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97-697: Sectional tensions over the issue of the westward expansion of slavery, previously resolved by the Missouri Compromise , were reawakened with the debate over Texas Annexation and the Mexican War . Texas Annexation was the major issue in the national elections of 1844, but, despite some signs of a sectional split, the election was resolved along the established party lines. Opposition to the Mexican War and, especially, opposition to acquiring new territory, also split largely along party lines. It

194-462: A Free State Party might take shape if Congress failed to reach an understanding over Missouri and slavery and possibly threaten southern pre-eminence. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts surmised that the political configuration for just such a sectional party already existed. That the Federalists were anxious to regain a measure of political participation in national politics

291-549: A battery at Fort Moultrie at the time of the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Rhett was born Robert Barnwell Smith in Beaufort , South Carolina, United States. He later studied law. Rhett was of English ancestry. On his mother's side, he was related to U.S. Representative Robert Barnwell (his great-uncle) and Senator Robert Woodward Barnwell (son of Robert). A cousin of the Barnwells was the wife of Alexander Garden . Rhett

388-592: A bloc on measures that challenged slaveholding interests and augmented by defections from free states with southern sympathies, was able to tally majorities. The Senate stood as the bulwark and source of the Slave Power , which required admission of slave states to the Union to preserve its national primacy. Missouri statehood, with the Tallmadge Amendment approved, would have set a trajectory towards

485-409: A cause as the one we fought for should have been sacrificed by the prejudices & want of judgment & foresight of one man [Jefferson Davis]! Yet such was the fact, according to my most deliberate opinion." Rhett struggled with skin cancer for many years, including a "cancerous growth on his nose which terribly disfigured him and also affected his general health in the years after the war." After

582-625: A complaint that New England and the Mid-Atlantic States suffered unduly from the federal ratio and declared himself 'degraded' (politically inferior) to the slaveholders. Federalists both in the North and the South preferred to mute antislavery rhetoric, but during the 1820 debates in the 16th Congress, King and other Federalists would expand their old critique to include moral considerations of slavery. Republican James Tallmadge Jr. and

679-590: A fire which all the waters of the ocean cannot put out, which seas of blood can only extinguish. If a dissolution of the Union must take place, let it be so! If civil war, which gentlemen so much threaten, must come, I can only say, let it come! Representatives from the North outnumbered those from the South in House membership 105 to 81. When each of the restrictionist provisions was put to the vote, they passed along sectional lines: 87 to 76 for prohibition on further slave migration into Missouri and 82 to 78 for emancipating

776-528: A free state to become the separate state of Maine . That occurred only as a result of a compromise involving slavery in Missouri and in the federal territories of the American West . Robert Barnwell Rhett Robert Barnwell Rhett (born Robert Barnwell Smith ; December 21, 1800 – September 14, 1876) was an American politician who served as a deputy from South Carolina to

873-525: A free state west of the Mississippi and a decline in southern political authority. The question as to whether the Congress was allowed to restrain the growth of slavery in Missouri took on great importance in slave states. The moral dimensions of the expansion of human bondage would be raised by northern Republicans on constitutional grounds. The Tallmadge Amendment was "the first serious challenge to

970-515: A leading role in accelerating the emancipation of the remaining slaves in New York in 1817 and had campaigned against Illinois's Black Codes . Though ostensibly free-soil, the new state had a constitution that permitted indentured servitude and a limited form of slavery. As a New York Republican, Tallmadge maintained an uneasy association with Governor DeWitt Clinton , a former Republican who depended on support from ex-Federalists. Clinton's faction

1067-548: A limited central government, they were reminded that Jefferson, as president in 1803, had deviated from those precepts by wielding federal executive power to double the size of the United States, including the lands under consideration for Missouri statehood. In doing so, he set a constitutional precedent that would serve to rationalize Tallmadge's federally imposed slavery restrictions. The 15th Congress had debates that focused on constitutional questions but largely avoided

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1164-533: A permanent adjustment of this sectional controversy. Fourthly, That the State of Georgia in the judgment of this Convention, will and ought to resist even (as a last resort,) to a disruption of every tie which binds her to the Union, any action of Congress upon the subject of slavery in the District of Columbia, or in any places subject to the jurisdiction of Congress incompatible with the safety, domestic tranquility,

