Rise of the New West, 1819-1829

by Frederick Jackson Turner

The debate in the Senate was marked by another speech of Rufus King, just re-elected a senator from New York by an almost unanimous vote. With this prestige, and the knowledge that the states of Pennsylvania and New York stood behind him, he reiterated his arguments with such power that John Quincy Adams, who listened to the debate, wrote in his diary that "the great slave-holders in the House gnawed their lips and clenched their fists as they heard him." [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, IV., 522; see Cong. Globe, 30 Cong., 2 Sess., App. 63-67.]

The case for the south was best presented by William Pinkney, of Maryland, the leader of the American bar, a man of fashion, but an orator of the first rank. His argument, on lines that the debates had made familiar, was stated with such eloquence, force, and graphic power that it produced the effect of a new presentation. Waiving the question whether Congress might refuse admission to a state, he held that, if it were admitted, it was admitted into a union of equals, and hence could not be subjected to any special restriction. [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 389 et seq.] Without denying the danger of the extension of slavery, he argued that it was not for Congress to stay the course of this dark torrent. "If you have power," said he, "to restrict the new states on admission, you may squeeze a new-born sovereign state to the size of a pigmy." There would be nothing to hinder Congress "from plundering power after power at the expense of the new states," until they should be left empty shadows of domestic sovereignty, in a union between giants and dwarfs, between power and feebleness. In vivid oratory he conjured up this vision of an unequal union, into which the new state would enter, "shorn of its beams," a mere servant of the majority. From the point of view of the political theory of a confederation, his contention had force, and the hot- tempered west was not likely to submit to an inferior status in the Union. Nevertheless, the debates and votes in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 seem to show that the fathers of the Constitution intended to leave Congress free to impose limitations on the states at admission. [Footnote: Elliot, Debates, V., 492.]

In the mean time, the House of Representatives was continuing the discussion on the old lines. Although the arguments brought out little that had not been stated in the first Missouri debate, they were restated day after day with an amplitude and a bitterness of feeling that aggravated the hostility between the rival forces. Even under this provocation, most southern members expressed their opinions on the morality and expediency of slavery in language that affords a strange contrast to their later utterances: in almost every case they lamented its existence and demanded its dispersion throughout the west as a means of alleviating their misfortune. Although most of the men who spoke on the point were from the regions where cotton was least cultivated, yet even Reid, of Georgia, likened the south to an unfortunate man who "wears a cancer in his bosom." [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1025.] Tyler of Virginia, afterwards president of the United States, characterized slavery as a dark cloud, and asked, "Will you permit the lightnings of its wrath to break upon the South when by the interposition of a wise system of legislation you may reduce it to a summer's cloud?" [Footnote: Ibid., II., 1391.] John Randolph, the ultra-southerner, was quoted as saying that all the misfortunes of his life were light in the balance when compared with the single misfortune of having been born a master of slaves.

In addition to the argument of "mitigation by diffusion," the south urged the injustice of excluding its citizens from the territories by making it impossible for the southern planter to migrate thither with his property. On the side of the north, it was argued with equal energy that the spread of slaves into the west would inevitably increase their numbers and strengthen the institution. Since free labor was unable to work in the midst of slave labor, northern men would be effectively excluded from the territories which might be given over to slavery. Economic law, it was urged, would make it almost certain that, in order to supply the vast area which it was proposed to devote to slavery, the African slave-trade would be reopened. As the struggle waxed hot, as the arguments brought out with increasing clearness the fundamental differences between the sections, threats of disunion were freely exchanged. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, V., 13, 53; Benton, Abridgment of Debates, XIII., 607.] Even Clay predicted the existence of several new confederacies. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, IV., 526.] Nor were the extremists of the north unwilling to accept this alternative. [Footnote: King, Life and Corresp. of King, VI., 274, 286, 287, 387.] But the danger of southern secession was diminished because Monroe was ready to veto any bill which excluded slavery from Missouri. [Footnote: Cong. Globe, 30 Cong., 2 Sess., App. 67.] While still engaged in its own debates, the House received the compromise proposal from the Senate. At first the majority remained firm and refused to accept it. [Footnote: Woodburn, in Am. Hist. Assoc., Report 1893, p. 251-297.] March 1, 1820, the House passed its own bill imposing the restriction on Missouri, by a vote of 91 to 82. By the efforts of the compromisers, however, a committee of conference was arranged, which on the very next day resulted in the surrender of the House. The vote on striking out the restriction on Missouri was 90 to 87. New England gave 7 ayes to 33 nays; the middle states, 8 to 46; the south cast 58 votes for striking out, and none against it; the northwest gave all its 8 votes against striking out the restriction; while the 17 southwestern votes were solidly in favor of admitting Missouri as a slave state.

