The Platte Purchase was a land acquisition in 1836 by the United States government from American Indian tribes of the region. It comprised lands along the east bank of the Missouri River and added 3,149 square miles (8,156 km) to the northwest corner of the state of Missouri .
83-609: This expansion of the slave state of Missouri was in violation of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which prohibited the extension of slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30′ north, except within the boundaries of the state of Missouri, as defined at the time of the adoption of the Missouri Compromise. The area acquired was almost as large as the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined, and extended Missouri westward along
166-542: 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 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,
249-462: 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
332-592: 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
415-625: 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
498-590: 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
581-616: 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 . Chief Mahaska Mahaska (archaic Ioway Maxúshga pronounced [mõxuʃꜜkɐ] ; contemporary Maxúhga ), or White Cloud, (c. 1784–1834) was a chief of the Native American Iowa tribe . His son, also named Mahaska,
664-525: 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
747-465: A host of other small items. The tribes agreed to move to reservations west of the Missouri River in what was to become Kansas and Nebraska . Furthermore, the U.S. government was to "build five comfortable houses for each tribe, break up 200 acres (0.8 km) of land, fence 200 acres (0.8 km) of land, furnish a farmer, blacksmith, teacher, interpreter." The reservations are today known as
830-515: 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
913-548: 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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#1732764890747996-419: 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 the 16th Congress. The Missouri Compromise was very controversial, and many worried that
1079-697: 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
1162-713: A reservation in Pottawattamie County, Iowa ( Council Bluffs, Iowa ). They moved again 1837–1838 in the Potawatomi Trail of Death to Osawatomie, Kansas . The formal application came in the summer of 1835 at a meeting on the Dawes farm near Liberty, Missouri . Andrew S. Hughes, the US Indian agent for the Sac and Fox tribes, presided over a meeting of Missouri residents who formally asked Congress to acquire
1245-474: 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
1328-732: The Iowa Reservation and the Sac and Fox Reservation . The tribes gave up 3.1 thousand square miles of land for reservations of 29 square miles combined (26 for the Sac and Fox and 3 for the Ioway). Michigan entered the Union on July 4, 1836. By the time the Platte Purchase was finalized, Missouri remained the second biggest state. The U.S. Government set up a United States General Land Office in Plattsburg, Missouri to handle
1411-565: 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
1494-586: 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
1577-563: 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 the United States , which portended an abandonment of
1660-477: 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
1743-472: 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
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#17327648907471826-479: 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
1909-529: 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
1992-552: 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
2075-433: 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
2158-414: 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
2241-523: 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
2324-502: 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
2407-642: 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
2490-712: 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,
2573-689: The Missouri River to 95°46′ west longitude. Less than a year after the Indian Removal Act of 1830, by which the US was authorized to remove the Native American population, the Missouri General Assembly was petitioning Congress to more clearly define the border on the northwest corner of the state. The Legislature noted the boundary was not clear, and that the land was not surveyed, thus leading to settlers encroaching on
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2656-469: 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
2739-446: 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 the sons of the founding generation the legal tools to hasten [the] removal [of slavery], including
2822-605: 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
2905-526: 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 the House to submit to the passage of the Thomas proviso and maneuvered
2988-428: 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
3071-518: 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
3154-544: 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 the three-fifths rule , which conferred Southern representation in the federal government derived from a state's slave population. Jeffersonian Republicans in
3237-528: The back as he sat by his campfire. He was buried along the Nodaway River in Edna Township, Cass County, Iowa . Mahaska became a symbol to settlers of the virtues of his native lifestyle, and of the possibility of peace between natives and settlers. Sculptor Sherry Edmundson Fry 's earliest public commission was a bronze statue of Mahaska. Recently restored, it still stands on its pedestal in
3320-658: 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 the Civil War and sowed its seeds; at that time, Thomas Jefferson predicted
3403-610: The courthouse square of Oskaloosa , which is the governmental seat of Mahaska County, Iowa, in the southeastern section of the state. At the right of the base is the artist's signature "S.E. Fry, 1907". When he accepted the Mahaska commission in 1906, Fry was living in Paris. He returned to Iowa the following summer to make preparatory drawings of Meskwaki at the nearby Settlement at Tama, Iowa , and to collect Indian artifacts and other reference materials. Returning to Paris, he began on
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3486-573: 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 the legislation on March 3, 1820, and President James Monroe signed it on March 6, 1820. Earlier, in February 1819, Representative James Tallmadge Jr. ,
3569-522: 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
3652-453: 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
3735-522: 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
3818-432: 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
3901-405: 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
3984-413: 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
4067-429: The labor-intensive hemp and tobacco . These were grown in the southern portion of the purchase, where farms and plantations had access to the Missouri River for shipping to market. The northern portion of the purchase attracted fewer Southerners and slaveholding was rare. Today the Platte Purchase area is among the most rural areas in Missouri. St. Joseph and Maryville, Missouri are the only communities totally within
