Slave Power: Missouri Debate Of 1820's

Slave Power was the term that was present in the Missouri debates of 1820s and became popular in the 1830s. Salmon P. Chase used the term to portray southern slaveholders organized politically as a clique to dominate the national government and state governments in the south, reverse the policy of founding fathers, and make slavery the ruling interest of the nation. [1] As the Slave Power grew more powerful, the Republicans severely criticized these slave owners in the south “unceasingly aggressive, insatiably greedy for still more representatives and senators, and increasingly hostile to public policies.” [2] The slaveholders dominated the federal and southern state governments and used the political leverage to foster the institution’s growth

For example, the three-fifths cause of the Constitution had increased their power in Congress and the electoral college to gain control of the polices of the major parties on slavery. As a result, the Slaver Power consolidated their domination through the purchase of Louisiana and Florida without prohibition of slavery and the passages of the Missouri Compromise that allowed slavery to cross the Mississippi River, the annexation of Texas and the compromise measure of 1850. Observing the dominance of the Slave Power, the Republicans were deeply concerned the fact that Slave Power dominated the government and was using it to extend the peculiar institution and impose a new and alien interpretation of the Constitution on the American people. [3] Furthermore, the Slave Power provided the connection between the Republican view of the south as an alien society and their belief to unify as a political organization to confine the southern influence.

They also pronounced that the Slave Power indeed was seriously threatening the most significant values and interests of the free states and the Union. [6] Additionally, to the Republicans, the emphasis on the Unionism was another impotent part of its ideology to attack the