THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.

By JAMES Albert Woodburn.

The struggle for the restriction of African slavery in the United States is the central theme in American political history during the nineteenth century. That struggle suggests to the student of American politics a long series of contests culminating at last in one of the greatest civil wars in human history.

For more than a generation all other subjects in our Congressional history had sunk into a place of secondary or temporary importance; this, amid events of varying moment, held first rank until it passed for settlement from the forum to the field.

The struggle over the admission of Missouri into the Union (1818-1821), involves the merits of the whole controversy. The immediate result of that struggle was the admission of Missouri without restriction, accompanied with the provision that slavery should be forever excluded from all the Louisiana purchase north of 36° 30', the southern boundary of Missouri. In these few words is stated the substance of the Missouri compromisethe basis of adjustment of one of our most violent political struggles, the outcome of one of the ablest, the most prolonged and startling debates in the annals of the American Congress.

In attempting to interpret the significance of that struggle and to estimate the principles which it involved, it is first essential to have, if possible, a candid recital of the facts.

Preliminary to this recital, the true story of the struggle requires a brief mention of the principal ways in which the slavery question touched our history from 1789 to 1820.

Congress very early found it necessary to define its Constitutional powers affecting slavery. This was done March 23, 1790. An address in the shape of a memorial or petition had been presented to Congress on February 11, 1790, from the

Quaker Yearly Meeting in Pennsylvania, against the continuance of the African slave trade and praying Congress "to remove that reproach from the land." The motion to send this memorial to a committee for a report gave rise to an animated debate of considerable length on the merits of slavery and on the competency of Congress to consider such a subject. Congress resolved upon the report of the committee to which the memorial was referred, in substance, as follows:

1. That the General Government was prohibited from interfering with the slave trade for the domestic supply until 1808. Congress might lay a tax of $10 on the importation.

2. That Congress had no power to interfere with slavery in the States, either to emancipate or to regulate the treatment of slaves. It remains alone with the several States to regulate their internal and domestic institutions.

3. That Congress could prevent the slave trade for foreign supply.

This assertion of the extent of the Constitutional power of Congress over slavery was universally accepted. There is no evidence that any considerable body of public opinion ever denied the correctness of this interpretation. Dr. Franklin, the president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, who was said to be the author of this memorial, acquiesced in the decision and did not repeat the application.* The Liberty Party men of 1844, and the Free Soilers of 1848 and 1852, never materially denied these propositions.

By the enactment of the fugitive slave law of 1793 Congress proceeded to carry into effect the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution. No considerable voice of opposition was raised to this enactment. This law passed the Senate by a unanimous vote and the House by a vote of 48 to 7. Two of its clauses related to fugitives from justice and two to fugitives from labor, and it seemed to be taken for granted that one set of refugees should be returned as well as the other.

In the cession of their western territory to the General Government, North Carolina, in 1789, and Georgia, in 1802, stipulated that slavery should not be prohibited therein. It seems to have been agreed, after the restriction in the Northwest by the Ordinance of 1787, that the lands south of the Ohio should follow the condition of the States which ceded it. The Gen

* Benton's Abridgments, Vol. 1, p. 239.

eral Government accepted the Southwestern Territory without objection to this condition of its cession.

In 1790 the treaty-making power was used with the Creek Indians to bind them to deliver up the slaves fled from Georgia. This brought the national power to the support of slavery. The right to do this existed, but it is not evident that it was the duty of the central Government to do so.

In 1802 a convention at Vincennes, Ind., over which William Henry Harrison presided, attempted to secure the repeal of the antislavery restriction in the Ordinance of 1787. The memorial which this convention sent to Congress was considered and its prayer rejected. Subsequent attempts in this direction were defeated, and Indiana, in 1816, came into the Union as a free State.

By the Louisiana treaty with France, in 1803, the people living in that Territory under French law were guaranteed all the rights of person and property which they were enjoying at the transfer. The third article of the Louisiana treaty provided,―

That the inhabitants of the Territory shall be incorporated in the United States and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess.

The right to their "property" included the right to their slaves, and it may be said that Louisiana came to us as slave territory. Louisiana was admitted to the Union in 1812, in harmony with this treaty. In the admission no discussion appears on the subject of slavery. The later proposed restriction on Missouri and Arkansas, parts of the original Louisiana purchase, appeared to the inhabitants of those Territories as an abolition of slavery, not as a restriction. Slavery had been legal in those Territories by the French law of Louisiana.

As to the slave trade, we prohibited it to carriers of other countries in 1794; we outlawed it entirely in 1807, the earliest possible constitutional date; in 1815 we united with England in the treaty of Ghent in agreement to suppress it; and in 1820 we declared the trade to be piracy.

Slavery existed in the District of Columbia, as it did in Missouri and Arkansas, because of the inertia of the Federal Government. Slavery existed in Maryland and Virginia, thẻ States which ceded this territory; the District was contiguous