\ HISTORY

White Man's Burden

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Crisis of Westward Expansion: Slave Labor versus Wage Labor

Crisis of Westward Expansion: Slave Labor versus Wage Labor

Thesis Statement

“The casual bigotry of the early European settlers became a virulent racism in the service of the South's regionalist ideology”.

Summary

As the United States expanded westward, the issue of slavery increasingly polarized the nation. By 1821 all of the northeastern states had abolished slavery. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, carved out of the free Northwest Territory had joined the Union as Free states. In the South, however, the institution of slavery had not only become more entrenched, but had expanded westward to Louisiana and the territories of Missouri and Arkansas. For both ethical and practical reasons, the North wished to prevent legalized slavery from spreading to the rest of the Louisiana Purchase. The South, however, saw any federal limitations on slavery in territories or states as a violation of states' rights and a threat to a system considered essential to the southern economy and way of life (Jordan, 1974).

In 1819 Missouri, a territory that allowed slavery, applied to enter the Union. Since the Union was composed of 11 slave states and 11 Free states, the admission of Missouri would grant the slave states a majority in the Senate. Northern congressmen tried to add an antislavery amendment to the Missouri statehood bill; southern lawmakers objected vehemently. The impasse was resolved with the 1820 Missouri Compromise, an agreement that allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, while Maine entered as a free state. The compromise further prohibited slavery in the unorganized western territories above the latitude of 36 ° 30'. This map shows free and slave states and territories in 1821, after the Missouri Compromise (Jordan, 1974).

Crises of Westward Expansion

In 1619, merely 12 years after the founding of Jamestown, Dutch traders first ...