PART 2: THE DIVERGENCE AND ITS INFLUENCE.
III: THE NEW BREED: THE PROMISE OF A NEW AMERICAN CHARACTER ON THE FRONTIER
The Rising World: Westward Expansion as the Founding of a New Civilization
As we have seen, the goal of Frontier settlement was to expand, not escape, American society and civilization.
The settlers hoped to acquire, secure, improve and integrate new lands into either their native states or the United States as a whole. They hoped to improve their own lot in life and standing in society. They desired order, religion, culture and law of the Anglo-American kind and imposed it wherever and as soon as they could.
The new societies saw themselves as a new founding generation of the American ideal and way of life.
For this reason, while Washington, Adams and Franklin were all admired as great men in the original states, it was in the Midwest where they achieved their godlike stature, since their actions in founding a new republic was an example of of the act in which the settlers of Ohio, Illinois and Missouri were engaged, to found a whole new society based on inherited principles upon lands which were truly new to them.
It is here that the identification between the Country - that is, the land and the people inhabiting it - became synonymous with the Republic or the Union - the political order prevailing over the land. It is here that the term Country was applied to the entire territory of the Union (previously, One may speak, for instance, of the "Ohio country" or "the country of Vermont" being separate parts of the United States).
But the United States was not just to be a Country but indeed, almost a world unto itself, a civilization with only tenuous connection to the Old World, importing and perfecting the good without being infected by the bad.
This was not a new dream, as the Revolutionary ballads often proclaimed:
"A Rising world shall sing of us / a thousand years to come / And tell our children's children / of the wonders we have done."
("Fair Thee Well Ye Sweethearts", Revolutionary Ballad, Anonymous)
"Torn out of world of tyrants / Beneath this Western Sky /
We found a new dominion /
A land of Liberty"
("Free America", Early Revolutionary Ballad, by Maj. Gen. Dr. Joseph Warren, fell in Bunker Hill, June 17 1775)
On the Nature of the Gods: American Style
For this new civilization rising out of the Frontiers, the Old World was a distant memory.
The Founding Generation had replaced the Medieval and the Ancient figures of political myth. George III replaced William the Conqueror, Franklin replaced Cato, Caesar was not only reviled, but forgotten, except as an allusion to the supposed ambition of this politician or another.
The models of the emerging American public morality were no longer the Ancient Philosophers, the Medieval kings, or the 17th Century English Parliamentarians but the enlightened group of statesmen who won the American Revolution and created the American Constitution.
Their virtues of honor, bravery, moderation and temperate disposition were praised and put upon a pedestal. The new gods were beneficent, wise, smiling and indulgent like grandparents. But they were also lofty and imposing, as righteous and pure as the avenging angels of the Lord, as demanding of Virtue and sorrowful in face of Corruption as the prophets of Israel.
Of course, this image was far from accurate, but it was not wrong either.
It was the image of the Founders as they truly were at a particular point, some for longer than others.
John Adams, just like Cicero, could be petty and censorious; Thomas Paine had a complicated relationship with the rest of the Founding Fathers due to his radicalism; Thomas Jefferson almost certainly had one with his slave (and half-sister in law), Sally Hemmings. But viewed through their actions during the Founding period and their framing and fortification of the Constitution, these men appeared as they truly were at that time - as heroes worthy of adoration and emulation, their flaws and peculiarities fading to insignificance.
This America, this fresh, new and vibrant Civilization that was born on the Frontier, was divided in two, between the North and the parts of the Frontier that were influenced by it and the South and those territories that emulated it.
It is not inaccurate to say that much of the experience of the Frontier as we had so far described it was very similar everywhere and that it produced similar attitudes and characteristic in the new territories and states:
Reverence to the Law but less so for lawyers.
Bellicose dispositions tampered by the need to rely on One's neighbors.
A passion for One's property and a conviction in One's right to hold on to it and to be able to climb in the world.
A suspicion of the established Eastern Coast with boiling patriotism for One's own state and of the Nation as a whole.
A roiling, boiling, burning religiosity untied to a single domineering Church.
But what we failed to account for, so far, was one particular institution that had split the Frontier and the Nation in twain: Slavery.
