| The failure of Mr. Clay's first attempt. |
Mr. Tomlinson, of the committee, took the floor against the report, and showed so conclusively that the legislature of a Commonwealth could not bind the makers of the organic law of the Commonwealth, and that, therefore, any obligation which the legislature of Missouri might assume toward Congress might prove nugatory, that the Senate bill, with the amendment offered by Mr. Clay's committee, was voted down.
| Mr. Clay's second attempt to secure a compromise. |
Mr. Clay waited ten days after this in order to let the feelings of the members become mollified, and on February 22nd, one of the most significant days in American history, made his final attempt to secure a compromise. He moved that members to a conference committee be appointed by the House. The motion was carried, and on the next day the members of the House contingent of the committee, consisting of twenty-three persons, under the lead of Mr. Clay, were appointed. The Senate met the advance promptly and appointed seven members to represent it.
| The second Missouri Compromise. |
On the 26th, Mr. Clay reported the results of the conference, in the form of a resolution of the following tenor: "Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, in Congress assembled, that Missouri shall be admitted into this Union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever, upon the fundamental condition, that the fourth clause of the twenty-sixth section of the third article of the constitution submitted on the part of said State to Congress shall never be construed to authorize the passage of any law, and that no law shall be passed in conformity thereto, by which any citizen of either of the States of this Union shall be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and immunities to which such citizen is entitled under the Constitution of the United States: Provided that the legislature of the said State, by a solemn public act, shall declare the assent of the said State to the said fundamental condition, and shall transmit to the President of the United States, on or before the fourth Monday in November next, an authentic copy of the said act; upon the receipt whereof the President, by proclamation, shall announce the fact; whereupon, and without any further proceeding on the part of Congress, the admission of the said State into this Union shall be considered as complete."
| Passage of the second Missouri Compromise Act. |
It will be seen that this recommendation contained the same objectionable feature as did that of the committee of Thirteen of the House, that is, the proposition to rely upon the Missouri legislature to enter into an obligation to Congress, which should bind all future legislatures and also the constituent power of the Commonwealth. It was, therefore, attacked upon the same ground, but the supporters urged so strongly that Congress should put a reasonable faith in the honor of Missouri to keep the pledge made by her first legislature, that the resolution was finally adopted by the House, by a very small majority, on the same day that it was reported. It was immediately sent to the Senate for concurrence, and, after a brief debate, was voted by that body on the 28th, by a large majority.
The great struggle was at last over, and it was sincerely hoped that the "era of good feeling," so suddenly interrupted by it, had been restored. Apparently it was so, but while the decision finally reached saved the country from one great danger, it sowed the seeds of another. A brief review of the effects of that decision upon the constitutional law, political science, and social conditions of the Republic will make this apparent.