Territorial expansion revealed major disagreements within the United States, directly leading to the rise of sectional tensions. Americans had been gradually moving west since colonization, but in 1803 it nearly doubled in size with the Louisiana purchase. The Louisiana territory remained largely unsettled until after the War of 1812. The successful defence against British forces led to a surge of nationalism. This surge of nationalism led to the belief that America was destined to expand and spread democracy across the continent. This widespread belief became known as Manifest Destiny. Western expansion soon led to conflict when Missouri requested statehood. At the time slave states in the South and free states in the North were politically balanced at eleven states each. Missouri’s admission as a slave state would upset the delicate balance of power, giving slave states the majority in congress. This upset Northerners who had grown increasingly opposed to the institution of slavery. The Missouri compromise was made in 1820 to prevent further conflict. In this compromise, Missouri would be admitted to the union as a slave state and Maine would be admitted as a free state. …show more content…
The admission of California, a free state, into the union created a significant controversy because there was no slave state to maintain the balance of power. This led to the Compromise of 1850, in which California is admitted into the union as a free state. In turn, the territories of Utah and New Mexico were organized under popular sovereignty, meaning the people living in the territory would decide whether it would be a free state or slave state. The passing of stricter fugitive slave laws was also part of the compromise. This infuriated Northern abolitionists who felt they were being forced to support an immoral institution. This sparked many protests and furthered the abolitionist
Leading up to the Missouri Compromise, there was a strain on the anti vs pro slavery supporters across the country. This all started in 1819 when Missouri wanted to be admitted to the union as a slave state. This was very controversial since there was a delicate balance between the free and slave states and admitting Main as a slave state would cause an uproar of an anti-slavery states and supporters. The issue was settled with a two-section compromise. The northern part of Massachusetts then moved toward becoming a separate state which would be named Maine. Maine was then admitted to the union as a free state while Missouri was admitted as slave state keeping the balance with twelve free states and twelve slave states. Moreover, in addition
Entry 1 Market Revolution What was the impact of the Market Revolution? In the beginning of the nineteenth century, people's lives changed remarkably. The typical person living before the Market Revolution focused on individualism. These people often farmed and survived on their own. After the Market Revolution, people started manufacturing and increased trade.
The Missouri Compromise was made in 1820, and it was a settlement trying to regulate the expansion of slavery. This controversy had occured when the state Missouri had applied for admission into the union, but had been rejected as the current states in the union had already achieved a balance in the number of slave and free states. If Missouri was accepted it would ruin the balance in the Senate to the slave states' advantage. To prevent their disadvantage in power, northerners accepted to admit Missouri into the union in one condition: they had to admit Maine as a free state. The admission of Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state would once again return to the balance, preventing and issues against the north and the south. The settlement was made stating that Missouri would be admitted as a slave state and
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 The Missouri Compromise was an attempt by the U.S. government to maintain the balance of power between the slave holding states and the free states in the U.S. Congress. Although the Compromise was initially successful in preserving the peace of the Union, it was only prolonging the unavoidable conflict that would happen four decades later. In 1819, the United States of America consisted of a total of 22 states, with 11 slave-holding states, and 11 free states.
Crisis events of the 1850s that helped lead toward the civil war were the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law, and the South leaving the Union. The Compromise of 1850 was five separate bills and three separate compromises. It admitted California as a free state, and the rest of the Mexican possession were left to be decided by popular sovereignty, which is a vote of the territory inhabitants. The result of this was 15 free states and 16 slave states. This lead to a stronger slave law, but no consistent majority of votes over the compromise (Faragher, 363). The Fugitive Slave Law helped lead toward the civil war because the law stated increased the power of slave owners to capture the escaped slaves. Through this the federal government fully
The United States is currently in a crisis because of Missouri. The people have asked for it to become a state. However, the people of Missouri have also decided that slavery will be permitted there. It has caused a dilemma because many slave owners already live in Missouri while the north is opposed to it becoming a slave state. The Northern Congressmen speak out against allowing the territory to enter the Union as a slave state because it would upset the balance in Senate. At the same time Maine has asked Congress if it can become a free state.
