Missouri becomes a free state

By the 1860s there was a minority in Missouri who wholly opposed slavery. I believe many were people from Germany.

Could Missouri have eventually have decided to end slavery without outside intervention?
 
By the 1860s there was a minority in Missouri who wholly opposed slavery. I believe many were people from Germany.

Could Missouri have eventually have decided to end slavery without outside intervention?

Frankly, I think it wouldn't have been hard at all. In fact, I am still surprised, to this day, that MO ever became a slave state in the first place. :eek:
 
My hunch is that it had a lot to do with who was settling; in a way, it was a little like Kansas 30 years later, except that a lot of Southerners moved there not knowing that they would have a chance to sway which side it would fall on.

If enoutgh Northerners had moved there before, I, too, think they might have been able to avoid it - perhaps with Arkansas Territory getting added into it and two states being created, one free and one slave.

Something was going to be done to try to keep the balance for as long as they could. However, it was only 8 years earlier, before Louisiana was admitted, that there had been 9 years with one more free state than slave state. (1803, Ohio's admission, to Louisiana's in 1812) So, my hunch is that during this time, and even for a few years after, there was acceptance in the South that they didn't *have* to have an equal number.
 
My hunch is that it had a lot to do with who was settling; in a way, it was a little like Kansas 30 years later, except that a lot of Southerners moved there not knowing that they would have a chance to sway which side it would fall on.

If enoutgh Northerners had moved there before, I, too, think they might have been able to avoid it - perhaps with Arkansas Territory getting added into it and two states being created, one free and one slave.

Something was going to be done to try to keep the balance for as long as they could. However, it was only 8 years earlier, before Louisiana was admitted, that there had been 9 years with one more free state than slave state. (1803, Ohio's admission, to Louisiana's in 1812) So, my hunch is that during this time, and even for a few years after, there was acceptance in the South that they didn't *have* to have an equal number.


The best account of the tooings and froings which led to it are in Fehrenbacher's The Dred Scott Case. According to him, the antislavery people missed their chance by wasting time on trying to restrict slavery in the "Orleans Territory" which later became the State of Louisiana. This was, of course, a fight they stood little chance of winning. In his view, had they offered to give in on OT in return for extending the Northwest Ordinance to the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase, they would, in 1804, have stood a good chance of gaining their point.

This would have barred slavery from Missouri, and at least in theory from Arkansas as well. In practice AR would probably have legalised it after attaining Statehood, but MO very likely wouldn't have. This of course means no Bleeding Kansas later on, as the proslavery people there won't have MO as a base of operations.
 
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