The Middle Period, 1817-1858. John William Burgess
that there was any obligation, legal or moral, resting upon the Government of the United States toward any of the citizens of the United States, or any of the Commonwealths, to maintain slavery in the province of Louisiana and in the Territories carved out of it. There was, as we have seen, a provision in the Treaty of cession of 1803, by which the United States Government obligated itself to France to protect the property of the inhabitants of the province. But the Government of the United States was under no obligation to any citizen of the United States, or to any Commonwealth of the Union, to keep this Treaty inviolate. It may be affirmed, then, that the United States Government had, in the case of Louisiana, for the first time, permitted and maintained slavery in territory where it was perfectly free to act in regard to this subject as it would, in so far as its own citizens were concerned. This certainly manifested a great increase in the power of the slave-holders over the general Government.
| Interest in slavery in Maryland and Virginia increased by the acquisition of Louisiana. |
In consequence of this vast territorial extension of slavery the interest of the more Northern of the old slave-holding Commonwealths in slavery was, during this period, greatly re-enlivened. Maryland and Virginia were already, in 1807, overstocked with slaves. The opening up of the virgin lands of the Southwest to the immigration of masters and slaves from the older Commonwealths, and the abolition of the foreign slave-trade, now made the Southwest an excellent market for the surplus slave population of these older Commonwealths.
| The domestic slave-trade. |
The domestic slave-trade began now to be one of the chief sources of the wealth of Maryland and Virginia especially. Those who participated in this traffic justified it by the claim that it was better for the slaves themselves to be removed to new homes, where they could be better supported, than to be kept in their old homes and suffer for the want of the necessaries of life, and that the distribution of the slave population over a larger area would make future emancipation easier, and less dangerous to the supremacy of the white race. There was a certain force in this reasoning. The mass of the slave-holders seem to have been fully convinced of its soundness, although it did not entirely quiet the consciences of the best men among them to the many painful incidents connected with the separation of the slaves, made subject to this traffic, from their old homes and associations.
It is easy to see, however, that the raising of negro slaves, having become a most profitable industry in the older Commonwealths, acted as a vast bribe upon the ideas of men in regard to the questions of the perpetuation and extension of slavery, and beclouded their consciences in respect thereto.
| The relation of slavery to the diplomacy of the United States. |
Finally, the capture and abduction of negro slaves by the British forces during the War of 1812, and the demand of the slave-holders that the United States Government should secure the restitution of their slaves, or compensation for the loss of them, from the British Government, moved the United States Government to assume its attitude toward slavery in the administration of the international affairs of the country. The cardinal political principle of the slave-holding statesmen, at that period, was that slavery was a "State" matter with which the United States Government had no concern, and in regard to which it had no powers. This appeal to the Government to voice and enforce their demands against Great Britain in respect to their slave property has seemed, therefore, to some of the later and more radical critics of American history to have been a gross inconsistency, and they have represented it as a proof of the insincerity of the slave-holders wherever their pecuniary interests were involved.
This criticism is rather taking, but a sound view of the Constitution will hardly support it. In making the United States Government the exclusive organ for dealing with foreign countries, the Constitution impliedly confers upon that Government a protectorate against foreign states over interests which are regulated, internally, only by the powers of the respective Commonwealths of the Union. It is true that this doctrine rests upon a national view of the federal system of government in the United States, a view which the slave-holding statesmen did not later share. From their later particularistic principle of the fundamental character of the Union, such a general protectorate over "State" interests by the United States Government against foreign countries could hardly be inferred from the Constitution. If this principle could be assumed by these critics as having been held at that time by the slave-holding statesmen, their charge of inconsistency, if not of insincerity, would be fairly made out. But such, as we have seen, was not the case. Many of the slave-holding statesmen of 1816 were stronger in the national view of the character of the Union than were the statesmen of New England itself.
The United States Government recognized its duty to extend the protection demanded in the case, and it secured from the British Government compensation to the masters for the loss of slave property occasioned by the acts of the British officers during the War.
Such was the status of the slavery question at the close of the War of 1812–15, at the commencement, therefore, of the period when, withdrawing themselves from foreign complications, the people of the United States began to adjust the different parts of their political system, chiefly if not solely, to the demands of their internal interests, and to solve the problems of their polity from the point of view of their domestic institutions. It is not strange, then, that from this point of time onward the powerful institution of negro slavery recognized more and more clearly its natural relations to all of these questions of internal policy and law, and sought more and more determinedly to bring the political system and the policies of the United States into accord with its own exclusive interests. For the first three or four years after the close of the War this tendency did not, as has been pointed out, appear upon the surface, but it was working in the depths. From 1820 to 1861, certainly, it furnishes the point of view for the correct elucidation of the majority of the great problems of the history of the United States.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CREATION OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MISSOURI
The Growth of Slavery not Seriously Checked by the Prohibition of the Foreign Slave-trade—The General Government Powerless Against Slavery in the Existing Commonwealths—The Powers of the General Government in Respect to Slavery in the Territories—The Powers of Congress in the Admission of new "States" into the Union—Slavery in the Missouri Territory—The First Petition from Missouri Territory for the Permission to form a Commonwealth—The Second Petition, and the First Bill in Congress, for the Admission of Missouri—The Tallmadge Amendment to the Bill—Passage of the Amendment by the House of Representatives—Passage of the Original Bill by the Senate—The Missouri Bill during the Session of 1819–20—Mr. Taylor's Proposition—The Bill for the Admission of Maine