Compare And Contrast Political Compromises Between 1820 And 1860

In the nineteenth century, sectional tensions were running high, but were unable to be eased since the effectiveness of political compromise was lacking, due to the inevitability of war. This was a result of “inherent antagonism” between the interests of planters and those of industrialists. Those in the North were irrevocably opposed to slavery on a moral and economic basis since they feared that slavery might spread into their own region or into the West and threaten the position of free white laborers. In contrast, many Southerners had built up a lifestyle and code of honor on the very basis of slavery and the idea that they, as a race, were superior. Though both sides worked hard to help smooth over the growing differences between the two

The issue was settled in 1820 with the Missouri Compromise which prohibited slavery north of the 36°30’ border of the Arkansas territory. The compromise set the precedent that for every new slave state accepted into the Union, a new free state must be established as well. Furthermore, the compromise was a clear recognition that Congress had no right to impose upon a state asking for admission into the Union conditions which do not apply to those states already in the Union. Yet, this only delayed the inevitable and served as a “quick-fix” solution. Thomas Jefferson, himself, wrote in a letter to John Holmes that the division of the country created by the Compromise line would eventually lead to the destruction of the Union. This act served to protect the tenuous peace between the North and South, until it was made void by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and declared unconstitutional in the 1857 Supreme Court decision, Dred Scott v.

He hoped that this compromise would “settle all questions in controversy between the free and slave states.” In order to please both the North and the South, the compromise stated that California was to be accepted into the Union as a free state, and proposed a new, more efficient and useful fugitive slave law. Additionally, terms of the compromise included the abolition of slave trade, but not slavery itself; Texas-Mexico boundary dispute resolved, and Texas paid ten million dollars by the federal government; and the citizen’s right in New Mexico and Utah of popular sovereignty. To convince the two side to accept his plan, Clay had them consider the alternative to accepting: disunion and possibly war. While the compromise did pass, Northern opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act quickly intensified as mobs formed to prevent enforcement of the act, and several other northern states passed their own laws barring the deportation of fugitive slaves, such as the Personal Liberty