1261-768: A professor of Africana Studies and US history at Bowdoin College , writes in Portland Magazine , "Martin Kinsley, Joshua Cushman, Ezekiel Whitman, Enoch Lincoln, and James Parker—wanted to prohibit slavery's spread into new territories. In 1820, they voted against the Missouri Compromise and against Maine's independence. In their defense, they wrote that, if the North, and the nation, embarked upon this Compromise—and ignored what experiences proved, namely that southern slaveholders were determined to dominate

1358-633: A single omnibus bill, in September 1850 President Millard Fillmore signed the five separate bills that made up the compromise. Around the same time, radicals within the South pursued their own solution, leading to the Nashville Convention in June 1850 that some hoped would become a secessionist convention. The convention denounced the proposed compromise, but rejected secession over any territorial restrictions on slavery in favor of extending

1455-474: A slave state was expected to be more-or-less routine. When the Missouri statehood bill was opened for debate in the House of Representatives on February 13, 1819, early exchanges on the floor proceeded without serious incident. In the course of the proceedings, however, Representative James Tallmadge Jr. of New York "tossed a bombshell into the Era of Good Feelings" with the following amendments: Provided, that

1552-723: A strong position for protecting traditional Southern rights. They did this by approving what came to be known as the Georgia Platform. The document in full is as follows: Be it Resolved by the People of Georgia in Convention assembled, 1st, That we hold the American Union, secondary in importance only to the rights and principles it was designed to perpetuate. That past associations, present fruition, and future prospects, will bind us to it so long as it continues to be

1649-756: The 1860 presidential campaign , a widely credited report in the Nashville Patriot said that the outcome was the intended result of a conspiracy by Rhett, Yancey, and William Porcher Miles hatched at the Southern Convention in Montgomery, Alabama in May 1858. One 20th-century historian called the scheme the work of "Rhett–Yancey– Keitt extremists." After the election of the Republican Party's candidate, Abraham Lincoln , Rhett

1746-630: The Charleston Mercury , now edited by his son, Robert Barnwell Rhett Jr. The 1860 Democratic National Convention met in Charleston , South Carolina and a large bloc of Southern delegates walked out when the platform was insufficiently pro-slavery. That led to the division of the party and separate Northern and Southern nominees for president, which practically guaranteed the election of an anti-slavery Republican , which in turn triggered declarations of secession in seven states. During

1843-565: The Compromise of 1820 ) was federal legislation of the United States that balanced the desires of northern states to prevent the expansion of slavery in the country with those of southern states to expand it. It admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and declared a policy of prohibiting slavery in the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 36°30′ parallel . The 16th United States Congress passed

1940-565: The Northwest Ordinance in 1787 and outlawing the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1808. The Founders sanctioned slavery but did so with the implicit understanding that the slave states would take steps to relinquish the institution as opportunities arose. Southern states, after the American Revolutionary War , had regarded slavery as an institution in decline except for Georgia and South Carolina . That

2037-586: The Northwest Ordinance . Further, antislavery legislators invoked Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, which requires states to provide a republican form of government. As the Louisiana Territory was not part of the United States in 1787, they argued that introducing slavery into Missouri would thwart the egalitarian intent of the Founders. Proslavery Republicans countered that

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2134-675: The Provisional Confederate States Congress from 1861 to 1862, a member of the US House of Representatives from South Carolina from 1837 to 1849, and US Senator from South Carolina from 1850 to 1852. As a staunch supporter of slavery and an early advocate of secession , he was a " Fire-Eater ", nicknamed the "father of secession". Rhett published his views through his newspaper, the Charleston Mercury . His son Alfred M. Rhett commanded

2231-525: The War of 1812 . The Founding Fathers had inserted both principled and expedient elements in the establishing documents. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 had been grounded on the claim that liberty and equality were linked together as universal human rights. The Revolutionary generation had formed a government of limited powers in 1787 to embody the principles in the Declaration but "burdened with

2328-510: The three-fifths rule , which conferred Southern representation in the federal government derived from a state's slave population. Jeffersonian Republicans in the North ardently maintained that a strict interpretation of the Constitution required that Congress act to limit the spread of slavery on egalitarian grounds. "[Northern] Republicans rooted their antislavery arguments, not on expediency, but in egalitarian morality." "The Constitution [said northern Jeffersonians], strictly interpreted, gave

