| Rufus
King and the Missouri Controversy
In 1819 a courageous group of Northern congressmen and senators
opened debate on the most divisive of antebellum political issues
-- slavery. Since the Quaker petitions of 1790, Congress had
fallen silent on the issue. That silence was shattered by Missouri's
request to enter the Union as a slave state, upsetting the tenuous
north-south balance. The antislavery battle was led by a forgotten
Founding Father; a Federalist Senator from New York named Rufus
King.
When the Missouri debates began, King was about to complete
a third term as Senator and was one of the most respected statesmen
in America. As a signer of the Constitution, a former ambassador
to Great Britain, and a candidate president in 1816, his political
career gave him a unique standing from which to lead the antislavery
delegation.
The controversy over Missouri began in February 1819 when Representative
James Tallmadge, Jr., of New York proposed an amendment to prohibit
slavery in Missouri. His proposal would allow for the gradual
emancipation of slaves in the territory and was strongly backed
by fellow New Yorker John Taylor, who helped push the amendment
through the House of Representatives. When the bill was sent
to the Senate, King upheld the antislavery arguments in an uphill
battle.
The debates in the Senate were not recorded, but the substance
of King's argument was preserved in a pamphlet that he prepared
at his estate in Jamaica, Long Island, after the initial Senate
debate (to see his estate today, visit www.kingmanor.org).
Using the formal tone and the logical arguments of a lawyer,
as well as his authority as one of the few remaining members
of the Senate who had signed the Constitution, King made a case
that the power of Congress included the right to regulate the
conditions of new states. King asserted that this included the
power to restrict slavery. In his view, the Tallmadge Amendment
fell safely within the bounds of Congress's mandate. To King,
federal regulation trumped the interests of local slaveholders.
If the power to create the laws of a new state were left to
slaveholders, then slavery would never fade away.
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| Map
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To back up his argument, King insisted that the Northwest Ordinance
of 1787, a proposal that he was instrumental in shepherding
through the Confederation Congress, provided a precedent for
Congressional action in the territories. The sixth article of
the ordinance, which every Southern state approved at the time,
prohibited slavery in what would eventually become the states
of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. After referencing
Congress's power, which he had a unique understanding of because
he helped create it, King said "Congress may therefore make
it a condition of the admission of a new state, that slavery
shall be forever prohibited within the same."
But that is as far as King was willing to go. Ever the conservative,
King did not call for the end of slavery, but simply a stop
to its spread. He was willing to abide by the deal struck at
the Constitutional Convention, saying "it is an ancient settlement,
and faith and honour stand pledged not to disturb it." As King's
biographer Robert Ernst says, "he was a free-soiler long before
free soil became a popular rallying cry."
Despite the gradual aspect of the Tallmadge amendment and King's
pledge to preserve slavery in the original territory of the
United States, the South vehemently rejected it. Over King's
objections, the Senate passed the Missouri Bill in March 1819
without the Tallmadge amendment, and sent it to the House for
consideration. The House refused to pass the Missouri Bill without
the amendment and returned it to the Senate. The Congressional
session ended before the impasse was cleared, giving each side
months to work the issue with their constituents back home.
It was during this lull that King prepared his pamphlet and
was re-elected to a fourth term. When he returned to Washington
in February 1820, he expanded upon his legalistic arguments
against slavery and included a discussion of human rights and
liberties. King was known as one of the most captivating and
eloquent speakers of his day, and no less a luminary than Daniel
Webster said, "You never heard such a speaker. In strength,
and dignity and fire; in ease, in natural effect, and gesture
as well as in matter, he is unequalled."
Mustering these capabilities, he appeared in a packed house
in the Senate gallery that included freed slaves, and gave what
would become the most important speech in his career, at the
climax of which he stated:
I have yet to learn that one man can make a slave of another.
If one
man cannot do so, no number of individuals can have any better
right to
do it. And I hold that all laws and compacts imposing any
such
condition upon any human being are absolutely void, because
contrary
to the law of nature, which is the law of God, by which he
makes his
ways known to man, and is paramount to all human control.
Historian David Brion Davis makes the claim that "up to that
time no statesman or political leader in the world had publicly
made such a radical declaration of slavery's illegality." The
speech was electric, and Southerners were outraged by its contents.
Their fears were compounded when followers of Denmark Vesey,
the leader of a slave revolt in South Carolina in 1822, cited
King's speeches in support of their cause. One South Carolina
resident was so incensed that he sent King a copy of a newspaper
article describing the Vesey uprising, addressed to "R. King"
with a hand-drawn gallows, an obvious threat to the senator's
life.
Despite their efforts, King and his allies were defeated. The
famous Missouri Compromise was passed in March 1820. It stated
that Missouri would be admitted as a slave state and Maine,
which had formerly been a district in Massachusetts, would be
admitted a free state, to preserve the free-slave balance. Also,
with the exception of Missouri, slavery was to be excluded from
the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36° 30'. Despite
losing this battle, King and his supporters were able to set
the benchmark that future antislavery advocates would reach
for and surpass. In the coming decades before the Civil War,
antebellum politicians would recycle the sectarian conflict
and arguments for and against slavery brought forth during the
Missouri Controversy.
-David Gary, Research Associate
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SUBSTANCE OF TWO SPEECHES DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED
STATES ON THE SUBJECT OF THE MISSOURI BILL. BY THE HON. RUFUS
KING, OF NEW-YORK.
New-York: Published by Kirk and Mercein, No. 22, Wall-Street.