IV: THE DIVISION: SLAVERY AND ABOLITION IN THE WEST
Am I Not a Man and a Brother? The First Abolition of Slavery
Slavery had split the nation at least four ways: Between the Slave, the Free, and the Slaver, as well as between supporters of Slavery of all three groups and the adherents of the Abolitionist movement, which was growing rapidly.
The Abolitionist movement had a long history in the United States. The first moves against Slavery go back to the beginning of the 18th century (Judge Samuel Sewall's "The Selling of Joseph" was published in 1700 AD and became a best seller in Massachusetts) and beyond.
While no state had abolished slavery before the Declaration of Independence, the newly created state of Vermont had declared in its 1777 Constitution:
That all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent, and unalienable rights, amongst which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
Therefore, no male person, born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person, as a servant, slave, or apprentice, after he arrives to the age of twenty-one years; nor female, in like manner, after she arrives to the age of eighteen years, unless they are bound by their own consent, after they arrive to such age, or bound by law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like.
(1777 Constitution of the Republic of Vermont, Chapter 1: "A Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the State of Vermont" Sec. I)
But Vermont was always a radical state - after all the next section shrines the authority of the government to subject private property for public use, as long as it pays for it. Other states had a longer and more torturous route towards abolition. Massachusetts had found out in 1783 that it abolished slavery by entering the following preamble to its 1780 Constitution:
"All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness."
(1780 Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Part I "A Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts" Article I).
The 1780 Constitution, including the preamble, was written by the crafty and shrewd John Adams, who was a known opponent of Slavery ("No One's Master, No One's Slave" was one of the election slogans spread by his supporters during the elections of 1800).
Disguised as a mere flourish to tie the new State-Constitution to the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble had dealt a death blow to slavery in the state and set free the 2.2% of Massachusettsans, previously held in bondage.
This was achieved by the lawsuit of Elizabeth "Mumbet" Freeman.
She was represented by the brilliant lawyer, Theodore Sedgewick. Lawsuits by slaves demanding their freedom on various grounds were not a new phenomenon - at this point, law firms had submitted suits to courts for 30 years in the name of their slave clients, but no provision in the law existed before for a general abolition until 1780.
I find it hard to believe that John Adams, himself a celebrated lawyer who was well informed of all the coming and going in the courts of his native state, did not knew what he did when he created exactly the provision which anti-slavery lawyers were looking for for such a long time.
The outcome of these processes was that initially, Westward Expansion of American Civilization had left Slavery behind. The "Institution" has been on the backfoot, or so it seemed.
Even Southerners were embarrassed into acquiescing to the Sixth (and final) Article of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance, proclaiming:
Art. 6. There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.
Be it ordained by the authority aforesaid, That the resolutions of the 23rd of April, 1784, relative to the subject of this ordinance, be, and the same are hereby repealed and declared null and void.
Done by the United States, in Congress assembled, the 13th day of July, in the year of our Lord 1787, and of their sovereignty and independence the twelfth
(1787 Northwest Ordinance, Art. 6)
This document, which was otherwise adopted to create the basis of the government of all future American territories, would have sealed the fate of Slavery West of the Appalachians - the West shall be a land of free, equal and industrious yeomen, quite to the liking of Thomas Jefferson, the great champion of Agrarian Democracy.
Betrayal: The Southwest Ordinance and its Abuse.
In April 1796, the Kingdom of Spain had agreed to cede the northern part of "West Florida" to the State of Georgia, thus ending the long dispute over the correct interpretation of the Treaty of Madrid.
Due to a massive fraud committed by the governor of Georgia, it was agreed that the territory, which was already settled by Georgians and other Southerners, was to be ceded to the tender ministration of the newly formed Federal Government. They were placed underthe brief Southwest Ordinance of 1790, originally issued to administer territories ceded by North Carolina, confirming:
… That the territory of the United States, south of the river Ohio, for the purposes of temporary government, shall be one district; the inhabitants of which shall enjoy all the privileges, benefits and advantages, set forth in the Ordinance of the late Congress, for the government of the territory of the United States, north-west of the river Ohio;
And the government of the said territory, South of the Ohio, shall be similar to that which is now exercised in the territory north-west of the Ohio; except so far as is otherwise provided in the conditions expressed in an Act of Congress of the present session, entitled, “An Act to accept a cession of the claims of the State of North Carolina, to a certain district of western territory".
