Missouri Compromise Of 1850: Issues Of Slavery And Expansion

In an essay that incorporates the textbook, lecture and power-point notes compare and contrast the compromises of 1820 and 1850.

As tensions between the North and the South rose on the issues of slavery and states’ rights, numerous compromises were proposed to ease the conflict. Such compromises included the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, and the Crittenden Compromise. These compromises had intentions of defining where slavery was permitted and clarifying states’ rights. They were only temporary fixes to a more pressing issue. Between the Missouri Compromise and the Crittenden Compromise, a series of events changed the political atmosphere of the United States and prevented any more compromises on the institution of slavery from being passed.

A little after the Manifest Destiny, the U.S. faced a series of troubles of sectional balances over whether or not the land acquired should be free or slavery states. The Compromise of 1850, proposed by Senator Henry Clay, included measures that dealt with the land acquired specifically from the Mexican War.

The Compromise of 1850 was a desperate attempt to keep the southern states from seceding from the United States of America. While the goal was to keep the south from seceding, the new laws actually created more tension than it solved. Since the division in America over slave ownership had been holding a delicate balance with the states on both sides, the North and the South. When California petitioned to join the Union in 1849 as a free state, that delicate balance tipped and the conflict once again erupted. The Compromise consisted of 5 laws, admitting California as a free state, creating Utah and New Mexico territories with the question of slavery in each is determined by popular sovereignty, settling a Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute in the former’s favor, ending the slave trade in Washington D.C. and making it easier for southerners to recover fugitive slaves (History).

The Compromise of 1850, as it was called, was a bundle of legislation that everyone could agree on. First, congressmen agreed that California would be admitted to the Union as a free state (Utah was not admitted because the Mormons refused to give up the practice of polygamy). The fate of slavery in the other territories, though, would be determined by popular sovereignty. Next, the slave trade (though not slavery itself) was banned in Washington, D.C. Additionally, Texas had to give up some of its land to form the New Mexican territory in exchange for a cancellation of debts owed to the federal government. Finally, Congress agreed to pass a newer and tougher Fugitive Slave Act to enforce the return of escaped slaves to the South.

The Missouri Compromise caused some of the biggest conflicts in United States history. One of the biggest conflicts caused by the Missouri Compromise was the Civil War. The Missouri Compromise was passed forty-one years before the Civil War happened. It caused the disagreement between the north, the anti-slavery, and the south, the pro-slavery in the United States on the issue of slavery. The north did not like slavery and the south did. The Missouri Compromise was written by Henry Clay and both people who promote slavery and people who are against slavery agreed to it in Congress. The Missouri Compromise was passed in 1820 agreeing to Missouri to be a slave state and Maine as a free state. It also banned slavery in the Louisiana Territory north from the latitude line which was thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes. The compromise stayed a law until it was canceled by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The

The Missouri compromise was a very important event that marked the beginning of the long battle against slavery. In the years leading up to the Missouri compromise tensions were rising between the North and the South. The states were all being divided into slave states and free states. Free states were states that were anti-slavery and were made up of mainly Northern states while slave states were states that supported slavery and were all mostly Southern states. Before the Missouri compromise the amounts of slave and free states were kept balanced. When Missouri met all the requirements to become a state and wanted to be admitted as a slave state, it threatened to tip the balance. The Missouri compromise allowed the admission of Missouri as a slave state while at the same time allowing Maine to be admitted as a free state, maintaining the balance. It also prohibited slavery in the states North of the southern boundary of Missouri. This conflict inspired other people and was the first major battle against slavery. It also kept the number of free and slave states even preventing the balance from being tipped in favor of slavery. One of the arguments that I intend to make to prove that the Missouri compromise was the beginning of this battle is that the Missouri Compromise prevented pro slavery states from gaining majority in the senate. A second point that I will make is that the Missouri compromise opened up serious debates and conversations that otherwise may not have

The Missouri compromise was an effort by congress to settle the sectional conflicts made by Missouri's admission to the union. The union was balanced with 11 free and 11 slave

The Compromise of 1850 was “a set of laws, passed in the midst of fierce wrangling between groups favoring slavery and groups opposing it, that attended to give something to both sides…”

During the Civil War Era and Reconstruction, there was continuous threats by the Confederacy of secession from the Union. The Confederacy was extremely hesitant to maintain relations with the Union and was willing to separate into its own territory. Secession, in Civil War terms, is the act of disassociation from the Union. The Confederacy was willing to secede from the Union for various reasons. Lincoln being elected was a red flag for the Southern states, which allowed for the issue of abolition to be a rising threat as well as create tension between the North and Southern territories.

3.     The Compromise of 1850- The compromise of 1850 consisted of 5 laws passed in September of 1850 that had to do with the issue of slavery.  When California wanted to come into the union as a free state it threw off the balance between free and slave states.  The compromise was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was taken out. Furthermore, California entered the Union as a free state and a territorial government was created in Utah. Also, an act was passed settling a boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico that also established a territorial government in New Mexico.

“Organized and championed by Henry Clay, the Compromise of 1850 was a series of laws and policy enactments that formed a comprehensive new national policy toward issues of slavery and westward expansion. At the core of this debate was the question of whether or not frontier territories should join the Union as new slave states. Southern states preferred an expansion of slavery into new territories, whereas northern states argued in favor of abolishing slavery in any new states. The Compromise of 1850 determined that new states would be slave-free, and the slave trade was also abolished in Washington, D.C. In exchange for these concessions, southern states received an amendment to the Fugitive Slave Act, which forced northern states to take more aggressive measures to return escaped slaves into the southern states from which they departed.

In 1820, the Missouri compromise was enforced, which sparked the clash between all of the states. The Missouri Compromise stated that Maine was a free state, Missouri was a slave state, and the rest of the Louisiana Territory was split into two halves; one free and one slave. Some people believed that because of this, the problem of slavery would finally be resolved, but Missouri threw a curveball when they required that free African American citizens could not cross Missouri borders. “Missouri’s restrictionist policy obviously denied African American citizens the constitutional right to move from one state to any other state” (193). But the Compromise was soon salvaged, and white southerners began to realize that in the eyes of the Union, they were a political minority because they could not even pass the Missouri Compromise.

The controversy over the extension of slavery into western territories contributed to the coming of the Civil War in many ways. Previously, the Missouri comprise admitted Missouri to the union as a slave state and Maine as a free state, preserving the fragile balance in Congress. However it did not apply to new territories that were not part of the Louisiana Purchase, and so the issue of slavery continued to fester as the nation expanded. During the election of 1848 slavery was a huge controversy. After two years of increasingly volatile debate over the issue, Kentucky Senator Henry Clay proposed another compromise to reduce tensions; Henry Clay had proposed ‘The Compromise of 1850’. The compromise was consisted into five parts; admit California

During the years leading up to the civil war, the issue of slavery was the main focus of most politicians. The people in the North were anti-slavery and wanted slavery to be gone forever. The people in the South, some who owned slaves, thought that slavery was a okay and that it should be legal. One of the first laws passed that had to do with slavery was the Missouri Compromise in 1820. In early 1819, Missouri applied to become a state of the union. At this time, there were 11 states that allowed slavery and 11 that did not. This balance was crucial because it meant that there was equal representation in congress for both sides. But Missouri would become a slave state, tipping the balance in favor of the South. To address