PW - Early 1800s Lesson

Early 1800s

Missouri Compromise of 1820

The state constitution proposed by Missouri allowed slavery. Because half the states in the union allowed slavery while the other half did not, statehood for Missouri would upset the U.S. Senate's equal balance between proslavery and antislavery senators. This issue was resolved when Congress passed the Missouri Compromise. This said Maine would be admitted to the Union as a free state, Missouri would be admitted as a slave state, and slavery would be prohibited in the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase except for Missouri. Once again, half the states would allow slavery while the other half did not, and the Senate would retain its equal balance between proslavery and antislavery senators - until the next state asked to enter the Union. 

MissouriCompromise.jpgONE DATE EVERYONE GETS WRONG 101 It seems almost everyone is unable to remember the year—or even the decade—in which Congress enacted the Missouri Compromise. It was 1820. The compromise admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free one, but it also divided the rest of the land obtained from France by the Louisiana Purchase into slave and free territory at 36°30’ north latitude, Missouri’s southern boundary. Although this legislation satisfied moderates for a generation, by mid-century the slavery issue was becoming ever more intense. It was addressed again by the Compromise of 1850; the 1820 act itself was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which permitted the residents of those territories to decide the slavery question for themselves. Passed in the forlorn hope of maintaining peace, the new legislation instead triggered bloody civil war in Kansas Territory between proslavery and antislavery settlers. The violence of the 1850s throws the hopeless compromises of that decade into high relief and makes us less aware of the earlier measure.Map showing the Missouri Compromise and division of Slave vs Free states.

Image Credit: Map courtesy of PBS.

Discovery of Nat Turner wood engraving illustrating Benjamin Phipps's capture of Nat Turner on October 31, 1831.

Nat Turner

African American preacher Nat Turner believed his mission on Earth was to free his people from slavery. Seeing an 1831 solar eclipse as a message from above, he led a slave rebellion on four Virginia plantations. About 60 whites were killed, and Turner was captured, tried, and executed. To stop such uprisings, white leaders passed new laws to limit the activities of slaves and to strengthen the institution of slavery.

Nullification Crisis

John C Calhoun daguerreotype (early photograph)Vice President John C. Calhoun argued with President Andrew Jackson about the rights of states to nullify (to cancel) federal laws they opposed. Trouble, known as the Nullification Crisis, resulted when southern states sought to nullify a high tariff (tax) Congress had passed on manufactured goods imported from Europe. This tariff helped northern manufacturers but hurt southern plantation owners, so legislators nullified the tariff in South Carolina. Calhoun, a South Carolinian, resigned from the vice presidency to lead the efforts of the southern states in this crisis. His loyalty to the interests of the southern region, or section, of the United States, not to the United States as a whole, contributed to the rise of sectionalism.

Calhoun and the advocates of sectionalism argued in favor of states' rights - the idea that states have certain rights and political powers separate from those held by the federal government that the federal government may not violate. The supporters of sectionalism were mostly southerners. Their opponents were afraid that if each state could decide for itself which federal laws to obey the United States would dissolve into sectional discord or even warfare.

 

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