… And be it further enacted, That the salaries of the Officers, which the President of the United States shall nominate, and with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoint by virtue of this Act, shall be the same as those, by law established, of similar Officers in the government north-west of the river Ohio. And the powers, duties, and emoluments of a Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Southern department, shall be united with those of the Governor.
Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg Speaker of the House of Representatives. John Adams, Vice President of the United States, and President of the Senate. Approved May 26, 1790 G. Washington President of the United States
The Northwest Ordinance, as we may recall, had abolished Slavery in the territories of the United States.
Since the Southwest Ordinance deferred to her elder sister in all things and promised to all the inhabitant of the new territory the same "privileges, benefits and advantages" promised in it, it follows that slaves brought over to it by their masters were now free.
But while this would have been the accurate interpretation of the Law, there was no way to enforce it.
There were precious little slaves in Ohio to begin with and therefore the United States Government did not have to worry the passage of the original Ordinance would force it to take up the task of freeing any slaves. The territories of Alabama and Mississippi, on the other hand, were awash with slaves and slavers, the latter accustomed to North Carolinian and Georgian planting life and intent on establishing themselves as a new planer class in the deep, rich soil of the new territories.
So the issue was let slide. A quite agreement was reached that "inhabitants" meant the free, non-Indian inhabitants of the Southwest territories, not their slaves. So was the legal foundation laid to the new, style of "Down River" Plantation systemin the new Deep South, the dread and scourge of thousands of human beings.
The fear of being "Sold Down River", a fate so horrid and gruesome it is used even in modern American idiom as an example of despicable treachery and wrong, was useful to Slavers throughout the Union.
Slaves employed as manservants, secretaries or abused in secret shame, just as those who worked the fields of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, knew that their masters had a weapon more gruesome than the overseer's whip at hand - that they can be send into a hands of even crueler masters, even less forgiving climate, and work more exacting and ruinous than anything they have experienced before.
Much was written of Southern apologia of Slavery portraying an idealized version of it to dupes and ignoramuses in the North.
What is often forgotten is that even this idyll was a fanciful version of the Upper South. The Deep South was not idolized - on the contrary, rumors were intentionally circulated of the myriad horrors of this Earthly Hell, the final destination of disobedient slaves.
This was not the first time such devices have been used - during the Colonial era, it was common for both English and French masters to threaten their slaves with shipment to the Caribbean Sugar plantation - a virtual death sentence.
American Independence severed the Imperial Connections between the American mainland and the Caribbean islands.
Shipping of slaves between them fell first under the British and then the American ban on the International Slave Trade there was a short respite coinciding with the first wave of American Abolition of Slavery.
The value of Slaves as a speculative asset plummeted with the loss of the most lucrative and active Slave exchange market in the World.
The value of slaves as a holding asset, collateral and actual source of free labor also fell as slaves were more prone to escape North, where there was a fair chance to find sympathetic souls and authorities to shelter them as emancipated members of society and the Slavers had lost their best source of intimidation.
The development of the Mississippi territories as slave states regressed the situation to pre-Revolutionary conditions.
While less lethal than the Caribbean Plantations of old, the Deep South cotton plantations were always in need for more slave labor to use and abuse, and as long as Slavery was not abolished, it was not only perfectly legal to conduct "Droves" of slaves between two slave-states.
A Pact with Hell: The Federal Crisis of the 1810s
Only in the power of the Federal Government alone to intervene in or halt this "Interstate Commerce".
While the loose interpretation of the Southwest Ordinance had given Slavery 4 more senators, the explicit language of Article 6 of the Northwest Ordinance had yielded a fresh crop of 3 Free States (without finishing the partition of the entire territory!) before 1820.
At this point, the Slave States numbered 10 in total (together with Louisiana) and the Free States - or those about to become free-states- 11. That meant that the Senate of the United States was divided 22-20 in favor of Freedom, and New Jersey had a growing abolitionist movement, albeit it won't join the side of Liberty for 27 more years.