2425-525: The 15th Congress. Blocked by northern Republicans, largely on egalitarian grounds, with sectional support from Federalists, the statehood bill died in the Senate, where the federal ratio had no relevance. The balance of power between the sections and the maintenance of Southern pre-eminence on matters related to slavery resided in the Senate. Northern majorities in the House did not translate into political dominance. The fulcrum for proslavery forces resided in

2522-614: The 16th Congress. The Missouri Compromise was very controversial, and many worried that the country had become lawfully divided along sectarian lines. The Kansas–Nebraska Act effectively repealed the bill in 1854, and the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), both of which increased tensions over slavery and contributed to the American Civil War . The compromise both delayed

2619-546: The Civil War and sowed its seeds; at that time, Thomas Jefferson predicted the line as drawn would someday tear the Union apart. Forty years later, the North and South would split closely along the 36°30′ parallel and launch the Civil War. The Era of Good Feelings , closely associated with the administration of President James Monroe (1817–1825), was characterized by the dissolution of national political identities. With

2716-574: The Confederate government and returned to South Carolina. During the rest of the Civil War , he sharply criticized the policies of Confederate President Jefferson Davis . In October 1865, Confederate military officer P.G.T. Beauregard wrote to Rhett encouraging him to resume publication of the Charleston Mercury "to help in re-establishing the truths of History. It will be difficult, even for many of our own people, to believe that so glorious

2813-479: The Constitution had long been interpreted as having relinquished any claim to restricting slavery in the states. The free inhabitants of Missouri in the territorial phase or during statehood had the right to establish or disestablish slavery without interference from the federal government. As to the Northwest Ordinance, southerners denied that it could serve as a lawful antecedent for the territories of

2910-473: The District of Maine. He suggested that Senator Rufus King's "warm" support for the Tallmadge Amendment concealed a conspiracy to organize a new antislavery party in the North, which would be composed of old Federalists in combination with disaffected antislavery Republicans. The fact that King in the Senate and Tallmadge and Tyler in the House, all New Yorkers, were among the vanguard for restriction on slavery in Missouri lent credibility to those charges. When King

3007-596: The Federalists discredited by the Hartford Convention against the War of 1812 , they were in decline nationally, and the "amalgamated" or hybridized Republicans adopted key Federalist economic programs and institutions, further erasing party identities and consolidating their victory. The economic nationalism of the Era of Good Feelings authorized the Tariff of 1816 and incorporated the Second Bank of

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3104-594: The Georgia Platform made it clear that the future of the nation depended on the North strictly adhering to the Compromise. Mississippi and Alabama joined Georgia in accepting the Georgia Platform. As a political ploy, the Platform thoroughly undermined any effective response from the Southern Rights parties. Generally the Compromise was popular throughout the South, and historian William J. Cooper Jr. made

3201-552: The House Committee of the Whole voted to link Tallmadge's provisions with the Missouri statehood legislation by 79–67. After the committee vote, debates resumed over the merits of each of Tallmadge's provisions in the enabling act. The debates in the House's 2nd session in 1819 lasted only three days. They have been characterized as "rancorous", "fiery", "bitter", "blistering", "furious" and "bloodthirsty". You have kindled

3298-535: The House of Representatives, and Toombs was appointed to the United States Senate. In Mississippi, Foote defeated Jefferson Davis for the United States Senate seat. In the elections to the House of Representatives , Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi returned 14 Unionists and only 5 Southern Rights candidates. In the rest of the South, the Whigs generally gained seats in Congress. In South Carolina, there

3395-453: The House to submit to the passage of the Thomas proviso and maneuvered a number of restrictionist northerners in the House to acquiesce in supporting Missouri as a slave state. While the Missouri question in the 15th Congress ended in stalemate on March 4, 1819, with the House sustaining its northern anti-slavery position and the Senate blocking a state that restricted slavery, it succeeded in

3492-433: The House, the southern share of the membership had declined since the 1790s. Hostility to the federal ratio had historically been the object of the Federalists, which were now nationally ineffectual, who attributed their collective decline on the " Virginia Dynasty ". They expressed their dissatisfaction in partisan terms, rather than in moral condemnation of slavery, and the pro-De Witt Clinton-Federalist faction carried on

