Compromises over Slavery

The existence of slavery was embedded into the United States Constitution (without the actual word “slave”) and it was protected through a number of compromises worked out between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. Some of these are included below:


The Three Fifths Compromise was reached among state delegates during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention.  It was the outgrowth of a debate over how taxes were apportioned according to land value rather than population. A special committee recommended apportioning taxes by population, and the Continental Congress debated the ratio of slaves to free persons at great length. Essentially, it was decided that the population of slaves in one state would be counted as three-fifths in total when apportioning Representatives, as well as Presidential electors and taxes. This greatly augmented southern political power, as only five states had slavery as a major institution. Thus, because of this compromise, the southern states had nearly 45% of the seats in the first U.S. Congress, which took office in 1790. 


The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was an act of the Congress of the Confederation that constructed a policy for the addition of new states to the nation. States had competing claims to western territory, and this ordinance structured settlement of such Northwest territory. Article Six of the ordinance prohibits slavery in the created Northwest Territories, but also included a clear fugitive slave clause.


The Fugitive Slave Acts  of 1793 and 1850 were among the most controversial laws of the early 19th century. The first Fugitive Slave Act stemmed from pressure from Southern lawmakers, as anti-slavery sentiment in the North drove a wedge between the newly created states. This edict dictated that slave owners and their “agents” had the right to search for escaped slaves within the borders of free states, and it included a more detailed description of how the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution was to be put into action. This was immediately met with great criticism, and most Northern states intentionally neglected to enforce the law. After increased pressure from Southern politicians, Congress passed a revised Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. The law forcibly compelled citizens to assist in the capture of runaway slaves, denied slaves the right to a jury trial, and increased the penalty for interfering with the rendition process to $1,000 and six months in jail. Widespread opposition and regular introduction of bills and resolutions related to repealing the Fugitive Slave Act was widespread, but the law persisted until after the beginning of the Civil War.


The Missouri Compromise of 1820 stemmed from when the United States Senate and the House of Representative attempted to maintain a balance of power between the slaveholding states and the free states, as the slaveholding states feared that if they became outnumbered in Congressional representation, they would lack the power to protect their property and trade interests. In 1819, Missouri applied for admission to the Union. Because it was a slaveholding territory, Northern states opposed it, feeling that Southern slaveholding states already had too much power. Because of the Three Fifths clause, the South had an advantage in Congress. Slavery had been creeping into the Northwest Territory despite the prohibition of slavery by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. After much debate, the Missouri Compromise was passed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Although it quelled immediate divisions engendered by the Missouri question, it intensified a larger regional conflict between the North and the South. The North noticed that the Southerners wanted to both continue and expand slavery while the South grew to believe that Northerners utilized slavery as a smokescreen behind which they could resurrect the Federalist Party and strengthen central government at the expense of states’ rights. 


The “Gag Rule” was instituted by the House of Representatives during the 24th Congress between 1836 and 1840. This was the first instance in what would eventually become a traditional practice forbidding the House from considering anti-slavery petitions. Representative James Hammond of South Carolina first proposed the gag rule in December 1835, Committee Chairman Henry L. Pinckney of South Carolina reported that all petitions, memorials, or resolutions regarding slavery should automatically be tabled and no further action be taken upon them, and Representative John Quincy Adams raised the first and most impassioned objections to the procedure. During the roll call vote, Adams shouted, “I hold the resolution to be a direct violation of the Constitution of the United States. It was finally repealed on December 3, 1844.


The Compromise of 1850 consisted of five laws passed in September of 1850 that dealt with the issue of slavery. In 1849, California requested admission to the Union as a free state, potentially upsetting the free-slave state balance in the United States Senate. Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions in order to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between the North and the South. From the Compromise of 1850 came the amendment of the Fugitive Slave Act, the abolishment of the slave trade in Washington, D.C., admission of California to the Union as a free state, the creation of a territorial government in Utah, and the passing of an act that settled a boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico that also established a territorial government in New Mexico.


The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 mandated “popular sovereignty,” allowing settlers of a territory to decide whether slavery would be allowed within a new state’s borders. The bill overturned the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude (the 36 30 line) as a boundary between slave and free territory. This bill produced a violent uprising known as “Bleeding Kansas,” as disputes arose between pro-slavery and anti-slavery activists that flooded in to the territories to sway the vote.


The Crittenden Compromise 
After Abraham Lincoln’s election as president in November of 1860, Southern senators began to leave the Senate to attend secession conventions, and Northern senators called for military preparedness. In order to avert civil war, Kentucky Senator John Crittenden proposed a collection of constituional amendments. The heart of his proposal was an amendment to extend the 36 30 parallel to the Pacific, even though it was made defunct by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Although it sanctioned the continuity of slavery in the South, it also preserved the Union. This peace proposal, although backed by some powerful senators, died in committee. However, it serves as a reminder that war was not considered to be inevitable, even after secession began, abolition was anything but certain, and compromise was still considered a viable option.


https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Crittenden_Compromise.htm
https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Compromise1850.html
https://www.history.com/topics/kansas-nebraska-act
https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Crittenden_Compromise.htm