The application of the Northwest Ordinance to territories further west, or even the completing of the division of the Old Northwest Territory to States (not to mention , a more honest construction of the Southwest Ordinance), would guarantee the side of freedom the power to regulate and restrict the slave trade, making slaves unprofitable as a trading or collateral asset- a role which the debt-addicted South needed them to fill even more than the exploitation of their unrequited labor.
The Slavers needed a way to carry Slavery out west, to erect at least as many Slave States as the number of Free States planted. They required two things for this purpose: Land and Legal Justification.
The first was acquired in one of the greatest achievements of the Jefferson Presidency, a full decade prior: the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The vagaries and expenses of War forced the French Empire to seek some quick cash and the British Blockade made its American territories as useless as, in the immortal words of John Adams, they were "on the Moon". It is not surprising therefore that they were more than willing to sell the territory at a rate of less than 3 cents per acre, to the grand total of $15,000,000.
Slavery in Louisiana was old, as old as the colonial presence governed by the French "Codes Noir", which were introduced there in the reign of Louis XIV. It meant that while Slavery in Louisiana was legally more cognizant of the Slave's personhood than in the Anglo-American slave states, it was more entrenched.
Thus abolishing Slavery in Louisiana proper (or the Orleans Territory as it was called for a time) was not a project the Federal Government was interested in nor one it found itself capable of undertaking. Trouble began to rise when dealing with the northern, more sparsely populated portion of the purchase, in particular the land known as Upper Louisiana or later, the State of Missouri.
As thin as the existing settlement was prior to the purchase, the inhabitants, whether French, Spanish or Anglo-American, were sensitive to the existing order in their land.
In particular, they were fearful of the supplanting of the Civil Law (that is, Continental European Law based on Roman Law) by the English Common Law prevalent in the United States. Not only was there a desire for legal continuity (and suspicion of the Common Law system) and of being dominated and subsumed by neighboring Anglophonic states, but also a concern to preserve Slavery, whose development in the Louisiana country both the French and Spanish government permitted and encouraged. A further concern was the status of Spanish and French land-grants, which the new territorial government intended to declare null and void.
These anxieties reached a boiling point when Congress had placed the organization of the government of the Territory under the authority of the governor of the neighboring Indiana Territory, a largely Anglophonic, Common Law, Free Territory, W. M. Harrison, and certain judges from Indiana.
This had caused the settlers to convene an assembely in St. Louis in September 1804, which concluded its deliberations by issuing a memorial and a petition to Congress, calls:
" 1. For the repeal of the Act erecting Louisiana into two territories , and providing for the temporary Government thereof .
2. That legal steps should be immediately taken for the permanent division of Louisiana .
3. That a Governor , Secretary and Judges should be appointed by the President , who shall reside in the District of Louisiana , and hold property therein to the same amount as is prescribed by Ordinance respecting the territory North West of the river Ohio .
4. That the Governor , Secretary and Judges to be thus appointed for the District of Louisiana , should in preference be chosen from among those who speak both the English and French languages .
5. That the records of each county , and the proceedings of the courts of Justice in the District of Louisiana , should be kept and had in both the English and French languages as it is the case in a neighboring country under a monarchial Government and acquired by conquest .
6. That supposing the District of Louisiana to be divided into five counties... which said members shall jointly with the Governor form the legislative council of the said District of Louisiana .
7. That Congress would acknowledge the principle of our being entitled , in virtue of the treaty , to the free possession of slaves , and to the right of importing slaves into the District of Louisiana under such restrictions as to Congress , in their wisdom , will appear necessary .
8. That Congress , taking into consideration the distance at which we live from the seat of the General Government , which does not allow the General Government to be informed with respect to the true interests of this country , but through the agents of that same government , - Congress should enact a law authorizing this District of Louisiana to send an agent or delegate to Congress whose powers as to speaking and voting in the House , Congress may circumscribe as to them may seem proper .
9. That funds be appropriated for the support , and lands set apart , or bought , for the building and maintaining of a French and English school in each county , and for the building of a seminary of learning , where not only the French and the English languages , but likewise the dead languages , mathematics , mechanics , natural and moral philosophy , and the principles of the Constitution of the United States should be taught ; independent of the obligation of spreading knowledge , upon which alone a free Government can stand , in a country till now unacquainted with your laws and languages , a powerful additional interest will result , in the opinion of Congress , from teaching principally mathematics and natural philosophy , when your Honorable Houses reflect that Louisiana abounds with mines of every description , which can never be worked to any advantage without powerful engines supplied by those two sciences .
