Rebelling Against the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise
The Political Rising Tensions Between Freedom Fighters and Slave Masters — Sermon from Henry Ward Beecher
Adapted passages from “Life and Work of Henry Ward Beecher” published in 1887
“ HENRY, the battle is coming on. When it will end I know I not. I only hope that everyone feels as alert as I do” (extract from a letter from Harriet Beecher Stowe, the sister of Henry, to Henry Ward Beecher). It was dated November 1, 1852, but expresses the feeling of many concerned Americans during the whole of this era of apparent peace. They were not deceived by the surface calm. They felt that, beneath all party platforms, and the compromises of party politics, and the makeshifts of a commercial spirit, the great conscience of the North was being stirred. Deep was calling unto deep, and the moanings of the sea that made things seem like dark times was coming. The storm, not a new one but the violent rising of the same old elements, began in Congress in the early part of 1854, upon the question of the organization of the territory of “The Platte,” afterwards divided into two Territories called “ Kansas and Nebraska.”
The star of empire was moving Westward, but of what kind should this empire be, of liberty or slavery ? If matters continued as they then were it must be the former. California, stretching along the Pacific coast for two hundred and fifty miles below Mason and Dixon’s line, had declared for freedom through all her borders. The Territories of New Mexico and Utah were not favorable to any great growth of slavery nor capable of rendering it much assistance. Texas, although intensely pro-slavery, yet, by reason of State pride, would not divide her imperial domain into quarters for the benefit of that institution. Only in one direction was expansion and growth possible, and that was in this broad domain which was now asking to be organized into Territories and would soon demand admission as States.
Why should not this magnificent country be opened to the slave owner and his property as well as to the settler from the North ? Was not this his right ? Other factors than property interests have entered into the question. Conscience has been enlisted upon the one side as on the other. The South has come to look upon slavery as having equal rights, under the Constitution, with liberty, and she feels aggrieved that she is not given all the privileges of her fellow-citizens of the North. The only thing that apparently prevented this natural and, as it seemed to her, just expansion, was the Missouri Compromise, which had solemnly guaranteed this whole territory to freedom. Why not repeal this obnoxious measure ? The proposition to do this sprang from Kentucky. The same State which, through its senator, Henry Clay, had been foremost in originally securing the act, now through its senator, Mr. James Dixon, his successor, was the first to ask for its repeal. Unlike as the movement seems, and disowned as it undoubtedly would have been by Mr. Clay, the great projector of the Missouri Compromise, yet in reality the substance of each is the same. In both there is but one design — to placate the slave-power and save the country by attempting to compromise, not diverse interests, but antagonistic principles. They were but separate steps in one path, and that a road towards national perversion, disgrace, and ruin. The guiding star which once shone in the heavens had been lost, and our states men were taking up with a will-o’-the-wisp, born of swamp and miasma, in its place.
Although the project was conceived by the South, it could not have been brought to the birth, much less nourished into strength, had it not been adopted by the North in the person of Stephen A. Douglas, one of the ablest leaders of the Democratic party, a member of the United States Senate, and chairman of the Committee upon Territories. Into the bill for organizing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, which he reported to the Senate in January of 1854, he introduced the proposition to repeal the old Missouri Compromise. The mere proposal was regarded as little less than sacrilege. For thirty years that compromise had been looked upon as a sacred pledge, to be held in the same reverence as the Constitution itself. Scarcely four years before, the mover of the proposition for its repeal had described it as “canonized in the hearts of the American people as a sacred thing which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to disturb.” An attempt to set it aside roused the most intense excitement throughout the whole land, the South in favor, the North opposed. The readiness with which the flame sprang up proved that through these past years of apparent quiet, the fire had been covered but not put out. Now that fresh fuel was added and the draught opened, it blazed up more fiercely than ever. It was not confined to any class or condition.
All of anti-slavery tendencies saw in it an evidence of the settled purpose of the South to nationalize the institution of slavery, and a testimony that it would not scruple to use any means to attain its end.
Moralists saw in it a disregard of most sacred promises, and felt the ground of constitutional fidelity shaking under their feet. More than three thousand clergymen in New England signed a protest against the action proposed.
“ We protest against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise as a great moral wrong ; as a breach of faith, eminently unjust to the moral principles of the community and subversive of all confidence in national engagements; as a measure full of danger to the peace and even the existence of our beloved Union, and exposing us to the righteous judgments of the Almighty.”
Even the mere politician was angry that an issue so repugnant to a majority of the people had been so unwisely precipitated. Nor were his anger and apprehension unwarranted. The storm of popular indignation swept down like a tempest upon the forests, scattering dead leaves, breaking off dead branches, and throwing down trees that had become rotten in trunk or root. Before the end of the year the Democratic party had lost its magnificent majority in Congress, and the Whig party had practically ceased to exist, dishevelled, torn up by the roots, buried by the storm.
During this preliminary contest Henry Ward Beecher is neither indifferent nor silent. In lectures, in special sermons, and in numerous Star Papers he makes his influence felt. In one of Beecher’s Star Paper articles he wrote about the occasion…
“Died in a thicket by crowds of wolves, that only wait for some single taste of blood to plunge in and tear the whole! Unless there is a storm from the people that shall roll like thunder in the mountains ; unless the recreant and graceless herd in Congress shall hear the coming down on many waters, like roaring freshets from mountains on whose tops clouds have burst, there will soon be no more ground to fight for. If anything is to be done it must be done by the North. It must be quickly, loudly, and impetuously done ! There must be an outcry coming up from the bosom of the people, like that which rent the midnight of Egypt when all its first-born were stricken. Let no man wait for his fellow. Let children and women lead and teach sluggish manhood with what energy and soul a voice should be heard for liberty, upon half a continent, like the voice of God when He speaks in storms!
