What If No Missouri Compromise?

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

What if admitting Maine and Missouri simultaneously, without creating a westward line of demarcation between free states and slave states, was enough to pass both houses of Congress in 1820? However, as a result, there is a more intentional and explicit policy of admitting states in pairs.

Either the admission of Florida and Texas is delayed or the admission of Iowa and Wisconsin is accelerated to keep balance.

A small bone of contention during the Mexican Cession debates of 1846-1850 is removed. It does require a slave state to offset California's admission - either California as two states (it has always been too big for one state anyway) or part of Texas being split off into another state. For simplicity, let's go with California for the south and the state of Fremont consisting of central and northern California.

Most importantly, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 is no longer contentious because it's not overturning a previous agreement. Anti-slavery sentiment continues to grow in the north, but now the trigger for the formation of the Republican party is removed. Maybe it still forms in response to Dred Scott in 1857?

Kansas is admitted earlier as a slave state, paired with Iowa as a free state. Oregon and Minnesota being admitted is paired with Texas agreeing to split into two states and West Virginia being created as a slave slate and a little smaller than it was IRL (no Jefferson or Berkeley Counties, at least).

Republicans run a candidate in 1860 without winning, but unsettling the South. Stephen Douglas, no longer a pariah, is elected. Without the stress of the heated 1860 campaign, he doesn't die in 1861, but his health is declining and he declines to seek a second term. John C. Breckenridge is elected president in 1864, but the Republican candidate polls stronger this time.

With no war on, Nevada remains a territory in 1864. However, when Nebraska is ready for admission, buoyed by the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad (a project pushed forward by Douglas), there is a crisis: there is no more Southern territory that can be turned into another slave state to balance Nebraska. Texas is willing to accept another partition, but lacks the population to justify it. Breckenridge and the Democrats demand Nebraska wait until Utah has sufficient population to enter as a slave state. Southern politicians loudly declare unbalanced admission of Nebraska is the first step in implementing the Black Republican agenda of squeezing the South out of the federal government then abolishing slavery. Secession Crisis of 1868-1869 instead of 1860-1861?

 

[steve59p]

Interesting idea although I don't know enough about the details of US politics of the time to respond with any reliable accuracy. I do notice that the problem might come to a head before your suggest because of
a) You seem to be counting a free Iowa twice, both as a counter to either Florida or Texas or later paired with a slavery Kansas.
b) I'm not sure if there's the basis for a breaking of Virginia with a modernist West Virginia as a slave state given how opposed to slavery the latter was OTL. Not to mention that Richmond - and the south in general - might not welcome the idea. Both as a loss of status for Virginia and also while it gives the south equality in the Senate since their not getting a new state but only the partition of an existing one it does nothing to boost their position in the lower house compared with the north actually getting an additional area of settlement.

The other question with a 1820 PoD of course is how many other things change. Depending on how Mexico develops you could have no encouragement of Anglo settlement in Texas, the defeat of any rebellion there of its later incorporation in the union and Washington's attitude to Texan territorial claims being a trigger to the war with Mexico and annexation of California and other areas. You could have a conflict with Britain over the Oregon territory or with the OTL agreement that could be a serious source of contention with the south as Oregon is clearly not going to be a slave state.

However definitely an interesting idea, thanks. I think the latter the split happens, unless it comes when a President is willing to allow a secession without a fight which I suspect would be unlikely, is going to be more to the advantage of the north as its population, industrial and infrastructure edge is likely to only grow larger over time than the slave holding areas.

 

[RedRover]

The Missouri compromise of 1820, the establishment between the parties in congress of a line of demarcation relative to banning slavery in the territories north of a certain line, encoded in Law by the "Missouri Compromise act," of March 6, 1820, settled the admission of Missouri to the Union as a potential slave State, along with Maine as a free State, and established the idea of admitting States in pairs over the next few decades...

The compromise led immediately to what some called the "second Missouri compromise" relative to the admission of Missouri to the Union with a constitution which did not recognize other that white people as citizens of the United States etc. The latter issue, might not have been one, had there been no Missouri compromise act in the first place, at least in some opinions.

Regarding the first act, or Missouri Compromise of 1820, Thomas Jefferson noted:

Jefferson had earlier written:

President James Monroe signed the Missouri compromise act into law in early 1820, believing it would settle the agitation over slavery in the territories...

James Monroe.

However, shortly afterward, Missouri sought admission to the Union with a State Constitutional provision found obnoxious by many, as it evidently excluded state recognition of free men of color as citizens of or people of the United States.
James Madison, Nov. 25, 1820, notes that accepting Missouri as a State of the Union with such a constitutional provision gave the slavery issue a new and more inflammatory form:

John Quincy Adams, accepting the Missouri Compromise act of 1820, was gobsmacked by the resulting constitutional issues relative to the new State's proposed constitution in 1821:

John Quincy Adams.

Here's a timeline of the "constitutional" question over Missouri's admission to the Union, resulting in the "second missouri compromise" of 1821;

Senator David Morrill, of New Hampshire, had spoken out against the Missouri Compromise in 1820, paraphrasing Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia", etc., to denounce it (and he corresponded with Jefferson on the subject). He voted against it.
Then as the 2nd Compromise issue came up regarding Missouri statehood, without its recognition of US citizens other than white men, he spoke out against that too:

At that time too, and for several more years, there were black citizens in Tennessee and North Carolina.

Sen. David L. Morrill, of New Hampshire.


So far as I can see it, if there was no Missouri Compromise act from congress in March, 1820, passed into law, drawing an imaginary dividing line through the western territories, to conclude the argument over the status of the territories formation into States, the decision could not have been decided by congress, and Missouri, among those territories, might not have been considered for admission to the Union the following year, and thus no wrangling about State constitutions at odds with some other States on the issue of citizens of color...

And subsequently, one of the principal points decided in the subsequent Dredd Scott case in 1857 by the Supreme Court majority in that case was that Scott's civil condition was subject to the laws of the State of Missouri, versus those of the State of Illinois, or of the United States, which in spite of any other evidences, as there were no free men in Missouri other than white under its constitution, Scott must not be a free man:

This court decision essentially declared the unconstitutionality of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, while upholding the more obnoxious provisions of the State of Missouri's constitution... which would not have been an issue without the action of the Missouri compromise itself, which in 1857 was found unconstitutional...

The courts' 1857 decision had no effect on the Missouri compromise act itself, as it had already been replaced by the "Kansas-Nebraska Act" of 1854.