USI.36+(a,b)

=The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1860-1877=

A. The Missouri Compromise (1820)
By 1818, Missouri gained enough of a population that it could be admitted into the Union as a state. Originally the Missouri territory came to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Missouri became the 24th state. But before it became a state, certain measures and compromises had to be taken in order to keep a balance in the House of Representatives between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery states.

It was expected that Missouri would be a slave state, seeing that most of its population came from the south. In 1820, Maine was admitted as a non-slave state at the same time and the year before, Alabama was admitted as a slave state. There was a balance in the senate of northern (free) and southern (slave) representatives. The [|Missouri Compromise] was a bill that admitted Missouri as a slave state and banned slavery in the remaining territories of the Louisiana Purchase. It also banned slavery north of 36°30'N latitude. At first, Missouri was admitted as a free state, but the next day, after the House voted 90 to 87 to allow slavery in Missouri, it became a slave state. The origins of the ban on slavery in the Louisiana Purchase are also from the same day: congress, after voting to admit Missouri as a slave state, voted 134 to 42 to prohibit slavery in the Louisiana Territory north of the 36° 30´ latitude line.

In 1854, the Missouri Compromise was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, admitting Kansas and Nebraska as states based on popular sovereignty. After three years the Missouri compromise was called unconstitutional by Judge Taney in the Dred Scott decision. Taney ruled that Congress had no rite to prohibit slavery in the territories. This was but one of the many debates in congress about the issue of slavery.



[|Pic. 1 Missouri] [|Pic.2 Missouri Compromise Line]

B. The South Carolina Nullification Crisis (1832-1833)
Nullification originated in 1798 when Jefferson and Madison proposed it to Kentucky and Virginia as an opposition to the Alien and Sedition acts. Nullification was also invoked at the Hartford Convention as a response to the War of 1812.

This was a crisis during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. It was based on the question of whether a state can refuse to recognize or to enforce a federal law passed by the United States Congress. It was a battle over state rights and the federal government. It was also a battle between South Carolina and Jackson about the Tariff of Abominations. South Carolina had hoped that Jackson would use his power to do something about the laws that it opposed. In the view of South Carolina, as the north and the rest of the country was getting richer and being protected by the tariff laws, it was getting poorer.

Jackson wrote his proclamation in response to an ordinance that South Carolina issued saying that states had the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 "are unauthorized by the constitution of the United States, and violate the true meaning and intent thereof and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State."

In 1832, Jackson signed a bill that revised the 1828 tariff downward, but it was not enough to satisfy most South Carolinians. The nullifiers thought that the tariff acts favored the northern manufacturers at the expense of southern farmers. After Jackson passed his proclamation, Congress passed the [|Force Act], authorizing the use of military force against any state that resisted the tariff acts.

This crisis was slowly put to an end by Henry Clay, who, with Jackson, came up with the [|Compromise Tariff of 1833]. This slowly lowered taxes over the next decade and was eventually accepted by South Carolina, ending the nullification crisis. The tariffs were reduced to their previous 1816 levels.

This conflict touched off on what was almost a civil war because during it because Jackson massed military force to South Carolina’s borders.