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The Crittenden Compromise proposed that the United States take the boundary between the slave states and free states that was set by the Missouri Compromise, and basically extended the line to California. The states below the line would be classified as slave states, and those above the line were classified as free states. The compromise also supported slavery in the District of Columbia, and asked for a great deal of suppression of African slave trade. It also stated that Congress would have no power to abolish slavery in states that permitted slave holding, and could not prohibit the transportation of slaves from one slave holding state to another.
The Crittenden Compromise failed in the House of Representatives in January of 1861 by a vote of 113 to 80, and then failed in the Senate in March of 1861 by a vote of 20 to 19. The Missouri Compromise was passed by the United States Congress to end the first of many problems they were faced with, concerning the extension of slavery in new United States territories. In 1819, Alabama was admitted to the United States as a slave state, which made the number of representatives in the United States Senate for free states and slave states equal. Then, in 1820, both Missouri and Maine wanted to be admitted to the United States and there was a debate as to if either of the states would be slave states.
Maine was admitted as a free state, and Missouri was admitted as a state without restrictions on slavery. Instead of Missouri being a free state, it was decided that all the land in the Louisiana Purchase that was north of 36 ^ 030 'N latitude, slavery would be prohibited. This provision was held until 1854, when the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed it. Part of the Crittenden Compromise stemmed directly from the Missouri Compromise.
The line created in the Missouri Compromise was the line that John Crittenden proposed the United States extend to California, in order to make all the states above that line, free states, and all those below, slave states. Unlike the Missouri Compromise however, the Crittenden Compromise placed a lot of focus on laws about slavery in slave states. The Missouri Compromise was only about deciding which states should be free and which should be slave states. The Missouri Compromise was not very fair to both the North and the South. Compared to it, the Crittenden Compromise was fairer because it gave the North and the South an equal amount of land. The North got the land above 36 ^ 030 'N latitude and the South got the land below it.
In the Missouri Compromise, Missouri had no rules against slavery, but was not a slave state, because they were not admitted to the United States as a slave state. In 1848, the United States gained more territory from Mexico, in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which was signed at the end of the Mexican War. After the signing of this treaty, the North and the South began to fight about whether or not the new territories gained by the United States should be slave territories or free territories. Then, California wanted to be admitted to the United States as a free state, which angered the South. Soon, the Senate was debating what to do about the problem of deciding which states that wanted to be admitted to the United States should be free states, and which should be slave states. It was then proposed that the states should decide for themselves upon admittance to the United States whether or not they wanted to be a free or slave state and California was admitted to the United States as a free state.
Like the Crittenden Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, was based on the territories the United States gained out West. The Crittenden Compromise wanted to make all states below the line created by the Missouri Compromise slave states and all those above the line, free states. The Compromise of 1850, however, wanted to let the states choose for themselves upon admittance whether or not they wanted to be a free or slave state. The Crittenden Compromise, was very strict about which states were "North" states and which states were "South" states, whereas in the Compromise of 1850, it did not matter if a slave state fell in "northern territory" or a free state fell in "southern territory." Both the Crittenden Compromise and the Compromise of 1850 were pretty fair to the North and the South. The division between free and slave states had the potential to be equal in the Compromise of 1850, so long as the states voted equally as to those being admitted free and those who were being admitted as slave states. When Abraham Lincoln was President of the United States, the Crittenden Compromise was proposed to him.
Of the two main amendments, the first being guaranteed slavery forever in states where it already existed, and the second being to divide the territories between slavery and freedom. Lincoln, agreed with the first of the amendments, but did not agree with the second. He wrote, "I am inflexible" about the second amendment in one of his private writings. President Lincoln feared that if a division was made between freedom and slavery, that the imperialists would look for more slave territories south of the American border. Because of his objection to this amendment to the Crittenden Compromise, Lincoln advised Republicans in Congress to vote against it.
If James Buchanan had run for and won reelection, the constant fighting between the North and the South about slave states and free states might have been solved peacefully. Buchanan had successfully made peaceful compromises and treaties with both Great Britain and Mexico about land. If he was able to make peaceful compromises with foreign affairs, he might have been able to make one with the internal fighting on the United States. Although he disagreed with slavery, he still thought that it was important to keep it in the states where it had already been instated, and to let new states being admitted to the United States decide whether or not they wanted to be a free or slave state. This way of thinking went right along with the Compromise of 1850 's goal.
When South Carolina succeeded from the United States, Buchanan promised them that no hostile moves would be used to force them back into the United States, which just showed how he tried to keep things peaceful. He might have been able to keep the United States from going to war, had he been reelected President of the United States. If Stephen Douglas had been elected President of the United States, he most likely would have used his idea of "popular sovereignty" to try to keep the North and the South from fighting. He had used this idea when he helped to draft the Compromise of 1850, in which the territories decided for themselves whether or not to be free or slave states. He probably would have used this same idea during the time when the Crittenden Compromise was proposed. He thought that the people could decide for themselves what was best for their state.
Douglas thought that popular sovereignty was the solution to any problem that the United States had, and if popular sovereignty failed, he blamed it on something else. Such as when popular sovereignty failed in Kansas, Stephen Douglas blamed it on the "organized interference of interests outside the territory." John Breckinridge was a firm believer in that federal and local governments had no power to restrict slavery in any part of the United States while it was still in territory status. Had he been elected President of the United States during the time of the Crittenden Compromise, he probably would have let the territories decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to be free or slave states. Then, only after they had obtained statehood, would he enforce slave laws in the states that needed them. He was also a firm believer that succession was a right, and therefore would not have approved with South Carolina's succession from the United States. In order to solve the Crisis of 1861, the United States territories should have been divided into equal pieces, then the United States should have told those territories to divide themselves up equally into slave states and free states as they saw fit.
If they had done this, then there would not have been a majority of slaveholders and non-slaveholders in the United States government, so that would have no longer been an issue that people were becoming upset about. The Free-Soilers would not have been affected by this decision, because supposedly they had all of their slavery issues solved with the Compromise of 1850, which was eleven years before this. In the Know-Nothings, the Southerners had seized control of the group and ordered for maintenance of slavery in it. Had this proposal been adopted, there would have been more equal numbers of Northerners and Southerners in the group. Therefore, this proposal would have made everyone happy, because the deal is not unfair to one group. Often times wars are started over conflicts that could have been solved peacefully, had someone sat down and logically came up with a proposal that was fair to those on both sides of the conflict.
Often times throughout American history, the South was given deals that were unfair to them, and this cause a lot of dissension among them. Had fair deals been given to both the North and the South, the Civil War might not have occurred, but whether that is true or not will never be known. Hopefully the United States government has learned what can happen as a result of proposing deals that are unfair to one side of the opposing groups.
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