable objections to the soundness of that proposition. In the first place, there was no compromise or compact whereby Congress surrendered any power, or yielded any jurisdiction; and in the second place, if it had done so, it was a mere legislative act,

'Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 1st Session, 33d Congress, P. 325 et seq.

that could not bind their successors; it would be subject to a repeal at the will of any succeeding Congress." 1

Mr. Douglas contrasted the resolutions of New York, hereinbefore noted, as opposing the admission of Missouri, with resolutions of the same State in which the Act of 1820 was called a compromise, and which denounced the KansasNebraska bill as in derogation of truth, a gross violation of plighted faith, and an outrage and an indignity upon the free States.

The bill passed. In 1855 there was formed the shortlived American party, yet the agitation of the slavery question still continued. The Republican party was formed. There was trouble and bitter controversy about the admission of Kansas.

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1856

There were three parties in the Presidential election of 1856 the Democratic, the Whig, or American, and the newly formed Republican party. The Republican Convention met in pursuance of a call on all those who were opposed to a repeal of the Missouri compromise and the policy of extending slavery in the Territories, and who favored the admission of Kansas as a free State and restoring the action of the Federal Government to the principles of Washington and Jefferson.

The Republican party was exclusively a Northern party, and it illustrates the selfishness of human nature, as well as the lust for political power and sectional supremacy, that the people of the Northern States should so soon have forgotten the principles to which they had adhered for nearly the whole life of the republic,-denying the power of Congress to admit new States from territory acquired since the adoption of the Constitution, and that the convention should demand the immediate admission of Kansas under her free State Constitution. In 1811 the admission of Louisiana, being a part of the territory acquired from France, was deemed sufficient to dissolve the Union because it was unwarranted by the Constitution and a violation of the compromises of that compact.

1

Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 1st Session, 33d Congress,

P. 335.

In 1814 the same opposition on constitutional grounds to the admission of States from territory not originally owned by the United States was manifested. In 1820 and 1821 the admission of Missouri was opposed on the same grounds. In 1845 the same principles were urged in opposition to the annexation of Texas. Now, however, the immediate admission of Kansas, adjoining Missouri, and formed of territory acquired as Missouri was, as a part of the Louisiana Purchase, -was demanded in a party platform and made even one of the elements of the formation of a sectional party in that section of the Union that had all along denounced as unconstitutional the admission of States acquired as Kansas was. It is not intended by what has been said to cast the reproach of a wilful violation of principles long entertained on those who thus changed position. The inconsistency is noted in order to make more clear the great truth that from the beginning the lust of power was the mainspring of the agitation of the slavery question, though motives of philanthropy were intermingled to an extent that gave force, persistency, and an extra zeal to the agitators.

The Democratic party placed itself on non-intervention as to slavery as recognized in the compromise of 1850, which they asserted had been confirmed by both the Democratic and Whig parties and ratified by the people in the Presidential election of 1852.

As to Kansas, the declaration was of the right of the people of the Territories, whenever the number of the inhabitants justified it, to form a Constitution admitting or excluding slavery, and to be admitted on terms of perfect equality with the other States.

The Whig platform denounced both the Republican and the Democratic parties as sectional, claiming that the former represented only the Northern States and that the latter "appealed mainly to the passions and prejudices of the Southern States."

Buchanan, the Democratic nominee, received 174 electoral votes, 1,838,169 popular votes, and carried 19 States. Fremont, the Republican nominee, received 114 electoral votes, 1,341,264 popular votes, and carried eleven states, all Northern. Fillmore, the Whig and American nominee, received 8 electoral votes, 874,534 popular votes, and carried

one state,-Maryland.1 The Northern States voting for Buchanan were Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and California.2

Buchanan received 496,905 votes more than Fremont, and 377,629 less than Fillmore and Fremont together. Still the popular vote in the North for Fremont exceeded that of Buchanan, and the result was a Pyrrhic victory for the Democrats. The lesson of the election was that a party organized solely on the ground of opposition to the institutions of the South had in its first race carried a majority of the Northern States, and had received the votes of a majority of the Northern people, whilst the Democrats had carried every Southern State except one, and that had been cast for the conservative, Mr. Fillmore. Here indeed was the "geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political," which, Mr. Jefferson thought, when "once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men will never be obliterated, and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper." That great statesman regarded such a line of division of parties as the knell of the Union, and "like a fire-bell at night, it had awakened and filled him with terror." 4 These words were spoken with reference to the agitation of the slavery question on the admission of Missouri.

3

If true then-and who can doubt that they were?—with how much force they must have struck the thoughtful men of 1856. The question, as Mr. Jefferson said, had been hushed for the moment, but this was a reprieve only, not a final sentence.

THE DRED SCOTT CASE

The South saw the deep significance of the situation, and was profoundly impressed with the impending danger. Yet some hope came within a few months from an unexpected quarter. The Supreme Court made its decision in the celebrated Dred Scott case. The South had long maintained

'Cooper's "American Politics," Book V, p. 7.

Ibid.

'Letter to John Holmes, "Jefferson Memoirs," Vol. IV, p. 323, and Randall's "Life of Jefferson," Vol. III, p. 456.

'Ibid.

19 Howard's Reports.