What Hath God Wrought (23 page)

The Missouri Controversy also concerned political power. Northern whites were not all humanitarians concerned for the welfare of African Americans, but many of them were increasingly alarmed at the disproportionate political influence of southern slaveholders. The North had come to resent the constitutional clause by which three-fifths of the slave population counted for purposes of representation in Congress and the electoral college. The rule helped perpetuate the Virginia dynasty of presidents that reigned for thirty-two of the first thirty-six years under the Constitution; specifically, it had cost John Adams the presidency in the close election of 1800. In 1819, the three-fifths clause was boosting southern membership of the House by seventeen.
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To free the slaves in Missouri, or any other state, would not reduce the state’s representation in the federal House but potentially add to it, since freedpeople would be fully counted (unless they were colonized elsewhere). But if slavery were on the road to ultimate extinction in Missouri, the state might not vote with the proslavery bloc. In such power calculations, the composition of the Senate was of even greater moment than that of the House. Despite the three-fifths rule, the northern majority in the House of Representatives increased with every census reapportionment. So the South looked to preserve sectional equality in the Senate, where each state had two members regardless of population. The recently approved admission of Alabama would balance the scales at eleven free and eleven slave states.

Voting on the Tallmadge amendment reflected these political realities. The House of Representatives narrowly approved gradual emancipation for Missouri, with the North supporting it 80 to 14 and the South opposing 64 to 2. But in the Senate the slave states had greater strength; furthermore, three of the four senators from Illinois and Indiana reflected Butternut sentiment and voted with the South. The Senate refused to accept any restriction on slavery. With the two houses deadlocked, the Missouri statehood bill lapsed when Congress adjourned.
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The opponents of slavery extension now took their case to the people. They organized antislavery demonstrations in northern states, though it was hard to mobilize popular sentiment while the panic distracted the public. Rufus King, Federalist senator from New York, rallied other northern members of his party behind the Tallmadge amendment. King had been a critic of the three-fifths clause back in 1787, when he attended the Constitutional Convention as a young man; now, he was a political ally of the African American voters of Manhattan.
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Republicans accused him of fanning the flames of northern sectionalism to revitalize the Federalist Party. Motives on both sides of this emotional issue were mixed with politics. But it is not clear how much King and other Federalists can have hoped to achieve for their party by exploiting the Missouri Controversy when they were not even contesting the presidency. The election returns of 1820 show no Federalist resurgence at either state or congressional level.
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A rebirth of the Federalist Party seems to have been a bugaboo that some Republican politicians used to frighten northern voters into appeasing the slaveholders.

The Jeffersonian Republican Party leadership, both in the White House and on Capitol Hill, interpreted Tallmadge’s amendment as a challenge to their power, a revolt by northern political outsiders threatening to split the party. They were determined to get Missouri admitted without restrictions on slavery. After the Sixteenth Congress convened in December 1819, the debate over Missouri resumed. The speeches seemed interminable as well as intemperate. When Felix Walker of North Carolina was urged to sit down, he replied that he had to give his speech for the folks back home, “for Buncombe County.” Ever since, Americans have called a certain kind of inflated political oratory “buncombe”—or “bunk” for short.
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Meanwhile, President Monroe, Representative Henry Clay of Kentucky, and the Senate Republican leaders busied themselves behind the scenes.
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What is now the state of Maine had been a part of Massachusetts ever since colonial times. In June 1819, the Massachusetts legislature consented to separate statehood for what had been “the District of Maine.” The Senate leadership promptly linked the admission of Maine and Missouri into a single bill, in effect holding Maine hostage for the admission of Missouri without the Tallmadge amendment. Most of the congressmen from the Maine portion of Massachusetts were thus eventually persuaded to accept Missouri with slavery permitted.

