Civil War Causes - The Missouri Compromise & Compromise of 1850
The Missouri Compromise (1820)
The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which allowed Missouri to become a slave state, further provoked anti-slave sentiment in the North. As as result, the abolitionist movement began as a more organized, radical and immediate effort to end slavery than earlier campaigns. It officially emerged around 1830. Historians believe ideas set forth during the religious movement known as the Second Great Awakening inspired abolitionists to rise up against slavery. This Protestant revival encouraged the concept of adopting renewed morals, which centered around the idea that all men are created equal in the eyes of God.
Abolitionism started in states like New York and Massachusetts and quickly spread to other Northern states.
The Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that temporarily defused tensions between slave and free states in the years leading up to the American Civil War. Designed by Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, with the support of President Millard Fillmore, the compromise centered around how to handle slavery in recently acquired territories from the Mexican–American War (1846-48).
The component acts:
- approved California’s request to enter the Union as a free state
- strengthened fugitive slave laws with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
- banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C. (while still allowing slavery itself there)
- defined northern and western borders for Texas while establishing a territorial government for the Territory of New Mexico, with no restrictions on whether any future state from this territory would be free or slave
- established a territorial government for the Territory of Utah, with no restrictions on whether any future state from this territory would be free or slave.
Fugitive Slave Act (1850)
By 1843, several hundred enslaved people a year escaped to the North successfully, making slavery an unstable institution in the border states.
The earlier Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was a Federal law that was written with the intent to enforce Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, which required the return of escaped slaves. It sought to force the authorities in free states to return fugitives of enslavement to their enslavers.
Many free states wanted to disregard the Fugitive Slave Act. Some jurisdictions passed personal liberty laws, mandating a jury trial before alleged fugitive slaves could be moved; others forbade the use of local jails or the assistance of state officials in arresting or returning alleged fugitive slaves. In some cases, juries refused to convict individuals who had been indicted under the Federal law.
The Missouri Supreme Court routinely held, with the laws of neighboring free states, that enslaved people who their enslavers had voluntarily transported into free states, with the intent of the enslavers' residing there permanently or indefinitely, gained their freedom as a result.[4] The 1793 act dealt with enslaved people who escaped to free states without their enslavers' consent. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled, in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), that states did not have to offer aid in the hunting or recapture of enslaved people, significantly weakening the law of 1793.
The Fugitive Slave law was often disregarded, especially in Free or Northern States. In 1850, Congress passed the controversial Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required all escaped enslaved people to be returned to their owners and American citizens to cooperate with the captures regardless if they were in the North, South, West, or whether they were in a free state or a slave state.
The Act was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a slave power conspiracy. It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to the enslaver and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate. Abolitionists nicknamed it the "Bloodhound Bill", after the dogs that were used to track down people fleeing from slavery.
The Act contributed to the growing polarization of the country over the issue of slavery. It was one of the factors that led to the American Civil War.
