Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/186

 into the Union as a free State, thus counterpoising Mississippi, just admitted as a slave State—these facts had led to a discussion which lasted for four years. At the first application for admission, during the session of 1818-19, an enabling act was to be provided by Congress. In this enabling act the House of Representatives provided that the new State should come into the Union as nonslave-holding; but, as the Senate dissented, no action could be taken. When the application was presented next session, that of 1819-20, after long debate both Houses of Congress concurred in Mr. Clay's compromise, that Missouri, where slavery already existed, should be admitted into the Union as a slave-holding State, but that after that period all States north of the parallel of 36° 30° north latitude, or the southern boundary line of the new State should be non-slave-holding States. This arrangement seemed likely to meet and adjust the difficulty. When, however, the State Constitution, framed under this enabling act, was found, at the reassembling of Congress in 1820-21, to embody a provision requiring the Legislature of the new State to pass laws "to prevent free negroes and mulattoes from coming to and settling in the State," a new and more exciting debate followed; which debate lasted through the short winter session that ushered in President Monroe to a second term of office, March 4, 1821. For, though since that period other States formed further north and in that same territory, have acted upon that same provision,— as the State of Wisconsin, admitted in 1848,—its embodiment in the Constitution of Missouri, brought into the Union under such circumstances, awakened strenuous opposition. At that time the idea of free labor had not taken shape as implying the prohibition of a competition between white and colored laborers; and the provision seemed in conflict with the admission of free as opposed to slave labor in the new State. Both Houses of Congress agreed in requiring the expunging of this provision from the Constitution submitted; the people of Missouri yielded; and, as authorized, the President, in view of the action of the State Convention called June 24th, declared by proclamation Aug. 10, 1821, that the State of Missouri was admitted to the Union and entitled to representation in the next Congress. It Avas just two years after this crisis that Houston came into Congress; where as representative from Tennessee for four years, and as Senator from Texas for fourteen years, he was destined to take such a course as was not the privilege or honor of any previous or subsequent American statesman.

As to the tariff, the old question of duties on imports as a ready and effectual method of collecting taxes for the support of the Federal Government, had up to 1823 not been specially