It was a mere accident that the line drawn by Mason and Dixon between Pennsylvania and Maryland became known in later years as the dividing line between slavery and freedom.The six States south of that line ultimately neglected or refused to abolish slavery, while the seven Northern States became free.Vermont became a State in 1791 and Kentucky in 1792.The third State to be added to the original thirteen was Tennessee in 1796.At that time, counting the States as they were finally classified, eight were destined to be slave and eight free.Ohio entered the Union as a State in 1802, thus giving to the free States a majority of one.The balance, however, was restored in 1812 by the admission of Louisiana as a slave State.The admission of Indiana in 1816on the one side and of Mississippi in 1817 on the other still maintained the balance: ten free States stood against ten slave States.During the next two years Illinois and Alabama were admitted, making twenty-two States in all, still evenly divided.
The ordinance for the government of the territory north of the Ohio River, passed in 1787 and reenacted by Congress after the adoption of the Constitution, proved to be an act of great significance in its relation to the limitation of slavery.By this ordinance slavery was forever prohibited in the Northwest Territory.In the territory south of the Ohio River slavery became permanently established.The river, therefore, became an extension of the original Mason and Dixon's Line with the new meaning attached: it became a division between free and slave territory.
It was apparently at first a mere matter of chance that a balance was struck between the two losses of States.While Virginia remained a slave State, it was natural that slavery should extend into Kentucky, which had been a part of Virginia.Likewise Tennessee, being a part of North Carolina, became slave territory.When these two Territories became slave States, the equal division began.There was yet an abundance of territory both north and south to be taken into the Union and, without any special plan or agitation, States were admitted in pairs, one free and the other slave.In the meantime there was distinctly developed the idea of the possible or probable permanence of slavery in the South and of a rivalry or even a future conflict between the two sections.
When in 1819 Missouri applied for admission to the Union with a state constitution permitting slavery, there was a prolonged debate over the whole question, not only in Congress but throughout the entire country.North and South were distinctly pitted against each other with rival systems of labor.The following year Congress passed a law providing for the admission of Missouri, but, to restore the balance, Maine was separated from Massachusetts and was admitted to the Union as a State.It was further enacted that slavery should be forever prohibited from all territory of the United States north of the parallel 36degrees 30', that is, north of the southern boundary of Missouri.
It is this part of the act which is known as the Missouri Compromise.It was accepted as a permanent limitation of the institution of slavery.By this act Mason and Dixon's Line was extended through the Louisiana Purchase.As the western boundary was then defined, slavery could still be extended into Arkansas and into a part of what is now Oklahoma, while a great empire to the northwest was reserved for the formation of free States.
Arkansas became a slave State in 1836 and Michigan was admitted as a free State in the following year.
With the admission of Arkansas and Michigan, thirteen slave States were balanced by a like number of free States.The South still had Florida, which would in time become a slave State.
Against this single Territory there was an immense region to the northwest, equal in area to all the slave States combined, which, according to the Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise, had been consecrated to freedom.Foreseeing this condition, a few Southern planters began a movement for the extension of territory to the south and west immediately after the adoption of the Missouri Compromise.When Arkansas was admitted in 1836, there was a prospect of the immediate annexation of Texas as a slave State.This did not take place until nine years later, but the propaganda, the object of which was the extension of slave territory, could not be maintained by those Who contended that slavery was a curse to the country.Virginia, therefore, and other border slave States, as they became committed to the policy of expansion, ceased to tolerate official public utterances against slavery.
Three more or less clearly defined sections appear in the later development of the crusade.These are the New England States, the Middle States, and the States south of North Carolina and Tennessee.In New England, few negroes were ever held as slaves, and the institution disappeared during the first years of the Republic.The inhabitants had little experience arising from actual contact with slavery.When slavery disappeared from New England and before there had been developed in the country at large a national feeling of responsibility for its continued existence, interest in the subject declined.For twenty years previous to the founding of Garrison's Liberator in 1831, organized abolition movements had been almost unknown in New England.In various ways the people were isolated, separated from contact with slavery.Their knowledge of this subject of discussion was academic, theoretical, acquired at second-hand.
