Missouri Compromise & America's Culture of Interaction

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The Missouri Compromise The Missouri Compromise & America’s Culture of & America’s Culture of Interaction Interaction White Nation, Under God White Nation, Under God Dennis J. Beesley

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Presentation at 1st Annual Graduate Student Conference, Claremont Graduate University, 2009.

Transcript of Missouri Compromise & America's Culture of Interaction

Page 1: Missouri Compromise & America's Culture of Interaction

The Missouri Compromise & The Missouri Compromise & America’s Culture of America’s Culture of

InteractionInteractionWhite Nation, Under GodWhite Nation, Under God

Dennis J. Beesley

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The “Event” in Historical Analysis

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The Missouri Compromise

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“The greatest political crisis between

the Revolution and the Civil War.” [1]

[1] Robert Pierce Forbes, The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery & the Meaning of America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 33.

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New State Admittance

14. Vermont Mar. 4, 1791

15. Kentucky June 1, 1792

16. Tennessee June 1, 1796

17. Ohio Mar. 1, 1803

18. Louisiana Apr. 30, 1812

19. Indiana Dec. 11, 1816

20. Mississippi Dec. 10, 1817

1817 Missouri Petitions Congress for Statehood; Congress receives the request and places it in committee for consideration on Mar. 16, 1818.

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April 4, 1818 – Arthur Livermore proposes an amendment to the Constitution preventing expansion of slavery in any future state admitted into the American Union.

Were Northern politicians opposed to an increase of Southern power, or slavery?

Restricting Slavery: Moral Issue or Power-Play?

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New State Admittance

April 14, 1818 – Senate passes bill enabling people of Illinois to form constitution and state government.

What about Missouri?

14. Vermont Mar. 4, 1791

15. Kentucky June 1, 1792

16. Tennessee June 1, 1796

17. Ohio Mar. 1, 1803

18. Louisiana Apr. 30, 1812

19. Indiana Dec. 11, 1816

20. Mississippi Dec. 10, 1817

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New State Admittance

January 12, 1819 – Senate passes bill enabling people of Alabama to form constitution and state government.

Again, what about Missouri?

14. Vermont Mar. 4, 1791

15. Kentucky June 1, 1792

16. Tennessee June 1, 1796

17. Ohio Mar. 1, 1803

18. Louisiana Apr. 30, 1812

19. Indiana Dec. 11, 1816

20. Mississippi Dec. 10, 1817

21. Illinois Dec. 3, 1818

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James Tallmadge, author of Tallmadge Amendment

While we deprecate and mourn over the evil of slavery, humanity and good morals require us to wish its abolition, under circumstances consistent with the safety of the white population.

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Missouri, Slavery & God

“The several States are invoked by the duty which they owe to the Deity, by the veneration which they entertain for the memory of the founders of the Republic, […] to refuse to covenant with crime, and to limit the range of an evil that already hangs in awful boding over so large a portion of the Union.”

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Abolition: Noble or Ignoble?

“They are persuaded that, to open the fertile regions of the West to a servile race, would tend to increase their numbers beyond all past example, would open a new and steady market for the lawless vendors of human flesh, and would render all schemes for obliterating this most foul blot upon the American character, useless and unavailing.”

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The American character, or the white race, was threatened by an increase in numbers of the black race.

President Monroe took it upon himself to ensure Congress that he was fulfilling the requirement “on the Executive to cause all negroes, mulattoes, or persons of color, who may be taken under the act, to be removed to Africa.”

Abolition of the Slave Trade

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Southern Religion & the Constitution

On Jan. 14, 1820, Senator James Barbour of Virginia defended Missouri’s right to “self-government – the choicest blessing of Heaven to human kind.”

“We are pledged by the most solemn sanctions of our religion to reject the mediated restrictions on Missouri; the Constitution, which we have sworn to support, forbids it.”

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On Feb. 17, 1820, in the House, Representative John Tyler:

“All men are, by nature, equally free, sovereign, and independent.” Nevertheless, “distinctions will exist,” including “virtue and vice, wealth and poverty, industry and idleness.”

Are these distinctions referring to “white and black”?

Southern Morality & Race

“If we cannot raise the black man up to the level with the white – and that we have not the constitutional power to do so none here have denied – let us raise, at least, the white man up to this level. Extend an equality of rights to the people of Missouri.”

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American Culture of Interaction: White Nation Under God

“Country Wedding,” 1820 painting by John Lewis Krimmel