3589-414: The House, which was defeated 89–87. In a speech before the House during the debate on the Tallmadge Amendment, Taylor was highly critical of southern lawmakers, who frequently voiced their dismay that slavery was entrenched and necessary to their existence, and he warned that Missouri's fate would "decide the destiny of millions" in future states in the American West . The controversy on the amendment and

3686-560: The Louisiana Purchase north of the 36° 30' parallel . The combined measures passed the Senate, only to be voted down in the House by Northern representatives who held out for a free Missouri. Speaker of the House Henry Clay of Kentucky , in a desperate bid to break the deadlock, divided the Senate bills. Clay and his pro-compromise allies succeeded in pressuring half of the anti-restrictionist Southerners in

3783-433: The Louisiana Purchase outside of Louisiana) by force of local law and territorial statute, rather than by territorial ordinance, as was the case in other territories where slavery was permitted. It is unknown if Congress purposely omitted any reference to slavery or Article VI in the 1805 territorial ordinance. Nonetheless, over the next fifteen years, some restrictionists – including Amos Stoddard – claimed that this omission

3880-642: The Louisiana Purchase, as the ordinance had been issued under the Articles of Confederation , rather than the US Constitution. As a legal precedent, they offered the treaty acquiring the Louisiana lands in 1803, a document that included a provision, Article 3, which extended the rights of US citizens to all inhabitants of the new territory, including the protection of property in slaves. When slaveholders embraced Jeffersonian constitutional strictures on

3977-712: The Louisiana Territory and all future states and territories, and southern "anti-restrictionists", proslavery legislators who rejected any interference by Congress that inhibited slavery expansion. The sectional "rupture" over slavery among Jeffersonian Republicans, first exposed in the Missouri Crisis, had its roots in the Revolutionary generation. Five Representatives in Maine were opposed to spreading slavery into new territories. Dr. Brian Purnell,

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4074-479: The Memphis convention never occurred. The Union Parties, despite the hopes and efforts of Stephens and others, did not become a national party. Cooper wrote: Political parties in the South lived and prospered only through their real or supposed ability to protect the South and her institutions. A party confined to Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi could make no believable claims for protecting anything. Ultimately

4171-419: The Missouri Compromise line to the west coast. Secessionist strength was strongest in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. In the first three of these states there arose local Union or Constitutional Parties to counter the radical Southern Rights parties which were forming. In South Carolina the Southern Rights agenda was already the dominant force in the state, and its leaders were already pressing

4268-469: The Missouri restrictionists deplored the federal ratio because it had translated into political supremacy for the South. They had no agenda to remove it from the Constitution but only to prevent its further application west of the Mississippi River. As determined as southern Republicans were to secure Missouri statehood with slavery, the federal clause ratio to provide the margin of victory in

4365-605: The Senate proslavery anti-restrictionists, and Missouri statehood would devolve upon the 16th Congress in December 1819. The Missouri Compromise debates stirred suspicions by slavery interests that the underlying purpose of the Tallmadge Amendments had little to do with opposition to the expansion of slavery. The accusation was first leveled in the House by the Republican anti-restrictionist John Holmes from

4462-428: The Senate, where constitutional compromise in 1787 had provided for two senators per state, regardless of its population. The South, with its smaller free population than the North, benefited from that arrangement. Since 1815, sectional parity in the Senate had been achieved through paired admissions, which left the North and the South, during the application of Missouri Territory, at 11 states each. The South, voting as

4559-518: The South vacillated, as did their hopes for the imminent demise of human bondage. However rancorous the disputes were by southerners themselves over the virtues of a slave-based society, they united against external challenges to their institution. They believed that free states were not to meddle in the affairs of slave states. Southern leaders, virtually all of whom identified as Jeffersonian Republicans, denied that northerners had any business encroaching on matters related to slavery. Northern attacks on

4656-427: The Southern Rights party to the "extent of ruining the state Democratic Party". Stephens, Toombs, and Cobb traversed the state in opposition with Stephens alone estimating that he traveled over 3,000 miles in the campaign. Unionists outpolled their opponents by 46,000 to 24,000 in the election to the convention, which included a 10 to 1 ratio of delegates committed against secession. Stephens and Toombs were delegates to

