Free Negroes in the North

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cases of free negroes who had become well-to-do tradesmen and farmers.

In the Northern states, especially in the cities, free negroes were so unpopular with the working people that they had great difficulty in getting along. Even at the height of the Abolition excitement, in the late fifties, when the colored race was drenched in the tears of Northern sympathy, a negro could hardly get a job in New York City. The white workingman considered the negro as a competitor who would work for lower wages than a white man and live on a scale below the white man's standard.

The political resentment that was developed by the haughty attitude of the Southern clique in Congress was accentuated by a difference in outlook and general conception of things between the North and South.

There was hardly any flow of population between the two sections, which were geographically so near together, but so far apart in sentiment. Lack of contact and exchange of ideas brought about innumerable misunderstandings, and men were already learning to hate one another for no more substantial reason than that they lived in different latitudes and faced different problems. In fact, two civilizations were growing up, side by side, both of them narrow and sharp at the edges . . . and in 1819 they had their first head-on collision over the admission of Missouri as a state. The citizens of Missouri wanted to bring their territory into the Union as a slave state, and they were supported by all the Southern representatives in Congress. The North, in its desire to limit the slavery area, bitterly opposed the admission of Missouri unless its state constitution prohibited the ownership of slaves within its borders. For the first time thousands of easy-going people realized that the country was already divided into two

sections with modes of thought that were utterly antagonistic to one another.

There was talk of disunion, of secession, of forming two nations—and in these secession projects the North was not in the least behind the South. Up to the beginning of the Civil War a large and influential body of opinion in every part of the country considered secession as an inalienable right of any state. For the sake of truth it is well to make a point of this general attitude, for in the ordinary school history it appears that secession was an unheard-of and astonishing idea concocted by Southern slave-owners, and that it came like lightning from a clear sky in 1860. Such a conception is wholly misleading. Secession had been discussed for fifty years before it occurred, and almost every state in the Union had threatened to secede at one time or another. During the War of 1812 there was a strong movement among the New Englanders to form a separate nation of the New England states; and the Connecticut legislature resolved that "the state of Connecticut is a free, sovereign and independent state; that the United States are a confederacy of states; that we are a confederated and not a consolidated republic."

When the Constitution was formed in 1787 the states were so fearful of any infringement of their rights that the makers of the Constitution purposely left the relations of the states to the central authority of the Union in vague indetermination.

As the Constitution was constructed, it was open to two conflicting interpretations, both of them legitimate and reasonable. One might argue that the United States was intended by its founders to be a league instead of a nation; and a plausible case could be made from the wording of the Constitution itself. . . an association of independent republics that had voluntarily surrendered some of their inherent rights for the good of all. The national government was held to be an agent with limited powers, and not a sovereign. But, according to this school of thought, the delegation of power to the central

Missouri Compromise

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agency was not necessarily permanent; any state might resume its status as a free nation whenever it desired to do so. This is the essence of the doctrine of states' rights, briefly stated, as it was conceived before the Civil War.

The other and opposing theory begins with a different set of assumptions. Those who made it their political gospel point to the first sentence of the Constitution, wherein is written: "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union . . ." and they contended that the Constitution made the American people an indissoluble nation that its authority came from the people of the country and not from the states.

In the debates over the admission of Missouri these conflicting ideas came out in their most corrosive form, but there were enough even-tempered men to put a conciliatory measure through Congress. A sort of gentlemen's agreement, known in history as the Missouri Compromise.

It was decided by the terms of the Compromise that Missouri should come into the Union as a slave state, but thereafter-and this is the core of the matter-slavery was to be debarred from all territory situated west of the Mississippi River and north of the 36° 30' parallel of latitude, which is the southern border line of the state of Missouri.

The country was divided by the Missouri Compromise into two opposing parts. A neat piece of anatomical dissection. Imaginary lines, parallels of latitude, freedom on one side of a chalk mark and slavery on the other. The clever statesmen who concocted this measure did not realize that they themselves were laying the foundation for a civil war; that they were dividing the nation into two countries instead of welding it into one.

Nevertheless, the Missouri Compromise was generally accepted at the time as a solution of the problem. For many years thereafter slavery was hardly mentioned in Congress, except in minor rhetorical skirmishes. But silence in Con

gress did not keep people, including Congressmen, from thinking of it. It became the skeleton in the Congressional closet. Adroit Southern leaders managed to sidetrack the subject as a critical issue, but these Southern gentlemen were like men sitting on the safety valve of a throbbing steam boiler; they had to use all their strength to hold it down, and were always in danger from an explosion.

The Missouri Compromise lasted for a generation, but it was repealed in 1854. It was unconstitutional, anyway, though this important question was not decided until after its existence was over.

Then came, in 1836, the revolt of Texas from Mexico and the slavery skeleton came out of the closet. It never went back. From then until the Civil War slavery was an important issue in national politics.

The Texans, who were settlers of American origin, won their independence from Mexico after a short and sanguinary conflict, but the Mexican government refused to confirm the treaty of peace in which their independence was granted, so they remained a virtually independent republic without the consent of Mexico. In 1837 their independence was recognized by the United States.

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The Texans never could have won if they had not been supplied with arms and volunteers through the unofficial connivance of the Jackson administration at Washington. Texas war debt grew up and expanded marvelously. It was represented by bonds and scrip, or deeds to lands on the immense cattle-raising plains. Nearly all this debt was held by American financiers.

The next thing in the list of events was a campaign of propaganda for the annexation of Texas to the United States. This movement was inspired by Southern statesmen, aided

powerfully by the financial interests of the North that had got control of most of the depreciated Texas bonds.

The Missouri Compromise effectually prevented the expansion of slavery in any direction except toward the South and West. Unless Texas could be annexed it was obvious that the South would, in a few years, have to take a back seat in national affairs. The Southern advocates of annexation hoped to make four new states of Texas, which would give them eight additional Senators.

The opponents of slavery-the intelligentsia and reformers of the North-came defiantly to the combat. William Lloyd Garrison, the leading abolitionist of the time, called upon the Northern states to secede from the Union if Texas with its slaves was admitted. William E. Channing declared, “I now ask whether as a people we are prepared to seize on a neighboring territory to the end of extending slavery? I ask whether as a people we can stand forth in the sight of God, in the sight of nations, and adopt this atrocious policy. Sooner perish! Sooner our name be blotted from the record of nations!"

In the face of so much clamor the annexation program lay down and seemed to die. But its quiescence was a sham. Behind the scenes there was no cessation in activity. Public speeches gave way to whispered conferences. Texas bonds and land scrip appeared miraculously in thousands of pockets. Charles and Mary Beard say, in their Rise of American Civilization:

In New York City, for example, three land companies, organized to buy claims of doubtful validity, had issued stocks to a gullible public. . . . In a word, the independence of Texas, the admission of Texas to the Union, and the confirmation of acquired land rights were essential to realizing the inflated hopes founded on an immense volume of paper scattered around through the United States.