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Causes Of the Civil War: The Compromise of 1820 and the Early Anti-slavery Movement

© Michael J. Swogger

The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 paved the way for United States expansion by more than doubling the size of the country. People from all states rushed westward to start a new and hopefully successful life. As the territories became highly populated, the issue of new states being admitted into the Union arose, and with this came the question of whether slavery would be allowed in newly admitted states.

Southern expansionists and settlers poured into the newly acquired territories from the Louisiana Purchase with hopes of expanding slavery to counterbalance the larger growth in the free North. In fact, some slavery settlers attempted unsuccessfully to defy the Northwest Ordinance and institute slavery in Indiana and Illinois. In 1819, when Missouri had petitioned to be admitted into the Union, many Northern anti-slavery advocates fought to keep slavery out of this soon-to-be state, while at that time, the territory fully practiced it. After intense debate in Washington, and a threat of disunion by many members of Congress, lawmakers created the Missouri Compromise in 1820 which allowed slavery in Missouri, but prohibited at any other points north of Missouri's northern border within the lands of the Louisiana Purchase.

Though few white men questioned the morality of slavery before the 1700's, there were those, such as the Quakers, who believed the act to be vile. In 1775 the Quakers founded the first American anti-slavery group. But it was between 1775 and 1830 when more and more abolitionists began to surface, and this emergence brought with it the importance of slavery to the political realm. By the early 1830's, abolitionism was in full thrust, and America saw the genesis of the American Anti-slavery Society in 1833, founded by several Northern men including the famous William Lloyd Garrison.

The Missouri Compromise seemed to have put the issue of slavery expansion to rest, but it only fed the fire for both groups on the two extremes. The abolitionists were unsatisfied that Missouri and other states south could be admitted as slave states, while the slavery advocates still wanted slavery to be expanded north if need be. The antislavery movement, probably somewhat fueled by the Missouri Compromise, kept pressure of both the South and Washington following 1820, and thus perpetuated the soon to be explosive issue of abolition.

Source Used: Ordeal By Fire, James McPherson: 1992

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