4753-577: The United States , which portended an abandonment of the Jeffersonian political formula for strict construction of the Constitution, a limited central government, and commitments to the primacy of Southern agrarian interests. The end of opposition parties also meant the end of party discipline and the means to suppress internecine factional animosities. Rather than produce political harmony, as President James Monroe had hoped, amalgamation had led to intense rivalries among Democratic-Republicans . It

4850-500: The compromise (although both voted against the bill abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia). They were joined in their state efforts to form the Constitutional Union Party by moderate Democrat Howell Cobb . Their opposition came from Democratic Governor George Towns and Hershel V. Johnson and fellow Whig John M. Berrien . After the final approval of the bills making up the Compromise of 1850,

4947-402: The conflict of opinion and policy, to preserve that Union which has extended the sway of republican government over a vast wilderness to another ocean, and proportionally advanced their civilization and national greatness. Thirdly, That in this spirit, the State of Georgia has maturely considered the action of Congress embracing a series of measures for the admission of California into the Union,

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5044-623: The convention and used it to officially organize the state Constitutional Union Party. Meanwhile, in Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina the Georgia election results, along with the inaction of the Nashville Convention, put a damper on secessionists. The task of the convention became the creation of a position that both supported the Compromise of 1850 as the final solution to the sectional disputes over slavery while maintaining

5141-522: The document's universal egalitarian applications and its declaration that " all men are created equal ." Article 1, Section 2 , of the US Constitution supplemented legislative representation in states whose residents owned slaves. Known as the Three-Fifths Clause , or the "federal ratio", three-fifths of the slave population was numerically added to the free population. That sum was used for each state to calculate congressional districts and

5238-453: The extension of slavery" and raised questions concerning the interpretation of the republic's founding documents. Jeffersonian Republicans justified Tallmadge's restrictions on the grounds that Congress possessed the authority to impose territorial statutes that would remain in force after statehood was established. Representative John W. Taylor pointed to Indiana and Illinois, where their free state status conformed to antislavery provisions of

5335-531: The faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Bill by the proper authorities depends the preservation of our much loved Union. In a very neat package, the platform offered support for both union and compromise, identified specific future violations of southern rights which would not be tolerated, and kept alive the possibility of secession as a future remedy. Many Southerners felt that the Compromise of 1850 had been shaped more towards Northern interests;

5432-540: The feeling among the Southern members for a dissolution of the Union – if the antislavery [measures] should be pressed to extremity – is becoming more general than at first." In the United States Congress the issues dividing North and South were debated ferociously, leading to the Compromise of 1850 that was intended to address all outstanding issues relating to slavery. After an early failure to pass

5529-522: The forces at work in the Missouri crisis. The core of the opposition to slavery in the Louisiana Purchase was informed by Jeffersonian egalitarian principles, not a Federalist resurgence. Because it no longer wanted to be part of non-contiguous Massachusetts after the War of 1812, the northern region of Massachusetts , the District of Maine , sought and ultimately gained admission into the United States as

5626-432: The further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been fully convicted; and that all children born within the said State after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be free at the age of twenty-five years. A political outsider, the 41-year-old Tallmadge conceived his amendment based on a personal aversion to slavery. He had played

5723-405: The future of slavery in the nation created much dissension among Jeffersonian Republicans and polarized the party. Northern Jeffersonian Republicans formed a coalition across factional lines with remnants of the Federalists. Southern Jeffersonians united in almost unanimous opposition. The ensuing debates pitted the northern "restrictionists", antislavery legislators who wished to bar slavery from

5820-413: The institution were condemned as incitements to riot by slave populations, which was deemed to be a dire threat to white southerners' security. Northern Jeffersonian Republicans embraced the Jeffersonian antislavery legacy during the Missouri debates and explicitly cited the Declaration of Independence as an argument against expanding the institution. Southern leaders, seeking to defend slavery, renounced

5917-486: The legislation on March 3, 1820, and President James Monroe signed it on March 6, 1820. Earlier, in February 1819, Representative James Tallmadge Jr. , a Democratic-Republican (Jeffersonian Republican) from New York , had submitted two amendments to Missouri's request for statehood that included restrictions on slavery. Southerners objected to any bill that imposed federal restrictions on slavery and believed that it

