Compromises Between 1820 And 1860

There were many important Compromises between the years of 1820 and 1860, some that worked completely and some that didn’t. In the early nineteenth century, people were good at compromising and making things work for everyone. How long did perfect compromising actually last? Slavery began to split the nation apart, causing compromising to become hard to do. Slavery was one of the biggest problems between 1820 and 1860. Sometimes two states had to be added to the Union at the same time, to make things fair. The North and the South fought almost constantly over the issue of slavery, sometimes things were able to be worked out about it, but as the years passed, the problems with slavery and territory started to become too big to ignore or

The issue the compromise was about was whether there should be slavery in the western territories. Maine wanted to be added to the Union, however, slavery was banned there. If Maine were to be added to the Union, it would upset the balance between free and slave states in the nation and the Senate. So, the Missouri Compromise, proposed by Senator Henry Clay, allowed Maine to enter the Union as a free state, and allowed Missouri to be entered into the Union as a slave state. However, the Missouri Compromise caused some problems. The compromise equaled the concerns and interests in the North and South, but the South was upset about how Congress gave itself the power to create and pass laws dealing with slavery. Much of the North was upset because Congress let slavery spread into another state. There were people who didn’t want to compromise, and others who did, such as Henry Clay. Clay wanted to keep the nation together. Henry Clay, a Senator, was someone who wanted to keep the nation together, so he gave a speech to the Senate in 1833 about how South Carolina cannot secede and become an independent state, and doesn't want to. “I say it is impossible that South Carolina ever desired for a moment to become a separate and independent state” (Doc A). For the people that were against slavery, they held anti-slavery conventions, talking about how awful slavery is and even called slave

Douglas, was an important election that would, and did, go down in history. Lincoln had opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, created by Stephen Douglas, which lead him into becoming a Republican. Here, nobody was able to Compromise. He ran against Stephen Douglas, and won the election with getting one hundred eighty electoral votes, and Douglas getting twelve (Southern Democrat Breckinridge seventy-two, and Constitutional Union Bell getting thirty-nine) (Doc H). In this election, Lincoln and Douglas had some series of debates over slavery. Although Lincoln never exactly stated that he wanted to abolish slavery, much of the South believed he was an Abolitionist. At his speech in 1858 in Springfield Illinois, Lincoln wanted the nation to be one thing or another, meaning all free or all slave, because it couldn’t keep going on how it was, else it would fall apart. In his speech, Lincoln said, “...but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other” (Doc G). After Lincoln won the election, it had shocked the South, making them angry. After this, the first southern state seceded from the Union: South Carolina. Six other states then seceded out of the Union, following South Carolina: Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, and Louisiana. When giving his inaugural address, Lincoln stated that he was no threat to the seceded states and that he