Resource Center OLLibrary
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and shipbuilders. The President's journey in this part
of the country did great good. He went as a peacemaker.
All knew that he had fought under Washington; all
respected the man's unblemished character and honest
purpose. When the people saw him dressed in the military
costume of the Revolution, the sight recalled the old
days that had "tried men's souls." |
In
Boston and other cities the citizens brought out the
shottorn and smoke-stained battle flags of 1776 to
decorate the streets. Gray-haired men, scarred with
wounds received at Bunker Hill, at Trenton, at Saratoga,
gathered to welcome the new President. He spoke of the
inestimable worth of the Union, of the need that the
North and the South had, and always must have, of each
other. Men listened, and forgot their political
differences. Every one declared that the "Era of Good
Feeling" had begun. When Mr. Monroe was chosen President
for the second time (1821) the people showed their
respect for him and their confidence in him by their
electoral vote, which lacked but a single one of being
unanimous.1|
1818- ] |
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carrying off property. It was no easy matter to fight the
Indians and negroes in the swamps and thickets of Florida.
Finally, General Jackson (§ 230) was sent (1818) to see what
he could do. In three months he conquered the country, though it
still belonged to Spain. Many years later (1835) we had a second
war with the Seminoles (§ 271).
The Spanish government found that these troubles
were likely to break out again, and wisely decided to sell Florida
to us. We obtained the entire territory, about 60,000 square miles
(1819), for $5,000,000 This was our second step in national
expansion (§ 215). (Map, p. 332.) At the same time we gave up
to Spain all claim to the country later known as Texas, which we
at one time considered to be included in our Louisiana Purchase
(§ 215). Spain, on the other hand, gave up her claim to the
"Oregon country" (§ 216), and so strengthened our title to
it.
239. The Question of the Western Extension of
Slavery. The year in which we purchased Florida (1819) the
question came up, whether slavery should be permitted to establish
itself west of the Mississippi, in the immense region then called
Missouri Territory. (Map, p. 214.) By the Ordinance of 1787
(§ 195) Congress had shut out slavery from the Northwest
Territory, which lay east of the Mississippi and northwest of the
Ohio River (Map, p. 172); now Congress asked if it would not be
best to shut it out also from the whole of Missouri Territory.
Ex-President Jefferson (§ 221) was afraid
that this discussion about the extension of slavery would lead to
trouble between the North and the South. He said that it terrified
him "like a fire bell in the night."
240. Change of Feeling in Regard to Slavery;
Condition of Things at the North and at the South. The reason
for his fear was that a great change had come over the country.
Before the Revolution every colony held negroes in bondage. But in
the North the slaves were chiefly house servants, and their number
was never very large. In the South, however, the planters raised
all of their cotton, rice, and tobacco by slave labor, and the
number of negroes was constantly increasing. At first few
persons
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considered slavery an evil; but after a time many able men in
both sections of the country came to believe that it was a bad
thing for both the whites and the blacks.
In the North this feeling led to the passing of
laws which gave the slaves their freedom. But at the South the
planters did not see how they could free their negroes without
ruining themselves.
Later, the invention of the cotton gin (§
205) made slave labor immensely profitable. For this reason the
planters wished to keep up the system. At the same time a good
many Northern men, who made money by manufacturing and dealing in
cotton cloth, became interested in maintaining slavery (§
205).
241. How Slavery divided the Country in
Regard to Trade with Europe. On the whole, the effect of the
slave system was now to divide the nation, instead of uniting it.
Many of the people of the two sections not only thought
differently about the right and the wrong of holding the negro in
bondage, but they no longer agreed about the tariff (§§
200, 234). The South devoted all its strength to raising cotton,
rice, and tobacco. It had scarcely any manufactures; it had to buy
all its clothing, shoes, and other goods. Europe could then make
these articles much cheaper than they could be made in the United
States. The South, therefore, naturally wished for free trade, in
order that it might import its supplies from the other side of the
Atlantic.
The North, on the other hand, however, had
gradually come to devote much of its labor and its money to making
cloth, shoes, and other articles; for this reason it was opposed
to free trade. It wished to keep up a protective tariff (§
234), which would tax foreign goods and so make people buy our own
instead.
242. Why the North opposed the Extension of
Slavery West of the Mississippi; why the South demanded it.
Now it happened that at that time (1819) the number of free states
and of slave states was equal, each section having eleven. A
majority of the Northern people, believing slavery to be an evil,
had therefore two chief reasons for opposing its establishment
west of the Mississippi in Missouri Territory (§ 239).