"Let every single man write, 'I solemnly protest against the violation of this promise liberty and the outrage of abolishing the Missouri Compromise '; and as he bears it to the post-office, if he find a fellow to sign it, let him sign ; but if not, let it go as his single protest.
"Let families send solemn protests — the father and mother, the children and hired laborers. Let there be ten thousand petitions from single families within a week at Washington.
"Let churches and congregations unite and send instant petitions.
"In this solemn hour of peril, when all men's hearts sink within them, we have an appeal to those citizens who rebuked us for our fears in 1850.
"Did you not declare that that should be a finality? Did you not say that, by a concession of conscience, we should there after have peace?
"Is this the peace ? Is this the fulfilment of your promise? Is not this the very sequence which we told you would come ? That compromise was a ball of frozen rattlesnakes. You turned them in your hands then with impunity. We warned and be sought. We protested and adjourned. You persisted in bringing them into the dwelling. You laid them down before the fire. Now where are they ? They are crawling all around. Their fangs are striking death into every precious interest of liberty! It is your work!
"In this emergency where are those ministers of the Gospel The Crisis,“ Beecher’s appeals and reproaches go out to all classes :
“ The virtue, the morals, the prosperity of a domain large enough to be an empire has no safeguard about it. Those future States, silent and unpopular, are like so many lambs huddled in a thicket by crowds of wolves, that only wait for some single taste of blood to plunge in and tear the whole ! Unless there is a storm from the people that shall roll like thunder in the mountains ; unless the recreant and graceless herd in Congress shall hear the coming down to many waters, like roaring freshets from mountains on whose tops clouds have burst, there will soon be no more ground to fight for. If anything is to be done it must be done by the North. It must be quickly, loudly, and impetuously done ! There must be an outcry coming up from the bosom of the people, like that which rent the midnight of Egypt when all its first-born were stricken. Let no man wait for his fellow. Let children and women lead and teach sluggish manhood with what energy and soul a voice should be heard for liberty, upon half a continent, like the voice of God when He speaks in storms!
“ In this emergency where are those ministers of the Gospel who have always refused to infuse into the public mind a sound and instructed moral sentiment upon the subject of slavery ? Hitherto you have been silent, because it did not concern the North. We earnestly protested that so deep and dreadful a disease could not prey upon any limb of this nation and not strike its taint and danger through and through the whole body politic. We implored men not to let the first principles of human rights die out of the popular mind ; not to let a gigantic engine of despotism, through its selfish remunerations of commerce, deaden every quick sensibility to justice and bribe to sleep the vigilance of humanity, though every palm should have thrice as many pieces of silver as did he of old.
“The North is both bound and asleep. It is bound with bonds of unlawful compromise ! You, ministers of Christ, held her limbs, while the gaunt and worthy minions of oppression moved about, twisting inextricable cords about her hands and feet ; or, like Saul, stood by, holding the garments of those that slew the martyr ! The poor Northern conscience has been like a fly upon a spider’s web. Her statesmen, and not a few of her ministers, have rolled up the struggling insect, singing fainter and fainter, with webs of sophistry, till it now lies a miserable, helpless victim, and Slavery is crawling up to suck its vital blood!
“ What, then, do you owe to God, to heaven, and to your country, in an effort to regain conscience, liberty, and duty ? God, who searches the heart, knows that it is not in our heart to say these things for the sake of aspersion. We would lie down before you, and let your steps tread our very neck, if you were only marching toward the high ends of our country’s good. But we cannot endure to see noble and venerable ministers of the Gospel first duped and deceived, and made to serve the ends of oppression, and then, when the mighty juggle is detected, stand silent and aghast, as unwilling now to repair as before to prevent the utter misery and eviL
“ But let us not be deceived. Let every man be prepared for a future! If this bill shall be defeated the North will be like a man just dragged out of the rapids above Niagara ! If this bill pass, the North will be like a man whirled in the very wildest rage of the infuriate rapids and making headlong haste toward the awful plunge.
“Does any man believe that there can be peace if this iniquity’ goes forward ? Will the South, with such advantage gained, easily relinquish her grip ? Will the North, betrayed, wounded, and religiously aroused from the very bottom, let slave States come to the door of the Union, from the very territory of which she has been cheated, and bid them enter? Such struggles are before us as we have never seen. The next time the masses, the religious- minded men of the then undivided North, are aroused, standing on no flimsy base of compromise but on the solid foundations of humanity, of natural feeling, of a Northern national feeling springing from a love of liberty, they will not be put to sleep again by any mere pretences of peace. The finality which the South gave was a hollow truce but to give them time to forge their arms and grind their swords. They bribed the North with a lie. The next time the North reaches forth her hand it will scarcely be for gold or silver. There is more danger now of wild collisions than of lying finalities. It will come to that if the foolish counsels of timid men prevail. If civil wars are to be prevented, now is the time ; courage to-day or carnage to-morrow. Firmness will give peace ; trembling will bring war.“
