American Civil War Missouri Compromise & 1850 Compromise?

Question

Why did the missouri compromise also known as the compromise of 1820 last 3 decades while the Compromise of 1850 only lasted 1 decade?

Answer 1

Pressures from both Northern Abolitionists and Southern extremists made it harder for leaders to hold to compromises in the 1850s. The 1850 compromise didn't really fail as such, that is, both sides stuck to the specific agreements they made in it. But both sides were increasingly unwilling to make concessions, and the controversy came up a few years later in the Kansas Nebraska Act. That law tried to avoid the problem of determining whether Kansas would be admitted as a free state by leaving it up to the settlers in Kansas, and that compromise was a catastrophic failure. The result was that both pro-slavery and anti-slavery radicals flooded into Kansas, created competing free and slave state governments in dubious elections, and fought a small scale prelude to the Civil War. Hopes for a compromise were further damaged by the Dred Scott decision of 1857, which ruled that Congress lacked power to ban slavery in any territory.

Answer 2

I have a tentative answer for you. It might not be as detailed as you are looking for, but hopefully it can at the very least supply you with a springboard to move from.
I am a freshman in college who wrote a paper on the Compromise of 1850, and part of that included studying the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise was created to one single incident: accepting Missouri as a slave state. This was a controversy because it would create more slave states than free states in the Union. The compromise was basically that Missouri would be admitted as a slave state, Maine would be admitted as a free state (prior to this it had been a commonwealth of Massachusetts, basically), and no more slavery would be allowed north of the 36 degrees 30 minutes latitude (which latitude formed the southern border of Missouri--hence Missouri would be the farthest north slavery could ever go). A balance between free and slave states (critical because of the state-by-state voting in the Senate) was roughly mantained by Michigan following Arkansas's entry in 1836 by its own entry in 1837, and though Florida and Texas entered back-to-back in the late 1840s, Wisconsin and Iowa subsequently entered.
The Compromise of 1850 was created to address the issue of slavery in the territories won by the United States from Mexico in the Mexican War. Since the Missouri Compromise, abolitionism had been on the rise in the north. Southerners became more insecure as a result of this, and thus the tension was higher by 1850 then it had been back in the 1820-1821 time.
California's application for statehood as a free state scared the south because 1. it would create an imbalance of free-slave states in the senate, and 2. the north already owned a majority of the actual population that the south did WITHOUT California.
Solutions ranged from popular sovereignty of the states to the famous (or infamous) Wilmot Proviso, which stated that no slavery at all would be allowed in any former Mexican territory.
The Compromise itself consisted of several key points to gratify each party, such as a tightening and enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law for the south and the federal government helping Texas pay war debts; the North received California as a free state; etc.
It is interesting and highly worthy to note that The Compromise of 1850 did not pass the Senate as "The Compromise". When all the components (I believe there were eight of them) were combined in one "Omnibus Bill", it failed. The Bill's creator, the Great Compromiser Henry Clay, subsequently went home in defeat. However, Senator Stephen Douglas took the bill up and split it into its eight rudimentary parts. Each one individually passed.
The Compromise of 1850 actually lasted less than a decade, as the Kansas-Nebraska act threw it out the window and said that popular sovereignty would be the determining factor.
If you ask me, I would say the Compromise of 1850 lasted less time than the Missouri Compromise because 1. The Missouri Compromise was created to address a specific problem, which it did, while the Compromise of 1850 was allegedly supposed to be some sort of more permanent set-up, which would allow greater room for collapse than a one-time fix. 2. The tensions between free and slave were much greater by that time than they were in 1820. 3. The Compromise was unpopular in the North (and to some southerners). In fact, many northerners considered Senator Webster's endorsement of the Compromise comparable to base treachery.

There is so much more to this than I've stated, it should be against the law to make such a general summary, but that's all I can give you off the top of my head. I would recommend looking at David M. Potter's work THE IMPENDING CRISIS (Potter is considered the premier historian on this), or if you have less time PROLOGUE TO CONFLICT by Holman Hamilton, which is shorter at only 190 pages. I hope this helps.

Answer 3

What caused or started the American Civil War? Three big reasons : 1. The Free Trade Policy 2. The Advocacy of Slavery 3. The Doctrine of State Sovereignty and Supremacy Read Samuel M. Schmucker's 'The History of the Civil War in the United States' (1865), it offers real information, and not any biased opinions about the North "invading" Fort Sumter.

Answer 4

The Missouri Compromise was an agreement passed in 1820 between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States Congress, involving primarily the regulation of slavery in the western territories. It prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30' north except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri.

The Compromise of 1850 was a series of laws that attempted to resolve the territorial and slavery controversies arising from the Mexican-American War (1846–48). The five laws balanced the interests of the slave states of the South and the free states. California was admitted as a free state; Texas received financial compensation for relinquishing claim to lands east of the Rio Grande in what is now New Mexico; the territory of New Mexico (including present-day Arizona and Utah) was organized without any specific prohibition of slavery; the slave trade (but not slavery itself) was abolished in Washington, D.C.; and the stringent Fugitive Slave Law was passed, requiring all U.S. citizens to assist in the return of runaway slaves regardless of the legality of slavery in the specific states.

The Compromise in general proved widely popular politically, as both parties committed themselves in their platforms to the finality of the Compromise on sectional issues. The strongest opposition in the South occurred in the states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, but unionists soon prevailed, spearheaded by Georgians Alexander Stephens, Robert Toombs, and Howell Cobb and the creation of the Georgia Platform. This peace was broken only by the divisive Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 introduced by Stephen Douglas, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and led directly to the formation of the Republican Party, whose capture of the national government in 1860 led directly to the secession crisis of 1860-61.

Many historians argue that the Compromise played a major role in postponing the American Civil War for a decade, during which time the Northwest was growing more wealthy and more populous, and was being brought into closer relations with the Northeast.[2] During that decade the Whigs collapsed, bringing about a major realignment with the new Republican Party dominant in the North.[3] But others argue that the Compromise only made more obvious pre-existing sectional divisions and laid the groundwork for future conflict. In this view the Fugitive Slave Law helped polarize North and South, as shown in the enormous reaction to Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law aroused feelings of bitterness in the North.

The country was older but not wiser. Wisdom does not come with age necessarily.

Great question.

Answer 5

they are really still in effect today in part. They allowed territories to join the US but they also dictated if they would be free or slave states. They each also had the agendas to open up the west for new railroad systems which were being built.