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Essays about the missouri compromise
Essays about the missouri compromise
Essays about the missouri compromise
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Throughout United States history, Congress has passed legislation to address important social and economic issues. These laws have often had a significant impact on the United States and/or on American society. The United States Congress passed many laws to help reduce tension and to appease all people. The goal of many of the laws created was to create peace and order between different groups of people.
One piece of legislation passed by the United States Congress was the Missouri Compromise. The historical circumstances surrounding the passing of the Missouri Compromise was tension between the North and the South. Missouri wanted to be admitted into the union as a slave state. This made the North angry because Missouri becoming a slave state
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would cause an imbalance between the number of slave states and free states. The North were against slavery and felt an imbalance would cause slavery to expand to new territories. The South on the other hand were in favor of slavery and wanted to expand slavery. The North also did not want an imbalance between slave and free states because that would mean they would less representation in government. Everyone wanted more representation so their voices would be heard. This caused major tension between the North and the South. The Missouri Compromise was created by Henry Clay in the year 1820.
The Compromise temporarily created peace between the North and the South. The Missouri Compromise appeased both the North and the South. To gratify the South, Missouri was admitted as a slave state. To gratify the North, the Maine was admitted as a free state. This maintained the balance between the number of slave and non-slave states. There were eleven free states and eleven slave states. The Missouri Compromise also called for the Missouri Compromise Line to be created. Any state above the Missouri Compromise Line except Missouri was considered a free state. Any state below the Missouri Compromise Line was a slave state. This Compromise created by Henry Clay created peace between the North and the South for a period of time, but soon after, more tensions over slavery between the them would …show more content…
arise. One piece of legislation passed by the United States Congress was the Fugitive Slave Act. The historical circumstances surrounding the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act were tensions between the North and the South over slavery. The North felt that slavery was immoral and needed to be stopped. The South felt that there was nothing wrong with the act of slavery and felt the North did not feel the same because they did not need the slaves. The Northerners were helping fugitive slaves escape slavery. The South felt that the North did not have the right to do this because they considered slaves were property. They paid for the slaves and felt the North wasn’t doing all they could to return their property to them. This caused major tension between the North and the South because of their contrasting views toward slavery. The Fugitive Slave Act was part of the Compromise of 1850.
The Compromise of 1850 was created by Henry Clay. The goal of the compromise was to gratify both the North and South in order to create peace between them. Another goal of the Compromise of 1850 was to preserve the Union because the Southern states were threatening to leave the Union.The Compromise appeased the North by admitting California into the union as a free state. This made the North happy because they wanted to expand the number of free states. The North wanted to stop the expansion of slavery to new territory. By admitting California as a free state in the Union it helped them do so. The South was gratified by the creation of the Fugitive Slave Laws. These laws made the North responsible for returning fugitive slaves to their owners. If someone knew where fugitive slaves were they were responsible for returning them back to their owner and if they did not there would be consequences if they were caught. If someone was caught helping a slave escape, they could be fined one-thousand dollars and or be sentenced to six months in prison. This made the South happy because it made them feel secure because they felt their property was being protected under this Compromise. The Compromise of 1850 would ease tensions temporarily because both the North and South were given things that they wanted, but later the tensions between the North and the South would occur
again. The United States Congress passed legislations in order to create peace and order within the United States. For example the Missouri Compromise and the Fugitive Slave Act were two pieces of legislation that were passed to create peace and order. They were made to decrease tensions between the North and the South over slavery. The legislations would include terms to gratify both the North and South which would create peace between them. Both legislations temporarily created peace between the North and the South by giving them something that they wanted.
Tempers raged and arguments started because of the Missouri Compromise. The simple act caused many fatal events because of what was changed within the United States. It may not seem like a big thing now, but before slavery had been abolished, the topic of slavery was an idea that could set off fights. The Missouri Compromise all started in late in 1819 when the Missouri Territory applied to the Union to become a slave state. The problem Congress had with accepting Missouri as a slave state was the new uneven count of free states and slave states. With proslavery states and antislavery states already getting into arguments, having a dominant number of either slave or free states would just ignite the flame even more. Many representatives from the north, such as James Tallmadge of New York, had already tried to pass another amendment that would abolish slavery everywhere. Along with other tries to eliminate slavery, his effort was soon shot down. The fact that people couldn’t agree on whether or not slavery should be legalized made trying to compose and pass a law nearly impossible.
First, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 established the slavery line that allowed slavery below it and forbid slavery above it. It also gave the South another slave state in Missouri and the north a free state in Maine. Although each region gained a state in the Senate, the south benefited most from the acquisition because Missouri was in such a pivotal position in the country, right on the border. Later on with the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, Missouri had a big role in getting Kansas to vote south because many proslavery Missourians crossed the border into Kansas to vote slavery. The Missouri Compromise also helped slavery because the line that was formed to limit slavery had more land below the line than above it. Therefore, slavery was given more land to be slave and therefore more power in the Senate, when the territories became state. In effect, the north got the short end of the stick and the south was given the first hint of being able to push around the north. The interesting thing is, the north agreed to all these provisions that would clearly benefit the south.
The North always looked at the South with antipathy and kept trying to abolish slavery, but the South didn’t like the North interfering and wanted to continue the use of slavery. The Missouri compromise was another issue between the North and the South. Missouri was a territory state, and it opted to be in the Union in 1818. There was a proposal to ban Slavery in Missouri, even though there were more than 2000 slaves living there, in desperation, Missouri asked for help from the South. Maine was another territory that had petitioned to enter the union, so in 1820 a compromise was set and Missouri was allowed to stay a slave state, and Maine was declared a free state.
