These failed compromises served purposes other than their intended ones. They served to “feed the extremist factions” in each of the divided sections of America. The deterioration of these compromises aided the progression of groups like the Radical Republicans, Know- Nothings, Free-Soil Party, and Abolitionists. One of the compromises that served to feed these factions was the Missouri Compromise. As stated before, this compromise debated on the admission Maine and Missouri as slave or free states.
It resulted in the 36°30′ line being set and is an example of an almost direct conflict between the North and he South on the institution. The North was against the spread of slavery so even though they conceded Missouri they were able to contain the spread of slavery (or so they thought). In the North and South, extremist factions were seeing all of this and were using it to their advantage. In the North, a group called Free-Soil Party was extremely pleased with this ruling. Even though they gave up Missouri, they were pleased that slavery was at least being restricted.
The Free-Soilers were a group that believed slavery should be contained to wherever it was and it should not spread. They disagreed with the elitist economy that as formed by slavery and the believed that land without slaves was the best thing for the economy. This was shown in their official platform “That we accept the issue which the slave power has forced upon us; and to their demand for more slave states and more slave territory, our calm but the final answer is: No more slave states and no more slave territory.
Let the soil of our extensive domain be kept free for the hardy pioneers of our own land and the oppressed and banished from other lands seeking homes of comfort and fields of enterprise in the new world. ” This directly shows they also felt oppressed by slave wners and their plantations because they had the intent to encroach on their lands. Therefore, in all this, the Missouri Compromise was their biggest fuel because they were able to preserve their land for the time being. The next big compromise that fed extremist factions was the Wilmot Proviso.
Similar to the Missouri Compromise, it sought to contain slavery. It was not even law, it was just a proposal made by David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, yet it caused a major sectional uproar in the States. This also fueled the fire of Radical Republicans. The uproar is what truly kindled the fire because it showed that outherners were not going to concede to the North’s advances on the South’s peculiar institution. “Party lines crumbled as every northerner, Democrat and Whig alike, supported what came to be known as the Wilmot Proviso, while nearly all southerners opposed it” (Foner, 507).
Party and country lines are truly starting to be defined at this point due to imminent beginnings of a Slave-Power government. The Wilmot Proviso was thought up to unify the sections but it further disconcerted party lines and national unity because the suppression of slavery was just being discussed in the houses of Congress. This oved both The North and the South from unity because their mal intentions for each other are now being exposed. This proposal also affected abolitionists because it exposes how tough of an opponent they were fighting against.
They sought to remove slavery from the United States but the South was having none of it. They would do anything to keep their institution alive as well as allow it to thrive and spread. As abolitionists abhorred slavery from a moral institution, the failure of the Wilmot Proviso was not good for them because it found that if the economy couldn’t stop slavery, their minority didn’t stand a hance at diplomacy. This triggered people like John Brown to take more militant action in raids like Harper’s Ferry. The last compromise failure in Antebellum America was the Crittenden Compromise of 1860.
According to Foner, the Crittenden Compromise “guaranteed the future of slavery in the states where it existed, and extended the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, dividing between slavery and free soil all territories” (530). Unfortunately for the South, this proposal failed as it neglected to address any of the North’s grievances. It was a last-ditch attempt to prevent the impending crisis that ad been building up since the early 1800’s that had been building up since the early 1800’s with all of the failed compromises.
The Crittenden Compromise sought to empower slavery unlike the Wilmot Proviso or the Compromise of 1850. It proposed slavery to be an exclusive state’s right issue and gave the government no jurisdiction over the subject. This shows not only the South’s inability to give up the institution but it also showed that the South was willing to ice the government out to get what they want. This wasn’t a new occurrence, though, with the nullification crisis also taking place. These two major events n Antebellum America hint at the idea of secession which continued to tense the rest of the country.
This only multiplied the pressure that was building up in the Union and it was due for a crack and this crack was the secession of the southern states. This division was necessary to let out all of the pressure and tension that was collected by the faction in the North and South. This made the Civil War unavoidable and this was caused by the remnants of all the compromises devised in Antebellum America. Addy The Missouri Compromise had been created in 1820 and established the imaginary 36°30′ line that determined free and lave territory.
It allowed Missouri to be added as a slave state while Maine was established as a free state to maintain balance amongst the Union. This compromise was later negated by the Kansas-Nebraska Act put in place in 1854. According to Eric Foner, he states, “During the next two years, the Whig Party, unable to develop a unified response to the political crisis, collapsed. From a region divided between the two parties, the South became solidly Democratic.. disgruntled Democrats, joined a new organization, the Republican Party, dedicated to preventing the further expansion of slavery” (Foner 512).
Passed in 1854 The Kansas-Nebraska Act created a more sectional America because settlers could not determine the status of slavery among these territories by themselves. This led to events like Bleeding Kansas which was caused because when it came time to use their popular sovereignty to vote on whether to outlaw slavery or not people from other the states, like Missouri, would cross over the border and cast votes which led to elections being invalidated and having to be done over again on other days. Bleeding Kansas also led to many acts of violence that held political anti-slavery sentiments.
However, the ctual act itself states that it will leave the states “… created into a temporary government by the name of the Territory Nebraska; and.. shall be received into the Union with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of the admission. ” (The Kansas- Nebraska Act). The act had went against the Missouri Compromise because Stephen A. Douglas passed this bill to give territorial governments to Kansas and Nebraska which had allowed them to use popular sovereignty to make their decisions. This negates the Missouri Compromise because it disrupted the balance of admitting every other state s a free state.
Also, it created more tension because people of Kansas could not form a unified decision. Instead of coming up with a solution or compromise on the decision of whether to keep slavery or not, a New Democratic organization had emerged called the Republican Party; they wanted to completely stop slavery all together. The Republican Party would eventually move to accomplish things like getting Abraham Lincoln into office as the first Republican President of the United States, and he goes on to issuing the Emancipation Proclamatic freed all the slaves from the Confederacy and ending the Civil which War.