The Missouri Compromise, enacted in 1820, forced American politicians to attempt to find a solution to the issue of slavery and its expansion into the territories gained by the Louisiana Purchase. With the addition of new territories being gained by the United States the issue of whether the new states would be slave states or free states arose. Prior to the Louisiana Purchase the states maintained a frail balance of both free and slave states. The North and the South, both wished to keep an equal number of representatives within the senate, and the new territories to the west threatened to undo this balance. When Missouri announced that they wished to join the Union as a slave state, the issue immediately became controversial. The Northern
In 1819, two more states wishing to join the union, were Missouri and Maine. Missouri wanted to join the union in the in the north, but as a slave state. this would make the balance of power in congress unequal. Many northerners opposed this idea. Northerners proposed that Missouri be a slave state and that no more slaves were to be brought in, and all slave children would be free at age 25. Eventually Missouri would be a free state. Southerners were opposed to this idea. Congress debated for months. This brought about the Missouri Compromise of 1820, when Henry Clay proposed that Maine enter the union as a free state. He also proposed prohibiting slavery above the 36’30’ latitude, which is the southern boundary of Missouri. Since plantations would not be able to survive further north of this line, the South agreed.
The Compromise of 1850 was an attempt to smooth out confrontations of the acquired land from the mexican war in 1846-1848. The compromise consisted of the admission of california as a free state, the termination of slave trade in washington, and the ratification of fugitive slave law. The fugitive slave law granted southerners to be more authoritative as laws became harsher, stricter, and harder for the slaves the escape. On the other hand, northerners gained more power in the government as they obtained another free state. Under these consequences, tensions continued to escalate between both sections instead of fixing the problems which then increased the chances of civil war from occurring.
The free states were equal in political power to the slave states, this made it hard to come to decisive decisions when each state wanted their own way.. If more slave states were added, pro-slavery states would have more power in Congress. The Southern states had more representatives due to the three-fifths of slave law. The issue of slavery continues to build and the Federal government couldn’t make a decision on the matter, fearing that states would secede the Union. No laws on ending or promoting slavery were created, the only laws created were short term fixes for pleasing both views. Compromises were made in the hopes of solving the slavery issue like a Union. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 would have upset the balance of Congress because Missouri wants to enter the Union as a slave state. It is decided that Missouri will enter a slave state, but the rest of the land gained through Manifest Destiny will be divided at the 36’30’ attitude. All the land North will be free while all the area South will be slave states. The Compromise of 1850 was for states applying for statehood, such as California, Utah, and New
With the creation of more and more states, debates on whether a state would enter as free or slave. The politics of slavery during this time were tied to the ideas surrounding manifest destiny. Therefore the United States decided that it would need to contain balance meaning there could never be freer than slave states, or more slave than free states. In order to maintain that balance, leaders from both the North and South created compromises that these leaders hoped would prevent the issue of slavery from creating further disagreements between the North and the South. They first created the Missouri Compromise in order to address the issues involving the balance between free and slave states. In 1819, Missouri applied to the Union as a slave state and by doing that it would tip the balance of power in the Senate where the count of free and slave states was eleven a
The compromises merely worked, and with the passing of time, tensions rose more between the sections, thus making these compromises less and less effective. The Compromise of 1850 enraged both the North and the South. When California was annexed, it was assigned to become a free state and the South did not appeal to that because the land boundaries that was made by the Missouri Compromise was large. Another part of this compromise that angered Southerners was that slave trade was banned in Washington D.C. The Fugitive Slave Law, which was a part of the Compromise of 1850 angered the North, because it allowed bounty hunters to hunt down slaves and the people who helped them to hide. Also, Northerners rejected this because they rejected Popular Sovereignty, which created possibilities of having slavery in any Northern states.
This lead to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, this was a comprise that state, by bringing Missouri in as a Slave State, Maine would enter as a Free State (America: A Narrative History, 2013). The Compromise also prohibit any future states above the 36o30’ longitude and latitude to be Slave States, excluding Missouri (America: A Narrative History, 2013). This was an easy and simple fix to both the economic and political issues the North and South were facing with the expansion of the United
Southerners believes that if the United States could forbid slavery in Missouri, they could do so elsewhere. It 1820 congress finally agreed that slavery would be allowed in Missouri, but at the same time Maine would be carved out and admitted to the union as a free state. They also agreed that as the United States Expanded westward, states north of the 36 and a half degrees North would be free states, while states south of that would be slave states. This angered the north because under the compromise the new slave states covered more land than that of the new free states. Northerners worried that another slave state might increase the power of the southern states in the government.
At the time, the United States contained twenty-two states, evenly divided between slave and free. In the years leading up to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, tensions began to rise between proslavery and antislavery factions within the U.S. Congress and across the country. They reached a boiling point after Missouri’s 1819 request for admission to the Union as a slave state, which threatened to upset the delicate balance between slave states and free states. To keep the peace, Congress came up with a two-part compromise, granting Missouri’s request but also admitting Maine as a free state. It also passed an amendment that drew an imaginary line across the former Louisiana Territory, establishing a boundary between free and slave regions that remained the law of the land until it was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.