From 1787 until the Missouri question came up, no successful attempt was made by Congress to prohibit slavery in any territory of the United States. In 1817, Missouri applied for admission to the Union. Her admission as a Slave State was strenuously contested, and to the act authorizing her to form a State Constitution was appended a provision applying the 6th or anti-slavery section of the ordinance of 1787 to all the territory ceded by Louisiana, outside of the limits of Missouri, and north of 36 deg. 30 min. north latitude, or the southern boundary of Missouri. The adoption of this act, fixing a geographical line between Free States and Slave States, has been called a compromise. The proposition was beyond doubt made in the spirit of compromise, and received the support of compromise men, but the North who insisted upon the exclusion of Missouri with a slave constitution, generally voted against the act in its final passage, and the South, for the sake of getting Missouri in with a slave constitution, as generally voted for it. The compromise was not acceptable to either side, and when Missouri presented her Constitution in 1821 for the approval of Congress, her admission was again opposed by Northern men, and made conditional upon her declaration by solemn act of her legislature, that a clause of her Constitution relating to free negroes and mulattoes, should not be construed to authorize any law violating the privileges and immunities of any citizen of either of the States of the Union, under the Constitution of the United States. Missouri made the declaration required, and by proclamation of the President, became a State on August 10th, 1821. The resolution of Congress of 2d March, 1821, was beyond doubt the real condition or compromise upon which Missouri was admitted, and it was in this compromise and not in that of 1820, that Henry Clay took part. Strange as it may seem; it is nevertheless true, that notwithstanding the alleged compromise of 1820, an attempt was made in 1821 by Northern men in Congress to override that compromise,—that "sacred compact," that "plighted faith," that "landmark of freedom,"—and to keep Missouri out of the Union, because she had adopted in her Constitution a provision to prevent free negroes or mulattoes from coming to or settling in the State—a provision which is contained in the present Constitutions of Indiana and Illinois, and has been enforced in Constitutions or legislation of other Northern States, and was sanctioned by the people of Indiana in 1851, when submitted to them as a distinct proposition, by a vote of 100,976 for it, to 21,066 against it. By that vote, Indiana as late as 1851 affirmed that Missouri was right and Congress wrong in the great conflict of 1821.
The high and sacred character of a national compact has been claimed for the Missouri act of 6th March, 1820. No man who will calmly and intelligently and without prejudice examine its history, can fail to see that however expedient it might have been at the time, there is no compact—no sacred character about it. Looking on the whole question as one of constitutional power and policy, I am free to say I think the South and not the North were in the right in the Missouri controversy.
What are the plain facts? In 1803 the territory embracing Missouri had been acquired as slave territory. It had been organized by Congress in 1804 as slave territory. The inhabitants under the foreign and territorial law had acquired and held slaves, as rightfully as they were held in any State. No prohibition of slavery had been extended over the territory. By the treaty with France and the settled policy of the Federal government, the territory of Missouri, when it had attained a sufficient population, was entitled to admission as a State on an equal footing with the original States. In 1817 Missouri asked of Congress authority to form a State Constitution, preparatory to her admission to the Union. Her case was in all its cardinal and essential features precisely parallel to that of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana, which had already been admitted as Slave States without question, and how was she met? Northern men in Congress, in effect said to her, if you choose to come into the Union as a Free State, we will let you in; if not, we will keep you out, and under our arbitrary power of government, until you get rid of your slaves. We don't believe in slavery, and don't mean to have any more barbarian slaveholders in our company. Northern men in Congress, in violation of the spirit and policy of the Constitution, which recognized slavery as a purely local institution, endeavored to compel a full grown sovereign State to abolish slavery. That is the whole point of the case. It is not surprising that this position and attempt of the North should have awakened a spirit of resistance in the South that shook the Union to its very center. Whatever might be the opinion of Northern men as to the power of Congress over slavery in the territories, or as to the expediency of prohibiting it, it was too late to apply their doctrine to Missouri. She was ripe for admission to the Union as a State, with domestic institutions formed to suit her people, and formed, too, under the eye and sanction of Congress, and Congress had no right to make her State sovereignty dependent on the carrying out as to other territory, of the Northern idea of prohibiting slavery. The case of Missouri should have been decided on its own merits.
