Daniel Walker Howe: Missouri, Slave or Free?
[Daniel Walker Howe, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815–1848 (Oxford 2007), is the Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus at Oxford University and Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles.]
On February 13, 1819, 35-year-old Congressman William Cobb unfolded his six-foot frame from his chair in the chamber of the Old Brick Capitol building in Washington, D.C., and locked his gray eyes on James Tallmadge Jr. of New York. There was little love lost between the grandson of Georgia’s most famous patriarch and the accomplished city lawyer. They had tangled on issues before, Cobb eloquently if savagely attacking Andrew Jackson over his campaign in Florida against the Seminoles; Tallmadge had defended the general with equal vigor.
At the moment, Congress was in the midst of discussing Missouri statehood, by now a normal expectation whenever a frontier territory attained the qualifying number of white settlers. Suddenly Tallmadge had electrified the proceedings by introducing a controversial proposal: statehood should only be granted, he insisted, if the further importation of slaves was prohibited. In addition, emancipation would come to all children born to slaves when they reached 25. Cobb and other Southern congressmen were outraged.
“You have kindled a fire which all the waters of the ocean cannot put out, which seas of blood can only extinguish,” Cobb told Tallmadge, his eyes blazing. The 41-year-old veteran of the War of 1812 was not one to back down: “If a dissolution of the Union must take place, let it be so! If civil war, which gentlemen so much threaten, must come, I can only say, let it come!” In a moment the smoldering coals of the slavery issue threatened to catch fire and burn out of control.
But at the same time other Americans were determined to transcend sectionalism and create an “era of good feelings.” Creative moderates such as President James Monroe, Rep. Henry Clay of Kentucky, and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun seized the initiative away from the truculent sectional extremists to avoid civil war. They worked out one of the most memorable compromises of American history....
Read entire article at American Heritage
On February 13, 1819, 35-year-old Congressman William Cobb unfolded his six-foot frame from his chair in the chamber of the Old Brick Capitol building in Washington, D.C., and locked his gray eyes on James Tallmadge Jr. of New York. There was little love lost between the grandson of Georgia’s most famous patriarch and the accomplished city lawyer. They had tangled on issues before, Cobb eloquently if savagely attacking Andrew Jackson over his campaign in Florida against the Seminoles; Tallmadge had defended the general with equal vigor.
At the moment, Congress was in the midst of discussing Missouri statehood, by now a normal expectation whenever a frontier territory attained the qualifying number of white settlers. Suddenly Tallmadge had electrified the proceedings by introducing a controversial proposal: statehood should only be granted, he insisted, if the further importation of slaves was prohibited. In addition, emancipation would come to all children born to slaves when they reached 25. Cobb and other Southern congressmen were outraged.
“You have kindled a fire which all the waters of the ocean cannot put out, which seas of blood can only extinguish,” Cobb told Tallmadge, his eyes blazing. The 41-year-old veteran of the War of 1812 was not one to back down: “If a dissolution of the Union must take place, let it be so! If civil war, which gentlemen so much threaten, must come, I can only say, let it come!” In a moment the smoldering coals of the slavery issue threatened to catch fire and burn out of control.
But at the same time other Americans were determined to transcend sectionalism and create an “era of good feelings.” Creative moderates such as President James Monroe, Rep. Henry Clay of Kentucky, and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun seized the initiative away from the truculent sectional extremists to avoid civil war. They worked out one of the most memorable compromises of American history....