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Road to Civil War
Slavery and the West
p. 436 - 439
The Missouri Compromise
• The request by slaveholding Missouri to join the
Union caused an angry debate.
• In 1819, 11 states permitted slavery and 11 did
not. The Senate – with two members from each
state – was evenly balanced between slave
and free states.
• The admission of a new state would upset that
balance.
• The North and South were competing for new
land in the West.
Clay’s Proposal
• The Senate suggested a way to resolve the
crisis by allowing Missouri’s admittance as a
slave state while simultaneously admitting
Maine as a free state.
• The Senate also south to settle the issue of
slavery in the territories for good by prohibiting
slavery in the remainder of the Louisiana
Purchase north of 36-30N latitude.
• Speaker of the House Henry Clay proposed the
Missouri Compromise.
• This would preserve the balance between slave
and free states
The Tariff Debate
• Americans from different parts of the country
disagreed strongly on the issue of tariffs, a fee paid
by merchants who imported goods.
• In 1828 Congress passed a very high tariff on
manufactured goods from Europe.
• Northerners welcomed the tariff because it meant
that Americans would more likely buy Americanmade goods.
• Southerners hated it because they argued that,
while tariffs forced consumers to buy American
goods, it also meant higher prices. They called it
the Tariff of Abominations.
The Nullification Crisis
• In 1832 Congress passed a new, lower tariff,
hoping that the protest in the South would die
down. It did not.
• South Carolina’s legislature passed the Nullification
Act, declaring that it would not pay the “illegal”
tariffs of 1828 and 1832.
• South Carolina legislatures threatened to secede
from the Union if they federal government tried to
interfere with their actions.
• To ease the crisis, Jackson supported a
compromise bill proposed by Henry Clay that would
greatly lower the tariff.
The Nullification Crisis
• Early in 1833 Jackson persuaded Congress to pass
the Force Bill, which allowed the president to use
the United States military to enforce acts of
Congress.
• South Carolina accepted the new tariff (Clay’s
compromise), but voted to nullify the Force Act.
• For the time being, the crises between a state and
the federal government was over.
• The South would remember the lesson of the
nullification crisis – that the federal government
would not allow a state to go its own way without a
fight.