1819.
(6 out of 32 pages)
The constitution declares “that congress shall
have power to dispose of, and make all needful rules and regulations
respecting the territory and other property of the United States.”
Under this power congress have passed laws for the survey
and sale of the public lands, for the division of the same into
separate territories; and have ordained for each of them a constitution,
a plan of temporary government, whereby the civil and political
rights of the inhabitants are regulated, and the rights of conscience
and other natural rights are protected.
The power to make all needful regulations, includes the
power to determine what regulations are needful; and if a regulation
prohibiting slavery within any territory of the United States
be, as it has been, deemed needful, congress possess the power
to make the same, and moreover to pass all laws necessary to
carry this power into execution.
The territory of Missouri is a portion of Louisiana,
which was purchased of France, and belongs to the United States
in full dominion; in the language of the constitution Missouri
is their territory or property, and is subject, like other territories
of the United States, to the regulations and temporary government,
which has been, or shall be pre[6]scribed by
congress. The clause of the constitution,
which grants this power to congress, is so comprehensive, and
unambiguous, and its purpose so manifest, that commentary will
not render the power, or the object of its establishment, more
explicit or plain.
The constitution further provides that “new states
may be admitted by congress in the Union” – time,
terms, and circumstances of the admission of new states are
referred to the discretion of congress; which may admit new
states, but are not obliged to do so – of right no new
state can demand admission into the Union, unless such demand
be founded upon some previous engagement of the United States.
When admitted by congress into the Union, whether by
compact or otherwise, the new state becomes entitled to the
enjoyment of the same rights, and bound to perform the like
duties as the other states; – and its citizens will be
entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the
several states.
The citizens of each state possess rights, and owe duties
that are peculiar to, and arise out of the constitution and
laws of the several states. These
rights and duties differ from each other in the different states,
and among these differences none is so remarkable or important
as that which proceeds from the constitution and laws of the
several states respecting slavery; the same being permitted
in some states, and forbidden in others.
[7] The question respecting slavery in
the old thirteen states had been decided and settled before
the adoption of the constitution, which grants no power to congress
to interfere with, or to change what had been so previously
settled – the slave states therefore are free to continue
or to abolish slavery. Since the
year 1808 congress have possessed power to prohibit and have
prohibited the further emigration or importation of slaves into
any of the old thirteen states, and at all times under the constitution
have had power to prohibit such migration or importation into
any of the new states, or territories of the United States.
– The Constitution contains no express provision respecting
slavery in a new state that may be admitted into the Union,
every regulation upon this subject belongs to the power whose
consent is necessary to the formation and admission of a new
state, that slavery shall be forever prohibited within the same.
We may, with the more confidence, pronounce this to be
the true construction of the constitution, as it has been so
amply confirmed by the past session of congress.
Although the articles of confederation were drawn up
and approved by the old congress in the year 1777, and soon
afterwards were ratified by some of the states, their complete
ratification did not take place until the year 1781.
The states which possessed small and already settled
territory, [8] withheld their ratification,
in order to obtain from the larger states a cession to the United
States of a portion of their vacant territory, without entering
into the reasons on which this demand was urged.
It is well known that they had an influence on Massachusetts,
Connecticut, New-York and Virginia, which states ceded to the
United States their respective claims to the territory lying
north-west of the river Ohio. This
cession was made on the express condition, that the ceded territory
should be sold for the common benefit of the United States;
that it should be laid out into states, and that the states
so laid out should form distinct republican states, and be admitted
as members of the federal union, having the same rights of sovereignty,
freedom, and independence as the other states!
Of the four states which made this cession, two permitted,
and the other two prohibited slavery.
The United States having in this manner become proprietors
of the extensive territory north-west of the river Ohio, although
the confederation contained no express provision upon the subject,
congress, the only representation of the United States, assumed,
as incident to their office, the power to dispose of this territory;
and for this purpose, to divide the same into distinct states,
to provide for the temporary government of the inhabitants thereof,
and for their ultimate admission as new states into the federal
union.
The ordinance for these purposes, which was passed by
congress in 1787, contains arti[9]cles, which
are called, “Articles of compact between the original
states and the people and states within the said territory,
forever to remain unalterable unless by common consent.”
The sixth of those unalterable articles provides, “that
there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in
the said territory.
The constitution of the United States supplies the defect
that existed in the articles of confederation, and has vested
congress, as has been stated, with ample powers on this important
subject. – Accordingly the ordinance of 1787, passed by
the old congress, was ratified and confirmed by an act of the
new congress during their first session under the constitution.
The State of Virginia, which ceded to the United States
her claims to this territory, consented by her delegates in
the old congress to this ordinance – not only Virginia,
but North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, by the unanimous
votes of their delegates in the old congress, approved of the
ordinance of 1787, by which slavery is forever abolished in
the territory north-west of the river Ohio.
Without the votes of these states, the ordinance could
not have passed; and there is no recollection of an opposition
from any of these states to the act of confirmation, passed
under the actual constitution. Slavery
had long been established in these states – the evil was
felt in their institutions, laws, and habits, and could not
easily or at once be abolished. But
these votes so honourable to [10] these states,
satisfactorily demonstrate their unwillingness to permit the
extension of slavery into the new states which might be admitted
by congress into the Union.
The states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, on the north-west
of the river Ohio, have been admitted by congress into the Union,
on the condition and conformably to the article of compact,
contained in the ordinance of 1787, and by which it is declared
that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude
in any of the said states. [end transcript]
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