Missouri Compromise Research Paper
Missouri Compromise
The first ships with African Slaves arrived in America in the 1600s and the slave trade spread through the colonies and continued through the birth of the United States. With the expansion of cotton and other goods of agriculture through the South, more slaves were needed to continue production. But after the American Revolution, many American goods, including indigo and tobacco, lost their appeal because the British were less keen to only trading with the US. Many slaves that previously worked were unnecessary and became a social burden on southern plantation owners. Many owners wished for the abolition of the slave trade as they saw these slaves as an economical loss because they were not making enough profit with the …show more content…
loss of their biggest trader.
But, Eli Whitney created the cotton gin in the 1790s which made processing cotton faster, but required more slaves to pick cotton. This revived the one crop economy of the south and increased the market and demand for slaves. Cotton spread across the “Black Belt” and many southern states supported slavery.
In 1819, Missouri applied to become the 23rd state and wished to be a slave state just like the rest of the Black Belt.
But, many of the northern senators were hesitant to allow Missouri to become a slave state because there were already 11 free states and 11 slave states and the northern senators did not want too much representation from slave state senators. Also, Missouri was the the west of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers so it was not required to follow the Northwest Ordinance Act leading to the confusion of whether it was a slave state or a free state. The northern senators argued that slavery was an immoral sin and should be abolished while the southern senators argued that slavery was justified in the constitution and that they had the right to keep slaves if they wanted to. To keep a balance of pro-slavery senators and free-state senators, Henry Clay proposed the Missouri Compromise which stated that Missouri would be a slave state if Maine was accepted as a free state. It further drew the 36-30 parallel to create a division for which states would be free and which would be slave-owning.
The Missouri Compromise created a temporary balance of slave v. free states until the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It decreased the arguing in senate about which states would be free or slave. But in the long term, we can argue that the Missouri Compromise created the clear barrier between north and south that would not come together until the end of the Civil War and was a prime reason for the Civil
War.
The first ships with African Slaves arrived in America in the 1600s and the slave trade spread through the colonies and continued through the birth of the United States. With the expansion of cotton and other goods of agriculture through the South, more slaves were needed to continue production. But after the American Revolution, many American goods, including indigo and tobacco, lost their appeal because the British were less keen to only trading with the US. Many slaves that previously worked were unnecessary and became a social burden on southern plantation owners. Many owners wished for the abolition of the slave trade as they saw these slaves as an economical loss because they were not making enough profit with the …show more content…
loss of their biggest trader.
But, Eli Whitney created the cotton gin in the 1790s which made processing cotton faster, but required more slaves to pick cotton. This revived the one crop economy of the south and increased the market and demand for slaves. Cotton spread across the “Black Belt” and many southern states supported slavery.
In 1819, Missouri applied to become the 23rd state and wished to be a slave state just like the rest of the Black Belt.
But, many of the northern senators were hesitant to allow Missouri to become a slave state because there were already 11 free states and 11 slave states and the northern senators did not want too much representation from slave state senators. Also, Missouri was the the west of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers so it was not required to follow the Northwest Ordinance Act leading to the confusion of whether it was a slave state or a free state. The northern senators argued that slavery was an immoral sin and should be abolished while the southern senators argued that slavery was justified in the constitution and that they had the right to keep slaves if they wanted to. To keep a balance of pro-slavery senators and free-state senators, Henry Clay proposed the Missouri Compromise which stated that Missouri would be a slave state if Maine was accepted as a free state. It further drew the 36-30 parallel to create a division for which states would be free and which would be slave-owning.
The Missouri Compromise created a temporary balance of slave v. free states until the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It decreased the arguing in senate about which states would be free or slave. But in the long term, we can argue that the Missouri Compromise created the clear barrier between north and south that would not come together until the end of the Civil War and was a prime reason for the Civil
War.