Thus, while the southern phalanx in opposition remained firm, enough members were won over from the northern ranks to defeat the restrictionists. Some of these deserters [Footnote: See King, Life and Corresp. of King, VI., 291, 329; Benton, View, I., 10; Adams, Memoirs, V., 15, 307. Randolph applied to them the term "doughfaces.">[ from the northern cause were influenced by the knowledge that the admission of Maine would fail without this concession; others, by the constitutional argument; others, by the fear of disunion; and still others, by the apprehension that the unity of the Democratic party was menaced by the new sectional alignment, which included among its leaders men who had been prominent in the councils of the Federalists. By the final solution, it was agreed (134 to 42) to admit Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state; while all of the rest of the territory, possessed by the United States west of the Mississippi and north of 36 degrees 30' was pledged to freedom. Yet the fate of the measure was uncertain, for some of Monroe's southern friends strongly urged him still to veto the compromise. [Footnote: Cong. Globe, 30 Cong., 2 Sess., App. 64.] The president submitted to the cabinet the question whether Congress had the right to prohibit slavery in a territory, and whether the section of the Missouri bill which interdicted slavery forever in the territory north of 36 degrees 30' was applicable only to the territorial condition, or also to states made from the territory. John Quincy Adams notes in his diary that "it was unanimously agreed that Congress have the power to prohibit slavery in the Territories"; though he adds that neither Crawford, Calhoun, nor Wirt could find any express power to that effect given in the Constitution. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, V., 5.] In order to avoid the difficulty arising from the fact that Adams alone believed the word "forever" to apply to states as well as territories, the president modified the question so that all would be able to answer that the act was constitutional, leaving each member to construe the section to suit himself.

Although apparently the Missouri struggle was thus brought to a conclusion, it is necessary to take note of two succeeding episodes in the contest, which immediately revived the whole question, embittered the antagonism, threatened the Union, and were settled by new compromises. In her constitution, Missouri not only incorporated guarantees of a slavery system, but also a provision against the admission of free Negroes to the state. Application for admission to the Union under this constitution in the fall of 1820 brought on a contest perhaps more heated and more dangerous to the Union than the previous struggle. Holding that Missouri's clause against free Negroes infringed the provision of the federal Constitution guaranteeing the rights of citizens of the respective states, northern leaders reopened the whole question by refusing to vote for the admission of Missouri with the obnoxious clause. Again the north revealed its mastery of the House, and the south its control of the Senate, and a deadlock followed. Under the skilful management of Clay, a new compromise was framed, by which Missouri was required, through her legislature, to promise that the objectionable clause should never be construed to authorize the passage of any laws by which any citizen of either of the states of the Union should be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and immunities to which such citizen was entitled under the Constitution of the United States. This Missouri accepted, but the legislature somewhat contemptuously added that it was without power to bind the state. [Footnote: Niles' Register, XX., 388, cf. 300.]

While this debate was in progress, and the problem of the status of Missouri, which had already established a constitution and claimed to be a state, was under consideration, the question of counting the Missouri vote in the presidential election of 1820 was raised. For this a third compromise was framed by Clay, by which the result of the election was stated as it would be with and without Missouri's vote. Since Monroe had been elected by a vote all but unanimous, the result was in either case the same; this theoretical question, nevertheless, was fraught with dangerous possibilities. Missouri was finally admitted by the proclamation of President Monroe, dated August 10, 1821, more than three years from the first application for statehood.

In a large view of American history, the significance of this great struggle cannot be too highly emphasized. Although the danger passed by and the ocean became placid, yet the storm in many ways changed the coast-line of American politics and broke new channels for the progress of the nation. The future had been revealed to far-sighted statesmen, who realized that this was but the beginning, not the end, of the struggle. "This momentous question," wrote Jefferson, "like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, 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." [Footnote: Jefferson, Writings (Ford's ed.), X., 157.]

John Quincy Adams relates a contemporaneous conversation with Calhoun, in which the latter took the ground that, if a dissolution of the Union should follow, the south would be compelled to form an alliance, offensive and defensive, with Great Britain, though he admitted that it would be returning pretty much to the colonial state. When Adams, with unconscious prophecy of Sherman's march through Georgia, pressed Calhoun with the question whether the north, cut off from its natural outlet upon the ocean, "would fall back upon its rocks bound hand and foot, to starve, or whether it would not retain its powers of locomotion to move southward by land," Calhoun answered that the southern states would find it necessary to make their communities military. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, IV., 530, 531.]

To Adams himself the present question was but a "title page to a great tragic volume." He believed that, if dissolution of the Union should result from the slavery question, it would be followed by universal emancipation of the slaves, and he was ready to contemplate such a dissolution of the Union, upon a point involving slavery and no other, believing that "the Union might then be reorganized on the fundamental principle of emancipation." "This object," wrote he, "is vast in its compass, awful in its prospects, sublime and beautiful in its issue. A life devoted to it would be nobly spent or sacrificed." [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, IV., 531.] Looking forward to civil war, he declared: "So glorious would be its final issue, that as God shall judge me I do not say that it is not to be desired." [Footnote: Ibid., V., 210.] But as yet he confided these thoughts to his diary. The south was far from contented with the compromise, and her leading statesmen, Calhoun especially, came bitterly to regret both the concession in the matter of admitting federal control over slavery in the territories, and the division of the Louisiana purchase into spheres of influence which left to the slave-holding section that small apex of the triangle practically embraced in Arkansas. While the north received an area capable of being organized into many free states, the south could expect from the remaining territory awarded her only one state.