In researching these pieces, I was reminded how dominant foreign policy issues had been to this point in our then-new republic’s history. This week’s piece on President Monroe’s domestic policy big idea of dealing with balancing the hostile competing factions concerning slavery and continental expansion began a pattern in which “compromises” attempted, to no avail, to resolve the issue without bloodshed.
As depicted in the excellent musical “1776” released just prior to the marking of our nation’s bicentennial; disputes over language concerning slavery nearly sank our Declaration of Independence. During government under the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Land Ordinance forbade slavery in the old Northwest.
The later US Constitution dealt with slavery concerning how slaves would be counted in the census for determining state representation in the US House of Representatives; fugitive slaves; and issuing a delay for any potential ban on the importation of slaves. Rapid westward expansion would force dealing with the contentious issue of slavery at an ever-quickening pace as states were admitted either “free” or “slave.”
The Compromise of 1820 (“Missouri Compromise”) brought in Missouri as a slave state; the northern counties of Massachusetts into the Union as the free state of Maine; and forbade slavery above the majority of the southern border of Missouri. It was the first significant negotiated settlement feather in the cap of Lexington’s own US House Speaker Henry Clay that would lead to the immortal nickname of “The Great Compromiser.”
In an example of one of those forgotten quirks that makes the study of geography so interesting; the Missouri Compromise boundary line did not include the “Boot Heel” region of Missouri. The Boot Heel is an area of Southeast Missouri extending farther south than any point in either Kentucky or Virginia; a point an old cavalry buddy from that land used to turn blood red about when other southerners in the barracks questioned his state’s southern “bonafides.”
Next Week: President John Quincy Adams’ Foreign Policy Big Idea
Shane Morris is a retired soldier and teacher. Contact at sigm11@yahoo.com (Subject: NtC)
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