4150-402: The land and placed it all initially in the newly created Platte County. This addition increased the land area of what was already the largest state in the Union at the time (about 66,500 square miles (172,000 km) to Virginia's 65,000 square miles, which then included West Virginia). The acquisition challenged the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by expanding slavery into free territory north of
4233-594: The land. Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton introduced a bill to acquire the land and it was approved with little opposition in June 1836. An agreement was reached on September 17, 1836, with the chiefs Mahaska and No Heart of the Ioway tribe and leaders of the combined Sac and Fox tribes in a ceremony at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas . It was presided by William Clark , the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, who
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#17327648907474316-424: The lands. The most spectacular example of encroachment was Joseph Robidoux , who had been operating an American Fur Company trading post at St. Joseph, Missouri since 1826. On January 27, 1835, Senator Lewis F. Linn wrote John Dougherty, an Indian agent, to inquire about acquiring the land. Dougherty agreed, noting that the territory was preventing access to Missouri River shipping by Missouri residents east of
4399-546: 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 the Federalists discredited by the Hartford Convention against
4482-585: The middle of the mouth of the Kansas river , where the same empties into the Missouri river, thence, from the point aforesaid north, along the said meridian line, to the intersection of the parallel of latitude which passes through the rapids of the river Des Moines, making the said line correspond with the Indian boundary line." The purchase extended Missouri's western border north of the Kansas River east along
4565-444: 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
4648-535: 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
4731-487: The northwest suburbs of Kansas City , a small area of Kansas City proper, the cities of St. Joseph and Maryville, Missouri , as well as Kansas City International Airport and almost all of Missouri's portion of Interstate 29 , save the small portion which runs concurrently with Interstate 35 in Clay County . When Missouri entered the Union, its western border was established as "a meridian line passing through
4814-501: 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
4897-420: 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
4980-463: 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
5063-460: 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
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#17327648907475146-525: The purchase area that have populations greater than 10,000. Kansas City, Missouri has influenced the area, expanding its boundaries into southern Platte County. 40°N 95°W / 40°N 95°W / 40; -95 Missouri Compromise The Missouri Compromise (also known as the Compromise of 1820 ) was federal legislation of the United States that balanced
5229-685: The purchase line. According to an early 20th-century historian, Dougherty's reputation among the Native Americans was that of the "Controller of Fire-water " from the Missouri River to the Columbia River. The first tribes to give up their land were the Potawatomi , who ceded their land in the Treaty of Chicago . They agreed to this in 1833 but the treaty wasn't finalized until 1835. The Potawatomi (about 1,000 to 2,000) moved north to
5312-454: 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 the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36° 30' parallel . The combined measures passed
5395-475: 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
5478-541: The river. St. Joseph , one of the main river ports of departure for the westward migration of American pioneers , was located in the new acquisition. The region of the Platte Purchase includes the following modern counties within its bounds: Andrew (435 square miles, 1127 km), Atchison (545 square miles, 1412 km), Buchanan (410 square miles, 1062 km), Holt (462 square miles, 1197 km), Nodaway (877 square miles, 2271 km), and Platte (420 square miles, 1088 km). It also includes what are now
5561-585: The second-largest county in the state, and Weston, Missouri ("West Town") was second only to St. Louis, Missouri in the state. St. Joseph would subsequently become the second-largest city in the state in the early settlement days. Since the purchase opened up a new slave area, the area was settled primarily by slaveholders from the Upper South: Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky. They brought enslaved African Americans with them or purchased them at slave markets, to work such Southern commodity crops as
5644-423: The settlement. Much of the land was dispensed as military land warrants to veterans of the War of 1812 (and later Mexican–American War ). Under the terms of the program, which was expanded in 1855, the 160-acre land grants could be given to military descendants and those grants could be sold. Initial settlement was concentrated in the Town of Barry in south Platte County. Almost overnight, Platte County became
5727-425: 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
5810-432: The southern Missouri border with Arkansas ( Parallel 36°30′ north ), and the Indian Removal Act. It required a second relocation of tribes who had just been moved "permanently" west of the Missouri border, as part of the forced Indian removal policy of ethnic cleansing from lands wanted by whites. The tribes were paid $ 7,500 for their land. The U.S. government was "to provide agricultural implements, furnish livestock", and
5893-463: 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,
5976-421: 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
6059-481: 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
6142-529: 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
6225-555: Was based in St. Louis. (He was one of the leaders of the Lewis and Clark Expedition .) Noted diplomat Jeffrey Deroine , a formerly enslaved man, served as an interpreter for this treaty. The Senate approved the treaty on February 15, 1837. On March 28, 1837, President Martin Van Buren issued a proclamation supporting the annexation. In October 1837, the Missouri General Assembly accepted
6308-566: Was better known as Francis White Cloud . Mahaska was born into the Iowa tribe . He became chief at an early age after killing several enemy Sioux to avenge his father's death by them. Later Mahaska supposedly killed a French trader in an argument; he was arrested and imprisoned in St. Louis, Missouri . After he escaped, he led a raid against the Osage . Afterward, he decided that his father's death
6391-400: 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
6474-558: Was finally avenged. Mahaska lay down his arms and adopted the lifestyle of the European-American settlers, building a log home and farming. He refused to let his braves avenge the death of an Iowa chief named Crane at the hands of Omaha Indians in 1833. When several Iowa killed six Omaha warriors, Mahaska assisted in their arrest. The next year one of the Iowa escaped from Fort Leavenworth and killed Mahaska by shooting him in
6557-403: 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
6640-479: 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
6723-400: 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
6806-632: 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
6889-641: 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
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