Which issue began the crisis that resulted in the missouri compromise?

The Missouri Compromise represents a major milestone in American history. Passed by Congress on March 3, 1820, the compromise temporarily settled a divisive national debate over whether new states would permit or prohibit slavery. Perhaps less known, but equally important, is the fact that this landmark legislative compromise also set the stage for a new era in Senate history

In the early years of congressional history, the House of Representatives dominated the legislative process, leaving the Senate to operate in its shadow. Americans found the more rambunctious House—then dominated by the nation’s most skilled politicians—to be far more interesting than the quietly deliberative Senate. Henry Clay, for example, served two short terms in the Senate beginning in 1806, but soon found its chamber too sedate for his grand ambitions. In 1811 he moved to the House, and was promptly elected Speaker on his very first day in office.

Speaker Clay was on hand in 1818 when Missouri became the first territory west of the Mississippi River to apply for statehood. When the statehood bill arrived in the House, a New York representative offered an amendment to prohibit slavery in the new state. The House approved the amended bill, but just barely, and with a vote that reflected the nation’s growing sectional crisis. “You have kindled a fire which all the waters of the ocean cannot put out,” declared one lawmaker. When the bill arrived in the Senate, pro-slavery senators struck out the offending amendment. The House refused to concur with the Senate’s version of the bill, a stalemate ensued, and the statehood measure died.

Missouri renewed its application for statehood in 1820. Once again, a contentious debate stirred up anger and bitterness over a score of issues—industrial development, trade and tariff policies, and—always—slavery. Seeking a way to settle the dispute and prevent disunion, Speaker Clay promoted a compromise to allow slavery in Missouri while simultaneously admitting Maine as a free state. This so-called Missouri Compromise drew a line from east to west along the 36th parallel, dividing the nation into competing halves—half free, half slave. The House passed the compromise bill on March 2, 1820.

The next day, pro-slavery advocates in the House moved to reconsider the vote. In what one Clay biographer called the “neatest and cleverest parliamentary trick ever sprung in the House,” Speaker Clay declared the motion out of order until routine business was completed, then discretely signed the Missouri bill and sent it to the Senate for approval. When his opponents again raised their motion later in the day, Clay blithely announced that the compromise measure had already gone to the Senate and had already been passed.

Why was the Missouri Compromise so important to the Senate? It maintained a delicate balance between free and slave states. On the single most divisive issue of the day, the U.S. Senate was equally divided. If the slavery question could be settled politically, any such settlement would have to happen in the Senate. That realization inspired men like Henry Clay—and Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun—to join the Senate, shining the spotlight of public attention on a new stage and a new era of debate.

Ironically, it was the astute maneuvering of Speaker Henry Clay that helped bring about this new era of Senate debate, creating a legislative forum in which Senator Henry Clay would soon forge other Union-saving compromises.

Most white Americans agreed that western expansion was crucial to the health of the nation. But what should be done about slavery in the West?

The contradictions inherent in the expansion of white male voting rights can also be seen in problems raised by western migration. The new western states were at the forefront of more inclusive voting rights for white men, but their development simultaneously devastated the rights of Native American communities. Native American rights rarely became a controversial public issue. This was not the case for slavery, however, as northern and southern whites differed sharply about its proper role in the west.

The incorporation of new western territories into the United States made slavery an explicit concern of national politics. Balancing the interests of slave and free states had played a role from the very start of designing the federal government at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The crucial compromise there that sacrificed the rights of African Americans in favor of a stronger union among the states exploded once more in 1819 when Missouri petitioned to join the United States as a slave state.

The South Carolina State Arsenal, nicknamed the "Old Citadel," was constructed after in Charleston, South Carolina.

In 1819, the nation contained eleven free and eleven slave states creating a balance in the U.S. senate. Missouri's entrance threatened to throw this parity in favor of slave interests. The debate in Congress over the admission of Missouri was extraordinarily bitter after Congressman James Tallmadge from New York proposed that slavery be prohibited in the new state.

The debate was especially sticky because defenders of slavery relied on a central principle of fairness. How could the Congress deny a new state the right to decide for itself whether or not to allow slavery? If Congress controlled the decision, then the new states would have fewer rights than the original ones.

Henry Clay, a leading congressman, played a crucial role in brokering a two-part solution known as the Missouri Compromise. First, Missouri would be admitted to the union as a slave state, but would be balanced by the admission of Maine, a free state, that had long wanted to be separated from Massachusetts. Second, slavery was to be excluded from all new states in the Louisiana Purchase north of the southern boundary of Missouri. People on both sides of the controversy saw the compromise as deeply flawed. Nevertheless, it lasted for over thirty years until the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 determined that new states north of the boundary deserved to be able to exercise their sovereignty in favor of slavery if they so choose.

Democracy and self-determination could clearly be mobilized to extend an unjust institution that contradicted a fundamental American commitment to equality. The Missouri crisis probed an enormously problematic area of American politics that would explode in a civil war. As Thomas Jefferson observed about the Missouri crisis, "This momentous question, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror."

In an attempt to keep a legislative balance between the pro- and anti- slavery factions, the Missouri Compromise delineated which states would be free and which would not.

African Americans obviously opposed slavery and news of some congressional opposition to its expansion circulated widely within slave communities. Denmark Vesey, a free black living in Charleston, South Carolina, made the most dramatic use of the white disagreement about the future of slavery in the west. Vesey quoted the Bible as well as congressional debates over the Missouri issue to denounce slavery from the pulpit of the African Methodist Episcopal church where he was a lay minister. Along with a key ally named Gullah Jack, Vesey organized a slave rebellion in 1822 that planned to capture the Charleston arsenal and seize the city long enough for its black population to escape to the free black republic of Haiti.

The rebellion was betrayed just days before its planned starting date and resulted in the execution of thirty-five organizers as well as the destruction of the black church where Vesey preached. Slaveholders were clearly on the defensive with antislavery sentiment building in the north and undeniable opposition among African Americans in the south. As one white Charlestonian complained, "By the Missouri question, our slaves thought, there was a charter of liberties granted them by Congress."

African Americans knew that they could not rely upon whites to end slavery, but they also recognized that the increasing divide between north and south and their battle over western expansion could open opportunities for blacks to exploit. The most explosive of these future black actions would be in 1831.

What were the main issues with the Missouri Compromise?

What began the Missouri crisis?

What was the crisis in the Missouri crisis?