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6014-590: The memories of South Carolina extremism during the Nullification Crisis. However, the most significant action would occur in Georgia. Governor Towns of Georgia, acting under the instructions of the state legislature, called for a special election to a state convention. The convention, scheduled for November, was intended to determine the appropriate response to the Compromise of 1850. Robert Barnwell Rhett from South Carolina and William Lowndes Yancey from Alabama joined local Georgians in supporting

6111-444: The moral dimensions raised by the topic of slavery. That the unmentionable subject had been raised publicly was deeply offensive to southern representatives and violated the longtime sectional understanding between legislators from free states and slave states. Missouri statehood confronted southern Jeffersonians with the prospect of applying the egalitarian principles espoused by the Revolutionary generation. That would require halting

6208-535: The nation through ironclad unity and perpetual pressure to demand more land, and more slaves—then these five Mainers declared Americans "shall deserve to be considered a besotted and stupid race, fit, only, to be led blindfold; and worthy, only, to be treated with sovereign contempt". The Missouri crisis marked a rupture in the Republican Ascendency, the national association of Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans that had dominated federal politics since

6305-433: The number of delegates to the Electoral College. The federal ratio produced a significant number of legislative victories for the South in the years before the Missouri Crisis and raised the South's influence in party caucuses, the appointment of judges, and the distribution of patronage. It is unlikely that the ratio before 1820 was decisive in affecting legislation on slavery. Indeed, with the rising northern representation in

6402-420: The offspring of slaves at 25. The enabling bill was passed to the Senate, and both parts of it were rejected: 22–16 against the restriction of new slaves in Missouri (supported by five northerners, two of whom were the proslavery legislators from the free state of Illinois) and 31–7 against the gradual emancipation for slave children born after statehood. House antislavery restrictionists refused to concur with

6499-463: The one legacy that defied the principles of 1776", human bondage. In a pragmatic commitment to form the Union, the federal apparatus would forego any authority to interfere directly with the institution of slavery if it existed under local control by the states. The acknowledgment of state sovereignty provided for the participation of the states that were the most committed to slave labor. With that understanding, slaveholders had co-operated in authorizing

6596-458: The organization of territorial Governments for Utah and New Mexico, the establishment of a boundary between the latter and the State of Texas, the suppression of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and the extradition of fugitive slaves, and (connected with them) the rejection of propositions to exclude slavery from the Mexican territories and to abolish it in the District of Columbia, and whilst she does not wholly approve, will abide by it as

6693-435: The other states for secession. The new Union parties attracted the overwhelming majority of Whigs in the three states. In Alabama and Mississippi the Whigs had been weak, and the creation of the Union parties revitalized the opposition to the dominant state Democratic Parties. In Alabama, the state divided along sectional lines. In the north of the state the pro-compromise Union Party had its greatest strength while Democrats in

6790-400: The people by expanding the functions of the federal government. Jefferson, at first unperturbed by the Missouri question, soon became convinced that a northern conspiracy was afoot, with Federalists and crypto-Federalists posing as Republicans and using Missouri statehood as a pretext. The disarray of the Republican ascendancy brought about by amalgamation made fears abound in Southerners that

6887-413: The point that, "Although the confrontation was not in fact a union-disunion one anywhere, the successful Unionist onslaught made it seem like one." Historian David Potter stated that the Georgia Platform "became the cornerstone of southern policy for several years." The state elections of 1851 reflected the popularity of the Unionist position. In Georgia, Cobb was elected governor, Stephens was reelected to

6984-464: The presidential candidacy of James K. Polk . Rhett opposed the Compromise of 1850 as against the interests of the slave-holding South. He joined fellow Fire-Eaters at the Nashville Convention of 1850, which failed to endorse his aim of secession for the whole South. After the Nashville Convention, Rhett, William Lowndes Yancey , and a few others met in Macon , Georgia on August 21, 1850, and formed

7081-503: The radicals acted. In Mississippi, Governor Quitman called for a special legislative session in November to discuss the state's reaction to the compromise. The Nashville Convention reconvened in November, but it was poorly attended and accomplished nothing. In South Carolina, there was already a regular legislative session scheduled for November, and Governor Whitemarsh Seabrook was persuaded not to take any special actions that might evoke

