Page images
PDF
EPUB

Clay

applied to a State, this to a Territory. charged the supporters of the amendment with being afflicted with negrophobia. Who, yesterday, feared the negro faces in the gallery? was the rejoinder. But the amendment would coop up the people of the slave-holding States by preventing the extension of their wealth and population. A glance at the map would confute this charge, was the reply: what immense and fertile regions were open to slavery, from the Sabine to Georgia; what millions of rich acres were lying waste in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana! Were not these enough?

Was not the amendment an entering wedge for an attack by Congress on the property of masters in their slaves? Certainly not. The amendment did not disturb that right, even in Arkansas. But it would tend to the dissolution of the Union. Impossible! Could any man believe that the preservation of the Union depended on the admission of slavery into a Territory which did not belong to the States when the Union was formed-a Territory purchased by Congress, and for which it was bound to legislate with faithful regard for the public welfare?

To this it was answered that Congress had no right to legislate on the property of citizens, but could levy taxes only. Why not prohibit other forms of property from crossing the Mississippi. The Southern States had given up the vast territory north of the Ohio and ought not to be deprived of a small share of the advantages of this

A Line of Demarcation for Slavery

new Louisiana country. At this point a claim was put forth which, thirty years later, when the Missouri Compromise was re-examined, became one of the chief reasons for its repeal: the amendment proposed would take away from the people of Arkansas Territory the natural and constitutional right of legislating for themselves, and would impose on them a condition which they might not willingly accept. In organizing a Territorial government and forming a constitution, they, and they alone, had the right to be the judges of what policy was best adapted to their genius and interests, and it ought to be left exclusively to them. They alone could decide whether to prohibit or to admit slave immigration. Slavery was an evil entailed upon. the country; it was not our original sin.

The

more widely diffused, the less the evil. The people of Arkansas and the West were the best judges of their constitutional rights. This was popular sovereignty.

Another idea destined to dominate the final decision was now advanced by McLane, of Delaware. A line should be fixed west of the Mississippi, north of which slavery should not be tolerated. Congress had no power to impose any condition upon the admission of a State impairing its sovereignty. The term State meant sovereignty. The claim of right to impose conditions was a double-edged sword. At some future day, when the slave - holding interest dominated Congress, it might be made a condition, when a new State was admitted, that slavery should never

be prohibited. A vast, unsettled region made this possible. On the vote the amendment was divided, and the first clause, forbidding the further introduction of slavery, was defeated by one vote;* the second clause was carried by two. On the 19th, by Clay's casting vote, the second clause was recommitted, and was finally struck out by two votes.‡ In slightly modified form, Taylor now renewed his amendment, but it was rejected by four votes. He then applied the idea of a fixed line between the two sections; slavery should not be introduced into any part of the Territories of the United States lying north of 36° 30' north latitude. The idea at once met with favor, and various lines were proposed. But none of these lines applied to Arkansas, and that Territory was organized without the imposition of any restriction on slavery.

It may be remarked that, in this debate, the principal arguments for and against slavery extension, heard later in the debates over the series of enactments called the Missouri Compromise, were outlined that Congress was bound by the treaty of 1803; that it could not interfere with property rights; that the States were sovereign, and that Congress could impose no Condition on them at admission. The suggestion of a fixed dividing line between slave soil and free soil was sedulously followed up. It was first made by a member from a slave-holding border State.

* Seventy-one to seventy. Seventy-five to seventy-three. Eighty-nine to eighty-seven. § Ninety to eighty-six.

Agitation Over the Rejection of Missouri

On the 17th the Missouri bill was read in the Senate, and referred to a committee having charge of a similar bill from Alabama. Ten days later both sections of the Tallmadge amendment were struck out,* and, as thus amended, the bill passed. Neither House would recede, and meanwhile Congress adjourned. The rejection of Missouri immediately became the theme of discussion all over the country. The case was reopened and reargued by all sorts and conditions of men. Petitions, arguments, and appeals; pamphlets, sermons, editorials, and resolutions accumulated as the season's political harvest. When Congress met, on the 6th of December, no member was forgotten, and a Representative had but to glance over his mail to discover how he ought to vote on the Missouri question. Had all this mass of opinion been sorted, it could have been cast into two heaps -one from the South, one from the North. It was a sectional question-the first, clearly defined, that had arisen since the formation of the Union. On the 8th, Scott, the Missouri delegate, presented several memorials from the Legislature and some of the inhabitants of the Territory, praying for its admission; and Strong, a New York member, gave notice that he would ask leave, on the following day, to introduce a bill prohibiting the further extension of slavery within the Territories of the United States. The notice was a sign of the times.

* The first by a vote of twenty-two to sixteen; the second, by thirty-one to seven.

A new element now entered into the problem. The people of Maine asked admission as a State, and a bill for this purpose was introduced in the House and another in the Senate.* There was nothing unusual in either bill. Each was a simple enabling act. The House bill passed on the 3d of January, 1820. While on its progress, Clay, on the 30th of December, expressed himself in ambiguous but suggestive language. If hard conditions were to be imposed on new States beyond the mountains, and Congress were thus to strike at their power and independence, might not hard conditions be imposed on new States in the East? Whatever this signified, on the 6th, when the House bill came up in the Senate, it was proposed to embody in the bill for the admission of Maine a clause for the admission of Missouri. Two wholly irrelevant matters were thus combined. Roberts, a Senator from Pennsylvania, labored in vain to separate the propositions and to amend the bill further by prohibiting slavery in Missouri. Every effort of the restrictionists to apply the provisions of the Ordinance of 1787 to the new State was defeated. In the debate the old arguments were repeated and elaborated; citations were made from the writings of the fathers, and The Federalist was quoted in evidence by both sides. On the 18th, Senator Thomas, of Illinois, brought in a bill to prohibit slavery in the Territories north and west

* The Articles of Separation, the Proclamation of the Governor of Maine, and other documents are given in Maine Constitutional Convention, 1819-20; Charles E. Nash, editor, Augusta, 1894.

« PreviousContinue »