10. That every private engagement conformable to the laws of Spain , entered into during the time Louisiana was ruled by the Laws of Spain , shall be maintained .
11. That any judgment which was considered as final , according to the Spanish law , shall not be revised by any of the tribunals to be established in Louisiana by the United States .
12. That any judgment from which an appeal might be had , according to the Spanish law , to any superior tribunal , may be appealed from , to a tribunal of equal dignity within this territory , or the United States , and that a final judgment be had conformably to the Laws of Louisiana at the time the suits were first brought into the court . "
If we take notice to section 7, we see that Slavery was one of the chief concerns of the petitioners.
Since in the words of Gov. Harrison (in a letter of introduction he gave one of the participants in the Convention, one Auguste Choteau), "Nine tenths of the people of the country" were "warmly attached to the Government of the United States" and since the inhabitants did not threaten revolt (the entire document reads as an incredibly pro-Union statement, the petitioners asking to be governed on their own terms), Congress had no compunctions in granting them their petition and even employing some its better points in drafting Organic Acts for new Louisiana Purchase Territories.
Thus, when Missouri had petitioned Congress in 1819 to enter the Union, it desired to do so as a Slave State.
The Missouri Compromise and the End of the Era of Good Feelings
When the Bill proposing to accept Missouri into the Union came before Congress early in 1819, it was predicted to smoothly sail through the process and be written into Law with dispatch.
As a matter of fact, most legislative issues have had smooth sailing. 19 years after the end of the last Federalist Presidency (the unhappy, single term administration of John Adams), Seven years after the War of 1812 and five years the disastrous Hartford Convention, the Republican-Democrats didn't just have the upper hand, they had a monopoly on power.
To be called a Federalist meant to be considered not just an oligarch, a crypto-monarchist and a bribe-monger. The Hartford Convention added a whiff of Treason to the mix and the Republican-Democratic party, eager to shift public attention from the myriad diplomatic and military disasters which led the country to the brink of ruin, was extremely efficient of making as much hay as possible from the Convention's supposed entertaining of the idea of secession.
No matter that the delegates of the Convention outright refused to even mentioned such a possibility.
No matter that the demands in the Resolutions of the Convention were utterly reasonable and well within the bounds of the Amendment process described in the Constitution.
No matter that these demands can be summed as merely to grant states a more free hand in their own defense in case Federal forces failed to do so (which to a large degree, they were!).
Only one of the two parties could have emerged alive from the struggle which the War of 1812 had ushered, and the Republican-Democrats were adamant that they shall not be on the losing side.
Thus was ushered in the Era of Good Feelings, when only one party had survived as a national player. Even certain Federalists found it expendient to run as Republican-Democrats and the West was solidly on the Republican-Democratic side, even more unanimously than the East.
On that sleepy session in Congress, it was not one of those former Federalists, but a man born and bred in the bosom of the Republican-Democratic Party, Representative James Talmadge of New York, that shattered the Era of Good Feelings forever.
Born 2 years after the Declaration of Independence, Mr. Tallmadge was the son of a Revolutionary Colonel of volunteers, one Col. James Tallmadge Sr. He studied the Law in Providence, Rhode Island and Politicsunder the tutelage of Georfe Clinton, the great Republican-Democrat governor of New York.
His credentials as a loyal party man were impeccable. Serving with honor in the War of 1812, no one could accuse him of harboring any sympathies to the Hartford Convention. Elected in a special election as a safe, reliable replacement to a representative-elect who died before he could take office, he had defended Andrew Jackson and the Seminole War, a good Republican-Democratic cause.
And yet it was this man, this partisan, this safe-and-sound Republican-Democrat who had stood for principle on in February 1819, proposing "the following proviso":
And provided, that the further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been fully convicted; and that all children born within the said State, after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be free at the age of twenty-five years.