In view of all the facts, and of its proposed restraint upon the constitutional power of new States besides Missouri, I fully believe the Supreme Court of the United States correctly laid down the law in the Dred Scott decision, declaring the 8th section of the act of 6th March, 1820, being the prohibition of slavery, to be unconstitutional and void, for the simple reason that it was the right of the people of those new States to make a constitution or laws for or against slavery as they saw fit, and not the right of the Congress, which has no power under its own Constitution to make State Constitutions.
The principle of compromise embraced in the Missouri line, whether legal or not, calmed the agitation of the question of slavery, which had, during the Missouri struggle, assumed a dangerous form. It shut out slavery in the vast region north of 36 deg. 30 min., not adapted to slave labor, and permitted it south of that line where slavery had taken or was likely to take root. Therefore when Arkansas applied in 1836 for admission as a Slave State, she came in without serious controversy, though northern opposition in Congress was not even then silent.
Between the establishment of Texan independence in 1836 and her annexation to the United States in 1845, in view of the latter event, the question of slavery extension became one of absorbing interest to the nation. The Democratic party recognized it in the 7th article of their platform in their National Convention of 1840, taking the true ground of non-intervention by Congress. In 1843 the Liberty party, so called, organized upon the distinct ground of opposition to slavery. In 1844 the Democratic party reaffirmed their platform of 1840, and declared in favor of annexing Texas, and its candidates were sustained by the people. In 1845 the Congressional agitation was resumed on the question of annexing Texas. It resulted in the annexation, upon the compromise of extending the Missouri compromise line of 36 deg. 30 min. across the Texan territory, leaving a disputed boundary north of that line, which was adjusted in 1850 by making 36 deg. 30 min. the north boundary of Texas.
In 1846 the question of prohibition again came up in Congress on the bill to organize a territorial government for Oregon, and was kept in agitation until Oregon was forced, for self-protection to form a provisional government; and after a proposition of Mr. Douglas, sustained by the Senate, to extend the Missouri compromise line to the Pacific, had been voted down in the House by northern votes, the Oregon bill was finally passed in 1848, with the proviso of the ordinance of 1787 against slavery, the South voting in a body against its passage—not because they expected slavery to go there, but because they wanted the Missouri line of compromise extended to the Pacific.
In 1846 and 1847 the slavery agitation raged fiercely in the nation and in Congress upon the question of applying a slavery prohibition in the form known as the Wilmot proviso to all the territory to be acquired from Mexico under the treaty, the negotiations for which were then pending. The Wilmot proviso was voted down, and the treaty was consummated Feb. 2, 1848, and Mexican territory, embracing California, Utah and New Mexico was acquired without prohibition of slavery, but the territory was free under the Mexican law, and all Mexican inhabitants who should elect to become citizens of the United States, were entitled to become so at the proper time to be judged of by Congress, and to be incorporated into the Federal Union according to the principles of the Constitution.
At the commencement of the session of the XXXIst Congress in 1849, the slavery agitation had reached a degree of intensity before unknown. The territory acquired from Mexico, in consequence of this agitation had been left without civil government. California, full of northern emigrants in search of gold, had in the absence of any action of Congress, exercised her inherent right of self-government and formed a State Constitution prohibiting slavery, and was asking admission to the Union. Utah and New Mexico were ripe for territorial governments. The Texan boundary was unsettled. The South was opposing the admission of California as a Free State and insisting on its division, and demanding the distinct legalization of slavery in the territories south of the Missouri line of 36 deg. 30 min., and the extension of that line to the Pacific, and demanding also a more stringent fugitive slave law, and the North was demanding the admission of California and the establishment of the Wilmot proviso over all the territory to be organized, and demanding also the immediate abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.
The contest for speaker in the House continued from the 3d to the 22d December, 1849, resulting in the election of Howell Cobb over R. C. Winthrop. So ominous of trouble were the signs of the political sky, that President Taylor, in his annual message, took occasion to caution the Congress against the introduction of topics of a sectional character, and to repeat the solemn warning of Washington against furnishing any ground for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations.