The Crisis in Missouri

The Crisis in Missouri When Missourians started requesting statehood in 1817, the United States entered a new phase of its expansion. As the first territory to petition for statehood after being included in the Louisiana Purchase, Missouri was a part of that enormous acquisition. Tens of thousands of people had moved to Missouri by the year 1818, including slaveholders who had brought about ten thousand slaves with them. When the Missouri territory's status was seriously considered by the U.S. House of Representatives in early 1819, the state's admittance to the Union proved to be difficult since it sparked a contentious discussion on whether or not slavery would be permitted in the newly formed state. Since the uneasy compromise of the "three-fifths clause," which stipulated that a state's entire free population and 60% of its enslaved population would be counted in determining the number of that state's members in the House of Representatives and the amount of its federal tax bill, was reached at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, politicians had tried to avoid the topic of slavery. Many northern politicians were incensed by the agreement because, they said, the "extra" population of enslaved people would give southern states more votes than they earned in the House and the Electoral College, despite the fact that slavery was practiced at the time in numerous northern states. By providing slave states a two-vote edge, Missour's admission as a slave state further jeopardized the precarious balance of power between free and slave states in the Senate. When anti-slavery congressman James Tallmadge of New York tried to modify the statehood bill in the House of Representatives, the discussion concerning representation turned to the morality of slavery itself. Tallmadge suggested that Missouri become a free state, that when the state attained statehood, no more slaves may be brought into Missouri, and that all children born into slavery in Missouri after statehood would be released at the age of twenty-five. By framing slavery as a wrong that had to be eradicated, the amendment changed the nature of the discussion. Representatives from the North backed the Tallmadge Amendment, arguing that slavery was morally repugnant and went against the equality and liberty that were the cornerstones of the country. The amendment was rejected by Southerners in Congress on the grounds that it violated slaveholders' property rights and their ability to take their property anywhere they pleased, so attempting to progressively outlaw slavery across the Union, not just in Missouri. Advocates of slavery, who had previously maintained that slavery was a necessary evil, now started to spread the myth that slavery was beneficial for the US economy. They said that it produced money and freed White men to pursue their own passions rather than working the land, as African descendants were more suited to do. Supporters contended that those under slavery received care and that being slaves was a better way for them to learn about Christianity than living as free heathens in an undeveloped part of Africa. Above all, they contended, the United States was destined to establish an empire of slavery across the Americas. As Western expansion continued, these arguments in favor of slavery were to be made again and time again, and with great power: What was most concerning for the nascent nation's cohesiveness was the debaters' division along party lines rather than sectional ones. Regardless of party identification, most northerners backed the Tallmadge Amendment, whereas southerners opposed it despite party differences on other issues. It failed, and the Missouri issue sparked vociferous clamor for disunion and bellicose threats of civil war. In 1820, Congress ultimately reached a compromise known as the Missouri Compromise. Maine, a free state, and Missouri, a slave state, would both join the Union at the same time after having formerly been a part of Massachusetts. The Senate's balance between slave and free states was preserved, the Tallmadge Amendment was narrowly defeated, and southerners no longer had to worry that Missouri slaveholders would lose their human property. Drawing a line across the remaining portion of the Lovisiana Territory at latitude 36° 30, which coincides with Missouris southern boundary, prevented similar confrontations every time a territory filed for statehood. With the apparent exception of Missouri, slavery was illegal north of this line but permitted south of it.