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[8] 1820, and that the prohibitory clause of the Missouri Compromise was without constitutional authority, in violation of the rights of a part of the joint owners of the territory, and in disregard of the obligations of the treaty with France. The basis of sectional controversy was the question of the balance of political power. In its earlier manifestations this was undisguised. The purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, and the subsequent admission of a portion of that territory into the Union as a state, afforded one of the earliest occasions for the manifestation of sectional jealousy, and gave rise to the first threats or warnings (which proceeded from New England) of a dissolution of the Union. Yet, although negro slavery existed in Louisiana, no pretext was made of that as an objection to the acquisition. The ground of opposition is frankly stated in a letter of that period from one Massachusetts statesman to another—“that the influence of our part of the Union must be diminished by the acquisition of more weight at the other extremity.”1 Some years afterward (in 1819-20) occurred the memorable contest with regard to the admission into the Union of Missouri, the second state carved out of the Louisiana Territory. The controversy arose out of a proposition to attach to the admission of the new state a proviso prohibiting slavery or involuntary servitude therein. The vehement discussion that ensued was continued into the first session of a different Congress from that in which it originated, and agitated the whole country during the interval between the two. It was the first question that ever seriously threatened the stability of the Union, and the first in which the sentiment of opposition to slavery in the abstract was introduced as an adjunct of sectional controversy. It was clearly shown in debate that such considerations were altogether irrelevant; that the number of existing slaves would not be affected by their removal from the older states to Missouri; and moreover, that the proposed restriction would be contrary to the spirit, if not to the letter, of the Constitution.2 Notwithstanding all this the restriction was adopted, by a vote almost strictly sectional, in the House of Representatives. It failed in the Senate through the firm resistance of the Southern, aided by a few patriotic and
1 Cabot to Pickering, who was then Senator from Massachusetts. (See Life and Letters of George Cabot, by H. C. Lodge, p. 334.)
2 The true issue was well stated by the Hon. Samuel A. Foot, a representative from Connecticut, in an incidental reference to it in debate on another subject, a few weeks after the final settlement of the Missouri case. He said: “The Missouri question did not involve the question of freedom or slavery, but merely whether slaves now in the country might be permitted to reside in the proposed new State; and whether Congress or Missouri possessed the power to decide.”
1881.
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