While this convention, in Philadelphia, was legalizing slavery, the Continental Congress, in New York, passed an ordinance for the government of the “territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio,” providing that slavery should be forever prohibited in that territory.
In 1820 the ocean slave-trade was declared to be piracy, punishable by death.
In that same year Congress, under pressure from the slave owners, adopted the Missouri Compromise, by which Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave State, with the proviso that slavery should be always forbidden in any other part of the territory north of 36° 30´ north latitude.
New England raged against slavery. Her abolitionists cried out against it night and day. To the assertion of the South that slaves were valuable property, legally acquired and legally held, they answered that slavery was a deep damnation in the sight of God, an unspeakably cruel crime, intolerable among civilized men. They helped slaves to escape from their masters, and did everything in their power to make a farce of the laws under which such fugitives might be returned.
A great gulf opened between the free States and the slave States, a gulf flaming with passion and menace. Could the nation hold together?
There were tremendous scenes in the Senate in 1850, when a compromise was reached. California was to be admitted a free State, slavery was to be abolished in the District of Columbia, and there was to be an effective Fugitive Slave Law. These were the principal points.
Henry Clay, in his seventy-third year, spoke for two days in favor of compromise and peace, picturing the frightful war that must result from a failure to agree. John C. Calhoun, pale, haggard and dying, rose from his sick bed, staggered into the Senate on the arms of friends and, being too weak to speak, sat there while his plea for the rights of the South was read. Then he went back to his bed to die a few days later, groaning, “The South! The poor South! God knows what will become of her.” Daniel Webster, too, raised his voice for compromise in one of his noblest orations. William H. Seward and Salmon P. Chase bitterly opposed any compromise on the basis of the Fugitive Slave Law. So fierce did the debate become that Senator Benton drew a pistol on Senator Foote.
Yet in the end, the compromise was adopted and the Fugitive Slave Law was passed.
Then, in 1854, Stephen A. Douglas, United States Senator from Illinois, introduced a bill providing a government for the immense country now included in Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana and portions of Wyoming and Colorado—a country larger than all the existing free States. All this region was in the area from which slavery was forever prohibited by the Missouri Compromise. Yet Douglas’ bill provided that whenever any part of the territory should be admitted to the Union the question of slavery or free-soil should be decided by its inhabitants. This was the famous “squatter sovereignty” idea, a virtual repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
After a desperate fight in Congress, Douglas carried his bill. It was a startling step and a direct bid for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. By this act Douglas made himself one of the most conspicuous men in the country.