This paper examines how the question of slavery in newly admitted states drove the United States toward sectional crisis and, ultimately, civil war. Beginning with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Louisiana Purchase, the paper traces a series of congressional compromises — including the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 — that attempted but ultimately failed to resolve the slave state/free state balance of power. It then analyzes the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, the election of 1860, and the resulting Confederate secession, concluding with the Union victory, emancipation, and the unresolved racial tensions of Reconstruction.
After the War of Independence, the United States stretched no further than the Appalachian Mountains to the west. Fully aware of the vast potential of new lands, Congress drafted a key piece of legislation that would henceforth guide the process by which new states would be created and admitted to the Union. The legislation, called the Northwest Ordinance, was ratified in 1787 and outlined in detail the official statehood procedure: "So soon as there shall be five thousand free male inhabitants of full age in the district… they shall receive authority… to elect a representative from their counties or townships to represent them in the general assembly." When the population of a territory reached 60,000 voting-age males, a state constitution had to be delivered to Congress, which would then vote on whether or not to admit the state into the Union.
With the Northwest Ordinance, the creation of new states ensured that they would be "on an equal footing with the original States." However clearly the Northwest Ordinance spelled out the rights and liberties of citizens of new states, one issue would become so contentious and divisive as to tear the nation apart a century later. That issue was slavery.
As the United States acquired new territories to the west, the question of whether to extend the right of slave ownership to settlers could not be decisively resolved. The free state/slave state issue was debated for decades in Congress. Although the Constitutional Convention had expressly outlawed the importation of new slaves after 1808, no laws prevented the proliferation of slavery or the domestic slave trade. Except in states that voluntarily banned or limited slavery, the "peculiar institution" remained an integral part of life in many parts of America.
The question of whether to admit new states as slaveholding or free had a direct bearing on political representation in Congress. The Southern slaveholding states, fearing political disenfranchisement, wanted new states admitted as slaveholding ones in order to have more sympathizers in Congress. However, the abolitionist movement was growing stronger and more vocal, especially in the North. The massive land gains made when the United States purchased the French territory of Louisiana in 1803 complicated matters enormously. The more than 500 million acres of land acquired would be carved into numerous states and territories, and the slave state/free state question became one of the principal reasons why the nation eventually went to war in the 1860s.
The first territory from the Louisiana Purchase lands to be admitted to the Union was Missouri, in 1818, immediately bringing to light the deepening rift between Southern and Northern sentiments. Missouri was being settled largely by slaveholding Southerners who hoped the state would be admitted without any provisions restricting slavery within its borders. To their consternation — and that of other Southern states — Northern congressmen in the House of Representatives helped pass a bill that would admit Missouri as a free state. The bill failed to pass in the Senate.
The crux of the free state/slave state issue was congressional representation. Before Missouri applied for statehood, the number of slave states and free states was equal. To preserve the balance of power, Congress needed to compromise. When Maine applied for statehood in 1820, Congress proposed what would become known as the Missouri Compromise: in exchange for admitting Maine as a free state, Missouri would be admitted as a slave state. Attached to the bill was a measure that physically demarcated North from South — a direct reminder of the sectionalism sweeping the nation. The compromise stipulated that new states admitted north of the 36°30′N latitude line would be automatically admitted as free states. Because no other state entered the Union until 1836, the Compromise held for nearly two decades.
As westward expansion flourished, driven by economic need and by manifest destiny, maintaining the balance of power in keeping with the Missouri Compromise's 36°30′ line grew increasingly difficult. California was particularly problematic. Taken from Mexico after the war, California was geographically bisected by the 36°30′ line and was therefore legally and politically divided in half. Nevertheless, residents applied for statehood as a free state in 1850.
Congress responded with a set of complicated concessions: California would be admitted as a free state in exchange for the Fugitive Slave Law, which required citizens residing in free states to hand over runaway slaves, who would be afforded no legal rights whatsoever. Additionally, the District of Columbia would cease trading slaves, but the institution itself would not be abolished; enslaved people would not be emancipated. The admission of California as a free state upset the balance of power in Congress. The Fugitive Slave Law fueled the Underground Railroad and underscored the deepening divisions between North and South.
"Popular sovereignty leads to frontier violence"
"Supreme Court ruling inflames national crisis"
"War ends slavery but leaves racial tensions unresolved"
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