The Missouri Controversy and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America (review)

Abstract

The Missouri Controversy and Its Aftermath: Slavery and Meaning of America. By Robert Pierce Forbes. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Pp. 384. Map. Cloth, $45.00.)Reviewed by John Craig HammondHow did white Americans move from their post-Revolutionary consensus concerning evil of slavery and sanguine expectations of its rapid demise to their Jacksonian-era rejection of abolitionism and acquiescence in institution as ineradicable and not incompatible with principles of Union? (2). The Missouri Controversy and Its Aftermath only begins to address this important question. According to Robert Pierce Forbes, Missouri Controversy made slavery's future central political of 1820s. A decade of political conflicts over slavery ended only with Martin Van Buren's deliberate creation of Second Party System, which expressly served the mutual goal of slaveholders to defend slavery from attack and of Democratic leaders to mobilize slaveholders as political bloc (8). By 1830s, Van Buren and Democratic Party had pulled off one of great ideological coups in American history: They redefined meaning of both slavery and America by creating new, conservative narrative of American history that protected slavery by denying its significance and by placing any criticism of it beyond reproach.Forbes begins his account with controversial claim that James Monroe entered presidency intent on strengthening bonds of union through internal improvements and reform, including a radical campaign to eliminate slavery and African presence from American life (15). Like many other white Americans, Monroe was committed to program of compensated emancipation and forced removal that would eradicate slavery from progressive, reform-minded, postwar America. When set against undeniable growth of slavery after 1815, this broad reformist, nationalist, and antislavery agenda set stage for Missouri Controversy that began in 1819.Thus, when New York Congressmen James Tallmadge proposed restrictions on Missouri slavery, simple question of Missouri statehood immediately became a referendum on meaning of slavery in America (43). Forbes provides detailed survey of sectional positions for and against restrictions, along with political, partisan, and ideological considerations that informed them. Northerners expressed their opposition to slavery on variety of pragmatic, constitutional, ideological, and political grounds. Though southerners found themselves on defensive, most remained reluctant to articulate or embrace positive good defense of slavery. Ultimately, Missouri Crises and Compromises would lead to two ominous developments. At once rendering slavery more racial and racism more national (119), they demonstrated that issue of slavery could not be discussed publicly without exposing unbreachable fissures in Union, and thus, to preserve Union, nothing should be said about slavery at all (120). It would take moderate antislavery white Americans over decade to learn this lesson.In Forbes's analysis, political conflict in 1820s involved struggles between three groups seeking to determine slavery's future. Led by James Monroe, Henry clay, and John Quincy Adams, reformers and nationalists remained committed to federally sponsored program of emancipation and removal. Historians tend to dismiss colonization, but Forbes ties it to other issues, explaining why it fired imagination of reformers and nationalists through 1820s. The tariff and sale of domain could finance compensated emancipation of slaves as well as building of canals. Monroe's amalgamation of parties would allow nationalists to build broad coalitions of voters and politicians to support improvement and progress. The economic stagnation of slavery in Upper South made whites there open to proposals for compensated emancipation and removal, while skeptical Upper South politicians might support emancipation if it came with promise of federal funding for new road or canal through their district. …