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1. They thought it would be a serious injury
to that part of the country, and as great a mistake as for a
farmer to take the thistles and weeds which grew on his old land
and deliberately plant them on a field of freshly cleared
soil.
2. They objected to it because, if the new
territory should be admitted as slave states, the South might
thereby gain a majority of representatives in Congress. That
section could then, by its votes, strengthen and extend slavery,
and at the same time it might repeal the protective tariff (§
241) and so permit the free importation of all kinds of
manufactured goods.
On the other hand, the South argued that its
prosperity depended on the extension of slave labor, and on free
trade with Europe; their papers boldly declared: "Slavery must
have room." The people there saw that the North was rapidly
outstripping them in growth of population. If, then, a part of
Missouri Territory should enter the Union as a free state, the
North would probably get control of Congress and of our foreign
trade.
243. The Great Missouri Compromise, 1820.
Finally, a part of Missouri Territory was set apart under the name
of the state of Missouri, and applied for admission as a slave
state. (Map, p. 214.) The South urged the measure with all its
might; the North fought against it with equal determination. After
nearly two years of angry debate Henry Clay1 of
Kentucky succeeded in persuading Congress to make a compromise, --
that is, a bargain in which each side agreed to give up something
to the other in order to settle the dispute.
The Compromise was this:
I. The North agreed that Missouri should enter
the Union as a slave state.
2. The South agreed that in all future cases the
states formed out of the remainder of Missouri Territory north of
the parallel
1 Henry Clay was born
in Virginia in 1777; died at Washington, 1852. He studied law, and
in 1797 removed to Lexington, Kentucky. In 1799, when the people
of Kentucky were about adopting a state constitution, Clay urged
them (but without success) to abolish slavery. He entered Congress
in 1806, and continued in public life from that time until his
death. He was an of remarkable personal influence, a "peacemaker"
by temperament, and the greatest orator the Southwest ever
possessed. Although ardently attached to his adopted state of
Kentucky, yet he declared in 1850 that he owed his first
allegiance to the Union, and a subordinate allegiance to his
state. See Carl Schurz's admirable "Life of Henry
Clay."
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[1815- |
of 36 degrees and 30 minutes on the map should come in free.
(Map, below.)
3. Finally, the South agreed that it would no
longer oppose the effort of the North for the admission of Maine,
which would, of course, come in as a free state.
This law was passed in 1820 under the name of
the Missouri Compromise Act. Maine was admitted (1820) and
Missouri
MAP ILLUSTRATING THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE ACT OF 1820
The Act did not mention the territory south of 36o 30', but the understanding was that it was to be opened to slavery.
followed (1821). This kept the political balance even, for the
North now had twelve free states and the South twelve slave
states.
Many people believed that the passage of the
Missouri Compromise Act1 had settled the debate about
the extension of slavery "forever." But facts proved that in this
case "forever" meant
1 John Randolph, a
Virginia slaveholder, then in Congress, called the Northern men
who voted for the Compromise "Doughfaces," because he thought they
had no more character than a piece of dough. But John Quincy Adams
of Massachusetts, a thorough hater of slavery, who was then
Secretary of State, and who had no more "dough" in his make-up
than a block of New England granite, believed the Missouri
Compromise was a wise measure and necessary to the preservation of
the Union.
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only about twenty-five years (§§ 285, 298, 299, 305)
then,1 as we shall see, the question came up again, and
in a more dangerous form than before.
244. Desire to reach the West; the "National
Road." Next to the extension of slavery, one of the greatest
questions of this period was how to reach the West. To-day we find
it difficult to understand this. To go West, we simply step into
an express train, and steam whirls us to our destination at the
rate of forty or fifty miles an hour. If mountains block the way,
the train either climbs over them or goes through them.
In President Monroe's time the railway did not
exist, and although the steamboat did (§ 220), that could
only go where some navigable river or lake opened the way. Look on
the map
THE CUMBERLAND OR NATIONAL ROAD
of the United States (Map, above), and you will see that the
Allegheny Mountains shut out the East from the West. As the
steamboat could not find a passage leading through those rough
walls of rock, Congress resolved to build a wagon road over them.
Such a road had already been begun (1811) at the head of
navigation on the Potomac, at Cumberland, Maryland. (Map, above.)
This National Road was now (1825) gradually extended across the
forest-covered mountains to Wheeling, on the Ohio River, where it
connected with steamboats running to Cincinnati and to New
Orleans.
But that was not enough. There were millions of
acres of fertile land in Ohio and the country beyond it, which
emigrants
1 That is, until the
question of the annexation of Texas came up in 1845, followed by
that of the Wilmot Proviso (1846-1848), by the Compromise of 1850,
and by the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854.
