Compromise


  Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson
Balance of Power
Balance of power is a condition in which both sides of an issue hold equal ability.

South Carolina

  • Three solutions attempted by South Carolina were:
    1. Revoke the import tariffs from 1828 and 1832.
    2. They discontinued collecting the import tariff.
    3. They threatened to stop being part of the United States.
  • President Andrew Jackson solved the Nullification Crisis by lowering the import tariff and then using the military to make sure that everyone, including South Carolina, paid it. This was a compromise on both sides since the North and West had wanted a higher tariff and the South did not want one at all. The end result was that the situation was solved peacefully.
  • Florida was allowed to join the U. S. as a state because Iowa was also allowed to at the same time. Since Florida was a slave state and Iowa was a free state the balance of power remained the same.


The Missouri Compromise

  • Henry Clay was a senator from Kentucky who proposed the Missouri Compromise.
  • The northern senators did not want Missouri to become a state because it was a state that believed in slavery. If it were allowed to join the United States it would have meant that there were more states that had slaves than did not.
  • The Missouri Compromise established a rule for the land in the Louisiana Purchase in which an imaginary line would be drawn up the middle. On one side of this line slavery would be legal and on the other side it would not.
  • Three important parts of the Compromise of 1850 were:
    1. California became part of the U. S. as a free state.
    2. The land that had been gained from Mexico during the Mexican War was split into two pieces, New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory and each was allowed to decide for themselves whether they would allow slavery or not.
    3. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was passed which made the Southerners happy because their runaway slaves now had to be returned to them by law.


Popular sovereignty

  • Popular sovereignty is the idea of territories being able to vote whether or not they were going to allow slavery.
  • Popular sovereignty helped to bring about an end of the ability of Congress to make compromises on slavery by giving the states control over whether they would be a slave state or a free state. This meant that Congress did not have power any more in matters of slavery.


The Kansas-Nebraska Act

  • 3 factors that ended the ability of Congress to make compromises:
    1. The concept of popular sovereignty.
    2. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.
    3. The Dred Scott decision that was made by the Supreme Court in 1857.
  • The Kansas-Nebraska Act replaced the Missouri Compromise and allowed slavery in places that had been free for 30 years. This act helped end the ability of Congress to make compromises on slavery by showing Congress that the compromises they made in the past could not be continued.
  • The election of 1860 ended all hope of any compromise between the North and the South. The South felt that, since a republican President had been elected without their votes, they had no power any longer in the federal government and some of the southern politicians began to plan to separate the South from the United States.