7178-475: The region. Enslaved African Americans accounted for twenty to thirty percent of the non-Native American population in and around the main settlements of St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve . In 1804, Congress limited the further introduction of enslaved men and women to those introduced by actual settlers. In addition, in appointing the officials from the Indiana Territory to Upper Louisiana (as Missouri

7275-439: The rights and honor of the slave-holding States, or any refusal to admit as a State any territory hereafter, applying, because of the existence of slavery therein, or any act prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the territories of New Mexico and Utah, or any act repealing or materially modifying the laws now in force for the recovery of fugitive slaves. Fifthly, That it is the deliberate opinion of this Convention, that upon

7372-464: The safeguard of those rights and principles. Secondly, That if the thirteen original parties to the contract, bordering the Atlantic in a narrow belt, while their separate interests were in embryo their peculiar tendencies scarcely developed, their revolutionary trials and triumphs, still green in memory, found Union impossible without Compromise, the thirty-one of this day, may well yield somewhat, in

7469-455: The short-lived Southern National Party. In December 1850, he was appointed to be a U.S. Senator to complete the term left by the death of Calhoun. He continued to advocate secession in response to the Compromise, but in 1852, South Carolina refrained from declaring secession and merely passed an ordinance declaring a state's right to secede. Disappointed, he resigned his Senate seat. He continued to express his fiery secessionist sentiments through

7566-425: The slave population rose from 3,101 in 1810 to 10,000 in 1820. Out of the total population of 67,000, slaves represented about 15%. By 1819, the population of Missouri Territory was approaching the threshold that would qualify it for statehood. An enabling act was provided to Congress empowering territorial residents to select convention delegates and draft a state constitution. The admission of Missouri Territory as

7663-464: The sons of the founding generation the legal tools to hasten [the] removal [of slavery], including the refusal to admit additional slave states." When free-soil Maine offered its petition for statehood, the Senate quickly linked the Maine and Missouri bills, making Maine's admission a condition for Missouri entering the Union as a slave state. Senator Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois added a compromise proviso that excluded slavery from all remaining lands of

7760-607: The south organized the Southern Rights Party. In Mississippi, Governor John Quitman and Jefferson Davis led the Southern rights group, while Senator Henry S. Foote , who had lost status in the state over his support for the compromise, was the most visible face of the Union Party. Georgia had a strong Whig Party led by Alexander Stephens and Robert Toombs . They had already led a Whig revolt against President Zachary Taylor although they ended up supporting

7857-463: The spread of slavery westward and confine the institution to where it already existed. Faced with a population of 1.5 million slaves and the lucrative production of cotton, the South would abandon hopes for containment. Slaveholders in the 16th Congress, in an effort to come to grips with that paradox, resorted to a theory that called for extending slavery geographically so as to encourage its decline, which they called "diffusion". On February 16, 1819,

7954-421: The tradition by posing as anti-restrictionists to advance their fortunes in New York politics. Senator Rufus King of New York, a Clinton associate, was the last Federalist icon still active on the national stage, a fact that was irksome to southern Republicans. A signatory to the US Constitution, he had strongly opposed the federal ratio in 1787. In the 15th Congress debates in 1819, he revived his critique as

8051-592: The very success of the Georgia Platform meant that it soon became a basic part of Democratic Party policy. Neither the isolated Union Parties nor the remaining Whigs in other states were able to offer an effective counter to the Democrats who now appeared to offer the best protection for Southern rights. This contributed to the dissolution of the Second Party System within the South. Missouri Compromise The Missouri Compromise (also known as

8148-545: The years after the War of 1812, the region, now known as Missouri Territory , experienced rapid settlement, led by slaveholding planters. Agriculturally, the land in the lower reaches of the Missouri River, from which that new state would be formed, had no prospects as a major cotton producer. Suited for diversified farming, the only crop regarded as promising for slave labor was hemp culture. On that basis, southern planters immigrated with their chattel to Missouri, and

8245-639: Was a member of the South Carolina legislature from 1826 until 1832, and was extremely pro-slavery in his views. At the end of the Nullification Crisis in 1833, he told the South Carolina Nullification Convention: A people, owning slaves, are mad, or worse than mad, who do not hold their destinies in their own hands. In 1832, Rhett became South Carolina's Attorney General , serving until 1837. He

