When the War of 1812 ended, the United States consisted of eighteen states—nine free and nine slave. Very soon Indiana was admitted as a free state, offset by Mississippi as a slave state. It was inevitable that this precarious balance between the North and the South would some day cause trouble, and the trouble came very soon. In 1818, Illinois entered as a free state, and the enabling legislation to admit Missouri was introduced in Congress in 1819.

The South assumed that Missouri would be a slave state, but a New York Congressman amended the Missouri statehood bill to provide for gradual freeing of the slaves there. The South reacted vigorously to keep from losing its equal representation in the Senate and blocked passage of the bill. Meanwhile, Alabama came in to balance Illinois, and there were eleven northern and eleven southern states.

The following year, when Maine applied for admission into the Union, Henry Clay of Kentucky engineered the famous Missouri Compromise. This agreement provided that Missouri would come in as a slave state but that no more slave states would be admitted from territory north of Missouri’s southern boundary. This compromise is important because it foreshadows the struggle between the North and South that eventuated in the Civil War a generation later. Although most of the oratory dealt with the slavery issue, the struggle also concerned the broader matter of political control in the West.

Representative Arthur Livermore Argues Against Extending Slavery

The following selections illustrate the debate in Congress over the Missouri question. The first speech is by Congressman Arthur Livermore of New Hampshire against the extension of slavery.

I propose to show what slavery is, and to mention a few of the many evils which follow in its train; and I hope to evince that we are not bound to tolerate the existence of so disgraceful a state of things beyond its present extent, and that it would be impolitic and very unjust to let it spread over the whole face of our Western territory. Slavery in the United States is the condition of man subjected to the will of a master who can make any disposition of him short of taking away his life. In those States where it is tolerated, laws are enacted making it penal to instruct slaves in the art of reading, and they are not permitted to attend public worship or to hear the Gospel preached.

Thus the light of science and of religion is utterly excluded from the mind, that the body may be more easily bowed down to servitude. The bodies of slaves may, with impunity, be prostituted to any purpose and deformed in any manner by their owners. The sympathies of nature in slaves are disregarded; mothers and children are sold and separated; the children wring their little hands and expire in agonies of grief, while the bereft mothers commit suicide in despair. How long will the desire of wealth render us blind to the sin of holding both the bodies and souls of our fellow-men in chains!

But, sir, I am admonished of the Constitution, and told that we cannot emancipate slaves. I know we may not infringe that instrument, and therefore do not propose to emancipate slaves. The proposition before us goes only to prevent our citizens from making slaves of such as have a right to freedom. In the present slaveholding States let slavery continue, for our boasted Constitution connives at it; but do not, for the sake of cotton and tobacco, let it be told to future ages that, while pretending to love liberty, we have purchased an extensive country to disgrace it with the foulest reproach of nations.

Our Constitution requires no such thing of us. The ends for which that supreme law was made are succinctly stated in its preface. They are, first, to form a more perfect union and insure domestic tranquility. Will slavery effect this? Can we, sir, by mingling bond with free, black spirits with white, like Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth, form a more perfect union and insure domestic tranquility? Secondly, to establish justice. Is justice to be established by subjecting half mankind to the will of the other half? Justice, sir, is blind to colors, and weighs in equal scales the rights of all men, whether white or black. Thirdly, to provide for the common defense and secure the blessings of liberty. Does slavery add anything to the common defense? Sir, the strength of a republic is in the arm of freedom. But, above all things, do the blessings of liberty consist in slavery?

Senator James Barbour Defends Slavery

In the second selection we have chosen, Senator James Barbour of Virginia defends slavery:

The gentleman from Pennsylvania asks shall we suffer Missouri to come into the Union with this savage mark [of slavery] on her countenance? I appeal to that gentleman to know whether this be language to address to an American Senate, composed equally of members from States precisely in that condition that Missouri would be in, were she to tolerate slavery. Are these sentiments calculated to cherish that harmony and affection so essential to any beneficial results from our Union? But, sir, I will not imitate this course, and I will strive to repress the feeling which such remarks are calculated to awaken.

... They assure us that they do not mean to touch this property [slavery] in the old states.... What kind of ethics is this that is bounded by latitude and longitude, which is inoperative on the left, but is omnipotent on the right bank of a river? Such a doctrine is well calculated to excite our solicitude; for, although the gentlemen who now hold it are sincere in their declarations, and mean to content themselves with a triumph in this controversy, what security have we that others will not apply it to the South generally?

Let it not, however, be supposed that in the abstract I am advocating slavery. Like all other human things, it is mixed with good and evil—the latter, no doubt, preponderating.... Whether slavery was ordained by God Himself in a particular revelation to His chosen people, or whether it be merely permitted as a part of that moral evil which seems to be the inevitable portion of man, are questions I will not approach; I leave them to the casuists [debaters] and the divines [preachers]. It is sufficient for us, as statesmen, to know that it has existed from the earliest ages of the world, and that to us has been assigned such a portion as, in reference to their number and the various considerations resulting from a change of their condition, no remedy, even plausible, has been suggested, though wisdom and benevolence united have unceasingly brooded over the subject.

However dark and inscrutable may be the ways of heaven, who is he that arrogantly presumes to arraign [challenge] them? The same mighty power that planted the greater and the lesser luminary in the heavens permits on earth the bondsman and the free. To that Providence, as men and Christians, let us bow. If it be consistent with His will, in the fullness of time, to break the fetter of the slave, He will raise up some Moses to be their deliverer. To him commission will be given to lead them up out of the land of bondage.

Representative James Stevens Argues for the Compromise

In the final selection James Stevens, Representative from Connecticut, pleads with Congress to accept the Compromise:

I have listened with pain to the very long, protracted debate that has been had on this unfortunate question. I call it unfortunate, sir, because it has drawn forth the worst passions of man in the course of the discussion....

If the deadliest enemy this country has, or ever had, could dictate language the most likely to destroy your glory, prosperity, and happiness, would it not be precisely what has been so profusely used in this debate—sectional vaunting?... Indeed, sir, there is no view of this unhappy division of our country but must be sickening to the patriot and in direct violation of the dictate of wisdom, and the last, though not least, important advice of the Father and Friend of his Country. He forbids the use of the words Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western, as descriptive of the various parts of your country.

But, sir, we have now arrived at a point at which every gentleman agrees something must be done. A precipice lies before us at which perdition [ruin] is inevitable. Gentlemen on both sides of this question, and in both Houses, indoors and out of doors, have evinced a determination that augurs ill of the high destinies of this country! And who does not tremble for the consequences?...

I wish not to be misunderstood, sir. I don’t pretend to say that in just five calendar months your Union will be at an end;...

But, sir, I do say, and, for the verity of the remark, cite the lamentable history of our own time, that the result of a failure to compromise at this time, in the way now proposed, or in some other way satisfactory to both, would be to create ruthless hatred, irradicable jealousy, and a total forgetfulness of the ardor of patriotism, to which, as it has heretofore existed, we owe, under Providence, more solid national glory and social happiness than ever before was possessed by any people, nation, kindred, or tongue under Heaven.