Western expansion and the Louisiana Purchase both led to the formation of the Missouri Compromise because more states started applying for statehood, and this distorted the balance between the slave and free states. Division between the North and South increased as a result of the Missouri Compromise. It created a line that separated the Union and set it to the path of Civil War. At first, the North and South saw the compromise as a successful document that maintained the balance between the number of slave and free states; however, when the Union gained more territory through Mexican War, Congress decided to modify the existing compromise. Finally, the repeal of the compromise made the final push that led to the explosion of animosity between the North and South, which led to the Civil War. Slavery in the new territories remained the main issue that caused the necessity of forming the Missouri Compromise. Jefferson accurately stated that the Missouri Compromise stood only as a temporary solution that eventually led to the full-fledged sectional war between
The Missouri Compromise acted as a balancing act among the anti-slave states and the slave states. Since states generally entered the union in pairs, it stat...
As the country began to grow and expand we continued to see disagreements between the North and South; the Missouri Territory applied for statehood; the South wanted them admitted as a slave state and the North as a free state. Henry Clay eventually came up with the Missouri Compromise, making Missouri a slave state and making Maine it’s own state, entering the union as a free state. After this compromise, any state admitted to the union south of the 36° 30’ latitude would be a slave state and a state north of it would be free. The country was very much sectionalized during this time. Thomas Jefferson felt this was a threat to the Union.
Additionally, the majority of states had conflicts between slavery in their territory, one of them dealt with missouri. Missouri applied for admission into the Union as a slave state; this became a problem because missouri ruined the balance for free slaves and slave states. The northern states wanted to ban slavery from occurring in missouri because the unbalanced situation it put towards the other states. In response, the southern states declared how congress doesn’t have the power to ban slavery in missouri. However, Henry Clay offers a solution, the missouri compromise of 1820. Missouri admitted as slave state and Maine becomes a free slave state. Slavery is banned in Louisiana creating a 36 30 line in missouri’s southern border; this maintained the balance in the U.S senate.
One item in the Compromise of 1850 was the provision for a stronger Fugitive Slave Law. This new law made it a federal crime to not return a runaway slave to the south. The law also established that any suspected runaway slave was to be tried by a single judge, not by a jury. Also, these judges were compensated by a system that provided them with more money for deciding that the slave was guilty than innocent. This law obviously encouraged people not to harbor runaway slaves, and when they were caught, it provided the judge an incentive to have them returned to the south.
The new territories and the discussion of whether they would be admitted to the Union free or slave-holding stirred up animosity. The Compromise of 1850 which offered stricter fugitive slave laws, admitted California as a free state, allowed slavery in Washington D.C., and allowed new territories to choose whether they wanted to be slave-holding or free was supposed to help ease tension between the North and South. Yet Southern states wanted more new territories to be slave-holders so the institution of it would continue to grow. They believed slavery was a way of life and as Larrabee said in his senate speech, “You cannot break apart this organization and this system that has intertwined itself into every social and political fiber of that great people who inhabit one-half of the Union.” (“There is a Conflict of Races”).
The south and the north made numerous compromises to create a great nation. The first indirect compromise was when the constitution didn’t mention slavery in the constitution, they left that for the states to deal with. After years after when the congress decide to stop the slave trade in 1808, they gave the south time to adjust to this but they new that by the time the slave trade died line was over the slave would have reproduces and they would have more slaves. Third compromise gave the south more power. They had notice that they had less seats in the house of representative. States with the most slaves, for instance Virginia and Maryland, were get out number in the house of representative, so the compromised to have the slave counted as part of the population. They got three counts for every five slaves. This helped balance the house of representative.
The Compromise of 1850 brought relative calm to the nation. Though most blacks and abolitionists strongly opposed the Compromise, the majority of Americans embraced it, believing that it offered a final, workable solution to the slavery question. Most importantly, it saved the Union from the terrible split that many had feared. People were all too ready to leave the slavery controversy behind them and move on. But the feeling of relief that spread throughout the country would prove to be the calm before the storm.
Correspondly, the senate passed the Missouri Compromise in February 1820, which allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state and Maine to enter as a free state, making the free and slave states balanced once again. Another amendment was passed to prohibit slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of the southern border of Missouri. This event envisioned a possible threat to the relationship between the North and South. Moreover, the United States began to believe in a manifest destiny, a god-given right to expand its territory until it had absorbed all of North America, including Canada and Mexico.... ...
The South did not want to lose slavery and wanted future territories to have slavery. Compromise is impossible to achieve. Going back to the quote, "The 1850's was a time of attempted compromise when compromise was no longer possible. " During the 1850's compromise was attempted by both the North and South and failed. It failed because both sides wanted different things, and this made compromise impossible.
After winning the Mexican-American War in 1848, the United States gained the western territories, which included modern-day California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, as well as parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma. However, controversial topics, that helped cause the Civil War, arouse with the addition of these new territories. Primarily, the people of the United States wanted to know whether the new territories would be admitted as free states or slave states. In order to avoid fighting between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North, Henry Clay (Whig) and Stephen Douglas (Democrat) drafted the Compromise of 1850. Although the compromise was created to stop conflict ...
In our countries government, Congress plays a major role in decision making. They’re primary role is to pass laws. These laws start off as bills. Bills can only be introduced by members of Congress. Although these bills only come from Congressman, there are many people who influence these bills. Such as the president, regular citizens, offices in the executive branch, and many others. The bills right off the bat do not have a very good chance of passage. Only one out of every ten bills even gets any attention at all. This is because they must go through many tests and hearings before they even have a chance of landing on the president’s desk. These steps in a bill becoming a law are very important, and make sure that all bills passed into law are the best of the best.