The Missouri Compromise: Henry Clay and State

Up to this time the division of the Union into two sections had been only a fact: henceforth it was fixed by law. . Each of the two groups inevitably constantly consolidated more and more; and the more they consolidated the more the Missouri line lost its imaginary character. For the first time there was, in the full sense of the term, a free North and a slave-holding South. "Political prudence," as it was hyper-euphemistically called, might lead one to oppose this with the strength of despair; but all political artifices were put to shame by the power of facts. Even the last resource, the erasure of the black line from the map by another law and by judicial decisions, remained without effect: the line was etched too deeply into the real ground. Only one thing could erase it, and this one thing was the destruction of the gloomy power that had drawn it. From the night of March 2, 1820, party history is made up, without interruption or break, of the development of geographical parties.

This was what was really reached when men breathed free, as if saved from a heavy nightmare. The little and cowardly souls congratulated themselves that the slavery question had been buried forever; and yet men never shook themselves free from the Missouri question.

The strife was kindled again by a clause of the Constitution of Missouri by which the legislature was obliged to pass laws against the entry of free colored persons into the State. The North declared that this clause infringed upon the constitutional provision according to which "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." The slaveholders affirmed that free blacks were not to be considered as citizens "in the sense of the Constitution." The Northern Congressmen opposed to this the fact that free blacks were citizens in some Northern States, and that the clause in question spoke of "citizens of every State." The debate was finally lost in endless arguments over the meaning of the words "citizens" and "citizens of the United States," without reaching any results.

A compromise was finally proposed by Henry Clay, which permitted the objectionable clause to remain in the State Constitution provided that the State would agree never to pass a law to make it operative. This assurance was given by the Missouri legislature, and the conflict ended.

Three constitutional questions -- two of them of cardinal importance -- had been discussed. Men had fought shy of all three for the moment, and for this reason the originators of the compromise claimed that they had postponed the decision to the Greek kalends. From a legal point of view, only one positive result had been reached, and this was on a point concerning which no legal question existed. The Northern majority had indirectly renounced the right of Congress to forbid slavery, as far as the territory lying south of the line of 36 deg 30' was concerned, and it had agreed to this renunciation because the Southern minority had renounced, on its side, its claims to having the question of law involved decided now in its favor, provided its concrete demands, which it based upon its interpretation of the Constitution, were complied with.

This was the true nature and substance of the "compromise" which gave Henry Clay the first claim to the proud name of "the great peace-maker."