The Middle Period, 1817-1858. John William Burgess
was regarded both in the North and in the South as an evil, but men differed in opinion as to whether confining the slaves to a particular section was a better means for its mitigation than spreading them over a larger area, and reducing thus their number relative to the white population in any particular section.
Surrounded in thought with the ideas and conditions of 1820, it is difficult to see why the balance of advantage contained in the compromise provision of the Missouri bill did not lie with the North. Compromise or no compromise about the remainder of the Louisiana territory, Missouri was bound to be admitted without restriction as to slavery. The customary law of the region seeking to become a Commonwealth permitted slaveholding. The population was sufficient to warrant the assumption of Commonwealth powers. The Constitution did not authorize Congress to impose the slavery restriction, and the people of the region had protested against it. The admission of Missouri was, therefore, no legitimate element in the compromise. Neither was the agreement on the part of the Senate to separate Maine from Missouri any proper element in the compromise. The restriction placed by the House on Missouri rested on a false interpretation of constitutional law, and the connection of the two subjects in the same bill rested on a false interpretation of parliamentary law. In principle both had to be abandoned. The compromise was in reality only about the remainder of the Louisiana territory after the admission of Missouri, in no part of which had slavery, to that moment, been prohibited. How much of it should continue open to the further introduction of slavery by the immigration of masters with their slaves, and how much should be given over to practically exclusive immigration from the North—these were the only proper terms of the compromise. What the South finally obtained out of it was one Commonwealth, while the vast region from which slavery was excluded has produced eight or nine Commonwealths. In the light of these considerations it certainly appears that the cause of free labor won a substantial triumph in the Missouri compromise, and that, in place of that shameful surrender of freedom to slavery, so emphasized by certain historians, a mighty step forward in the progress of liberty was taken.
It was confidently hoped and believed that the compromise had solved the slavery problem, in so far as Congress could solve it. The whole country breathed more easily and the thoughts of men were turned to other subjects.
| The revival of the Missouri struggle. |
But the peace proved to be only an armistice. In less than twelve months the battle was raging again with more than its former fury.
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