But to bring about the desired result required one further concession. Senator Jesse Thomas of Illinois, who had been voting with the proslavery side (he himself owned what his state euphemistically called “indentured” workers), made the offer. He proposed that slavery should be prohibited, not in Missouri, but in all the rest of the Louisiana Purchase lying north of 36° 30' north latitude, that is, the southern boundary of Missouri. Even then, most northern congressmen would not vote to admit Missouri without the Tallmadge amendment, but enough of them eventually came around to permit enactment of the famous “Missouri Compromise.” Considering that slavery on the frontier was remote from the daily lives of most northern whites, and that the country was in the grip of a depression, it is surprising that the antislavery congressmen held their ground as long as they did. In the end, eighteen northern representatives either voted for Missouri without restriction on slavery or else abstained—enough for it to pass with the support of a solid South. The acid-tongued Virginian John Randolph derided the eighteen as “dough faces,” and the epithet stuck as a name from then on applied to northerners who betrayed their section. As a group, doughfaces fared badly in the next election.
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The Thomas proviso passed the House with the support of 95 out of 100 northern Representatives and even a majority of southern ones, 39 to 37. The Senate considered all the compromise measures together as a package: The South voted 20 to 2 in favor; the North, 18 to 4 against. It is remarkable how many southern Congressmen felt willing, in 1820, to concede a ban on slavery in the greater part of the territories. In general, the slave-exporting states of the Atlantic seaboard insisted more strongly on keeping the territories open to slavery than did the slave-importing states, where masters had less at stake in keeping the price of slaves high. Intense opposition to any prohibition of slavery in the territories came especially from two pockets of “Radicalism” (as proslavery extremism was called): Virginia and Georgia. As time went by, southern Radicalism would become more widespread.
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Had the Missouri statehood bill passed Congress with the Tallmadge amendment, Monroe would have vetoed it. Now, the question arose whether he should sign the Thomas proviso. Actually, Monroe favored this concession to northern sentiment, but first he polled his cabinet on the constitutionality of restricting slavery in the territories; this way the president covered himself with the Radicals of his home state. Although tensions between the New Englander Adams and the Georgian Crawford surfaced at the meeting, in the end the cabinet secretaries unanimously endorsed the prohibition of slavery in the territory north of 36° 30'. Secretary of War Calhoun, still in his nationalist phase, went along, and his followers in the South Carolina congressional delegation voted for the Thomas proviso.
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At the time, the South felt much better satisfied with the Missouri Compromise than the North. The South had got what its leaders felt was essential: preservation of the principle that there could be no emancipation against the wishes of a local white majority. The compromise also created a new principle out of what had been happening more or less by accident, that states would be admitted in pairs so as not to alter the sectional balance. The South benefited from this custom, because southern territories were often admitted to statehood before achieving requisite population just to keep up the balance.
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To be sure, the North got by far the largest share of the Louisiana Purchase, but this mattered less in practice than it seems when one looks at a map. The only portion of the purchase actually open to settlement in 1820 was the part open to slavery, Arkansas, which went on to became a slave state in 1836. Settlement of the area above 36° 30' proceeded more slowly. Before the North could realize its full benefits under the compromise, the South would secure repeal of the restriction against slavery by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

What the Missouri Compromise really prevented was not the rebirth of the Federalist Party but the breakup of the Republican Party along sectional lines.
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Another effect of the compromise was to confirm the growing power of the Senate, which had prevailed over the House in their conflict over the Tallmadge amendment. In the early years of the Republic, the House had been the more influential branch of Congress; in a few more years the Senate would enter what is called its golden age. A third result was to enhance the reputation of Henry Clay, whose role in effecting the outcome (unlike that of President Monroe) everyone recognized.

But probably the most important outcome of the Missouri Controversy was not the compromise itself but the startling solidity of southern opposition to gradual emancipation in Missouri. Jefferson and the other southern “conditional terminators” (those who favored terminating slavery under the right conditions) had sided not with the restriction of slavery but with those who wanted to extend it. Their essential condition was the consent of the local white population, not obtained in Missouri. Their theoretically antislavery position had become proslavery in practice. Hope for a moderate, peaceful resolution of America’s number one social problem dimmed.
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The action now shifted to the western frontier, where most white Missourians came from the South. Although Henry Clay let it be known that he hoped they would adopt a gradual emancipation plan of their own, there was never any chance of this.
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In the election for a Missouri constitutional convention in 1820, the opponents of slavery were routed. The framers of the new state constitution, taking precautions against future settlement coming from the free states, legalized slavery in perpetuity and also forbade “free negroes and mulattoes from coming to and settling in this State.”
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Later, German American immigrants would bring a substantial antislavery vote into Missouri, but in the meantime, the minority of antislavery settlers often found themselves targets of violence.

By their provocative conduct the Missourians almost undid the compromise, for some northerners threatened not to consent to the Missouri constitution when it came back to Congress for final approval. The ban against free blacks conflicted with the clause in the federal Constitution requiring states to respect the “privileges and immunities” of citizens of other states, for a few northern states accorded citizenship to their black residents. Secretary of State Adams made no secret of his outrage. As he told Representative Henry Baldwin: “If acquiesced in, [the Missouri state constitution] would change the terms of the federal compact—change its terms by robbing thousands of citizens of their rights.”
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The southern bloc responded by denying that any review of Missouri’s constitution was in order; the admission had already been finalized. This dispute had not been resolved when it came time for a joint session of Congress to count, officially, the votes of the presidential electors. Of course, everyone knew that Monroe had been reelected almost unanimously, but was Missouri entitled to cast three electoral votes? The clerk announced the total both with and without the disputed votes of Missouri, concluding, “But in either case James Monroe is elected President of the United States.” This did not prevent the dignity of the occasion from being marred by shouting, disorder, and a walkout by angry senators.
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The second Missouri controversy was finally resolved by a second Missouri compromise, largely the work of Henry Clay. The Missouri constitution would be approved provided the state legislature promised not to pass any law violating the “privileges and immunities” clause of the federal Constitution. The promise was redundant, since no state has the right to violate the federal Constitution, but it served its purpose of allowing an exhausted Congress to check Missouri off its agenda. Really at issue in the second Missouri debate was the interpretation of the “privileges and immunities” clause: whether free African Americans could enjoy its protection if they were citizens of their home state. Congress left this issue unresolved, and Missouri proceeded to exclude all free blacks except those who were citizens of their home states. The bad example of Missouri was followed by other states (including some northern ones) legislating against settlement by free Negroes on the assumption that they were not protected by the “privileges and immunities” clause. By 1847, Missouri felt secure in banning all free black settlers, period. The second Missouri compromise proved even less durable than the first.
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