No Room for Compromise

In times of great political quagmires, the United States was proficient in preventing conflict by compromise. Eventually by 1860, sectional conflicts were far too evident for reconciliation to prevent. Compromises such as the Missouri Compromise and the Clay’s Compromise Tariff, which proved to be extraordinarily effective in resolving political debates, gradually altered into failure. Such compromises, which concluded in failure, would be the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas- Nebraska Act.

Initially the Missouri Compromise was effective in assuaging emerging predicaments between specified regions. The Compromise of 1820 impeded the sectional crisis between the North and the South, when these two regions were determining the organization of Missouri as a slave state or a free state. Furthermore, the Compromise Tariff was very successful in comparison to later tariffs because it prevented South Carolina from seceding in the Nullification crisis. In addition, several politicians such as Clay believed civil war was likely to come if the compromise did not take effect. Therefore, the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise Tariff temporarily assuaged sectional dilemmas and helped postpone the Civil War that was likely to emerge.

Compromises were mostly temporary, and because sectional crisis increased with the duration of time, compromises were becoming less effective. For example, the Compromise of 1850 was able to temporarily alleviate the sectional tensions but concluded in catastrophic failure. The Compromise of 1850 increased tensions and political disputes by angering both sides, in several of its parts. The annexation of California as a free state angered the South because the South felt California had a great deal of land under the line drawn by the Missouri Compromise. Another part of the Compromise of 1850 which angered the South would be the banning of the slave trade in Washington D.C. The Compromise of 1850 also angered the North because of the Fugitive Slave Law, which allowed there to be bounty hunters to find fugitive slaves and those who were hiding them. The Northerners were strongly opposing the Popular Sovereignty idea that was created by Lewis Cass and was used in the Compromise of 1850. Northerners did not like this because it made northern lands susceptible to slavery. Therefore, the Compromise of 1850 lead to a copious number of dilemmas.

Another major cause to political conflict would be the Kansas and Nebraska Act. The Kansas and Nebraska Act enforced popular sovereignty upon the new territories and faced opposition from the North. Another result from the Nebraska and Kansas Act would be “Bleeding Kansas” or what the northerners believed were the crimes committed against Kansas. This was Missouri’s desperate attempt to force Kansas as a slave state by flocking into Kansas’s territory and voting it as a slave state and attempting to force the Kansas residents to vote it as a slave state. The North were infuriated at the South for this, they believed this was corrupting the voting process. Hence, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a major cause to many political conflicts between the North and the South.

Conclusively, most compromises made between the time periods of 1820 to 1860 increased sectional and political quagmires rather then reduce them. This became particularly truer towards the concluding years of this time frame. The early 1820s and 1830s did contain a few compromises that did help with political disputes. Overall, Americans were forced to accept compromises were not able to resolve political disputes.