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Through out the history of America, there were many compromises made as a desperate attempt to make both groups of people of either side happy as much as they could. In this case, the United States tried to avoid war with a series of political compromises in an attempt to reduce sectional tensions between the North and South, which proved to be ineffective. In a time of quarreling over concerns in politics, a productive way to end a conflict was to just create a compromise. However, by the year 1860, those sectional tensions were too strong for any sort of settlements to occur. Some compromises, such as the Missouri Compromise, and the Clay's Compromise Tariff was effective in the first place, but eventually failed. Two compromises, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Compromise of 1850 immediately ended in failure. In the beginning, the Missouri Compromise was actually weakening any difficult situations between the sections. The Compromise of 1820 stopped the crisis between the North and the South., when they had to decide whether the Missouri should be a free state or slave state....
By 1824 however, the strong nationalistic unity had collapsed, ushering John Quincy Adams, who would prove to be a very divisive president. One must also look at the duality of the issue of the Missouri compromise. One hand, as shown in Document F, the very idea of drawing a line across the country is wholly separatist. The tensions and divisions created with the Missouri compromise would grow, and lead to the establishment of two very different societies in the North and South. On the other hand, the line illustrated the willingness of the politicians to work together to improve the nation.
...ri Compromise allowed different states to be a part of the Union while preserving their socio-economic base. These two divergent views were not sustainable within a union. Jefferson’s statement “[t]his momentous question, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror” was accurate, in that it foreshadowed the disunion of the states. Allowing Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, and others to enter as free states were in fact catalysts for major conflict between Americans who believed in the abolition of slavery. The Missouri Compromise also signaled the occurrence of the nullification doctrine due to conflicts arising from various factions within the Union. The nullification doctrine which allowed states to determine which federal law to abide by defeated the purpose of having a union.
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.
Missouri was a slave state, while Maine was a free state. This shows sectionalism as this thought on slavery distinctly separates the nation into Southern beliefs and Northern beliefs. This compromise shows the gap between the north and south. It has led to many devastating losses throughout history, yet on the other side it has “resolved” conflict when the conflict was too troublesome to talk through.
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...
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.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was a great victory for the south. The greatest benefit to the south was the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which established the sacred 36-30 line. If the Missouri Compromise had stayed in place, there would have been no more possibility for the expansion of slavery, since there was no land left south of the 36-30 line; under the Missouri Compromise southern expansion was hampered by the existence of the Gulf of Mexico. As a result of the line being repealed, it was possible for slavery to exist in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska because of popular sovereignty.
The people of the North and South each believed fiercely in their cause, one for a free people the other for life servitude. Neither group, based on the documents presented were willing to budge regarding their beliefs. They North wanted to abolish slavery completely and the South could not understand why they had to give up their way of life because the concept was so ingrained in them as a people. The two completely different ideals could not co-exist peacefully and therefore the eventual climax of this issue, the war, was an inevitable
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.
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.
The existence of slavery was the central element of the conflict of the north and south. Other problems existed that led to this succession but none were as big as the slavery issue. The only way to avoid the war was to abolish slavery, but this was not able to be done because slavery is what kept the south running. When the south seceded it was said by Abraham Lincoln that “ a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.” Because slavery formed two opposing societies and slavery could never be abolished, the civil war was inevitable. These were all the reasons why the south seceded from the union, this succession was eminent and there was no plausible way to avoid it.
Having slavery be a significant part of many American lives, the Missouri Compromise was another sign that slavery was still a want in new states. The change of slavery states and free states still wasn’t where it needed to be in order to be accepted by today’s standards, but there were already people rallying to get it removed. Many people were involved in the Missouri Compromise as well as affected by it, but, thankfully, none of it is still in place today.
Since the beginning of their new nation, the United States had many differences between the Northern and Southern states. During the Constitutional Convention they disagreed on how to determine their representation in the house based on population; the Southerners wanted to count their slaves and the Northerners did not, which lead to the three-fifths compromise. Later in the Convention there were concessions given to the South, which left the Northerners feeling uneasy, such as: a guarantee that the slave trade would not be interfered with by Congress until 1808 and slave owners were given the right to recover refugee slaves from anywhere in the United States. While many Northern delegates were disappointed with the rights given to the South, they felt it was necessary for the good of the Nation. This was necessary to form a strong central government and union between the states.