8342-598: Was a state issue, as settled by the Constitution . However, with the Senate evenly split at the opening of the debates, both sections possessing 11 states, the admission of Missouri as a slave state would give the South an advantage. Northern critics including Federalists and Democratic-Republicans objected to the expansion of slavery into the Louisiana purchase territory on the Constitutional inequalities of

8439-529: Was amid that period's "good feelings" during which Democratic-Republican Party discipline was in abeyance that the Tallmadge Amendment surfaced. The immense Louisiana Purchase territories had been acquired through federal executive action, followed by Republican legislative authorization in 1803 under President Thomas Jefferson . Prior to its purchase in 1803, the governments of Spain and France had already sanctioned and promoted slavery in

8536-421: Was basically only one political party, and it was divided between those advocating that South Carolina act alone and those that wanted action only in cooperation with other states. The South Carolina legislature called for both a state convention and another Southern Congress in early 1852 in Memphis. However the election turnout for the convention was very light, and the victories of Unionists elsewhere ensured that

8633-400: Was deliberate, intended to allow the United States government to prohibit slavery in Missouri if circumstances proved more favorable in the future. In 1812, Louisiana, a major cotton producer and the first to be carved from the Louisiana Purchase, had entered the Union as a slave state. Predictably, Missourians were adamant that slave labor should not be molested by the federal government. In

8730-829: Was elected to the South Carolina Secession Convention, which declared secession in December. He was chosen as deputy from South Carolina to the Provisional Confederate States Congress in Montgomery. He was one of the most active deputies and was the chairman of the committee that reported the Confederate States Constitution . He was then elected to the Confederate House of Representatives . He received no higher office in

8827-403: Was hostile to Tallmadge for his spirited defense of General Andrew Jackson 's contentious invasion of Florida . After proposing the amendment, Tallmadge fell ill, and Representative John W. Taylor , a fellow New York Republican, stepped in to fill the void. Taylor also had antislavery credentials since in February 1819, he had proposed a similar slave restriction for Arkansas Territory in

8924-412: Was indisputable. There was no basis, however, for the charge that Federalists had directed Tallmadge in his antislavery measures, and there was nothing to indicate that a New York-based King-Clinton alliance sought to erect an antislavery party on the ruins of the Republican Party. The allegations by Southern interests for slavery of a "plot" or that of "consolidation" as a threat to the Union misapprehended

9021-400: Was known until 1812), Congress heightened concerns that it intended to extend some sort of prohibition on slavery's growth across the river. White Missourians objected to these restrictions, and in 1805, Congress withdrew them. The final version of the 1805 territorial ordinance omitted all references to slavery. Under the 1805 ordinance, slavery existed legally in Missouri (which included all of

9118-632: Was manifest in the shift towards diversified farming in the Upper South ; the gradual emancipation of slaves in New England and more significantly in Mid-Atlantic States . In the 1790s, with the introduction of the cotton gin , to 1815, with the vast increase in demand for cotton internationally, slave-based agriculture underwent an immense revival that spread the institution westward to the Mississippi River . Antislavery elements in

9215-611: Was only with the introduction of the Wilmot Proviso in August 1846 that the national debate began to split along sectional lines. During the "prolonged deadlock of 1846-50" the idea of secession as a possible solution to Northern threats against slavery began to take root among more and more Southerners. In December 1849 Congressman Alexander Stephens , the future vice-president of the Confederacy, wrote to his brother, "I find

9312-641: Was re-elected to the US Senate in January 1820, during the 16th Congress debates and with bipartisan support, suspicions deepened and persisted throughout the crisis. Southern Jeffersonian Republican leadership, including President Monroe and ex-President Thomas Jefferson, considered it as an article of faith that Federalists, given the chance, would destabilize the Union as to restore monarchical rule in North America and "consolidate" political control over

9409-588: Was then elected a US Representative and served until 1849. In 1838, he changed his last name from Smith to that of a prominent colonial ancestor, Colonel William Rhett . Rhett objected vehemently to the protectionist Tariff of 1842 . On July 31, 1844, Rhett launched the Bluffton Movement , which called for South Carolina to return to nullification or else declare secession. It was soon repudiated by more moderate South Carolina Democrats, including even Senator John C. Calhoun , who feared it would endanger

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