The peace and backroom deals of the Era of Good Feelings were over. The divisions between North and South, East and West, North-West and South-West tore open in a session of screaming matches, protests and thinly threads of violence. Mr. Scott, the representative of the proposed State of Missouri had the temerity to speak about the fate of Caesar and the Ides of March. Rep. Cobb of Georgia plainly said that only Oceans of Blood could extinguish the Fires which had been kindled, supposedly, by Tallmadge's proposed amendment.
Tallmadge was not a man to take such insolence towards the Nation he spent his entire life serving go unanswered - by the very people seeking admission to it! - in his February 19th Speech he roared:
"Sir, if the dissolution of the Union must take place, let it be! If civil war, which gentlemen so much threaten, let it come! My hold on life is probably as frail as that of any man who now hears me; but, while that hold lasts, it shall be devoted to the service of my country - to the freedom of man. If blood is necessary to extinguish any fire which I have assisted to kindle, I can assure gentlemen, while I regret the necessity, I shall not forbear to contribute my mite.
… I know the will of my constituents, and, regardless of consequences, I will avow it; as their representative, I will proclaim their hatred to slavery in every shape; as their representative, here I hold my stand; until this floor, with the Constitution of my country which supports it shall sink beneath me. If I am doomed to fall, I shall at least have the painful consolation to believe that I fall as a fragment, in the ruins of my country."
This is just a short excerpt out of one of the longest, bravest, most coherent and brilliant examples of American oratory. Tallmadge examines his early attempts to compromise with the Slavers, just a day ago, and the moderation of his amendment. He dismantles their arguments from precedence and the Constitution, he ridicules their bravado and empty threats. He exposes them as empty, shallow, cruel and lawless men. He shows them in their true light as domestic enemies and traitors worse than the Hartford delegates, as self serving as they have ever accused the old Federalists of being.
The year-long struggle over the issue of Slavery in Missouri deserves its own essay. Suffice it to say that this fight, which involved all the talent and vigor of the American Polity, was ended by the two most prominent legislators of the age: One of the last of the Founding Fathers (and of the Federalists in high office), Senator Rufus King of New York, and the Great Compromiser of Kentucky, Republican-Democrat Henry Clay.
The compromise was simple: the Northeastern part of Massachusetts shall conclude its secession and would be admitted into the Union as the State of Maine. In addition:
"… Be it further enacted. That in all that territory ceded by France to the United States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, not included within the limits of the state, contemplated by this act, slavery and involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the parties shall have been duly convicted, shall be, and is hereby, forever prohibited: Provided always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labour or service is lawfully claimed, in any state or territory of the United States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labour or service as aforesaid."
The Union was saved. But not the Republican-Democratic dominion- not even the Party itself.
It was now made clear that the three great sections of the Country - North, South and West - have each their own interests and political inclinations, almost divorced from the old ideological divisions between Federalists and Republican-Democrats. The South and North voted as distinct blocks on the issue, the few remaining Federalists voting with their Northern brethren, the West have been divided. For instance, all of Kentucky's 3 representatives had joined the other Southern Slave-States in rejecting the Tallmadge Amendment in 1819, but 2 of them proceeded to vote with the Northern representatives in the vote to approve the amended bill - which the South, together with their fellow Kentuckian - rejected. Rep. Barber of Ohio consistently voted with the North. Mr. McLean of Illinois- with the South.
This division and instability reflected the division which Slavery had inflicted upon the West.
While the North and South have been coherent sections of the Country since Colonial times, and the abolition of Slavery in one and its preservation in the other merely strengthened this coherence, the West have been divided by this issue and its essential character have become conflicted. The Slave States leaned to the South in character and politics, the Free States towards the North, but neither lost entirely its identity as part of the West, distinguished separate from the Eastern section towards which it inclined with all the peculiar attitudes common to the successors of the settlers of the Old Frontier.
For better or worse, the West had come into its own and was to play the most crucial role in the coming decades, known as the Ante Bellum Period.
In this period, Westerners would create the three most influential political parties in American History, two of which dominate American politics to this very day, supply the United States with soldiers, legislators, writers and presidents, one of which would face another Westerner in America's bloodiest armed conflict.
But for now, peace was saved, and within the bounds of the Missouri Compromise (and its emended version known as "the Second Missouri Compromise") the Nation could expand Westwards, content, while unhappy, to let the wound of Slavery fester under this bandage.
(To Be Continued)