More northern resistance to the Platte Purchase

Map_of_Missouri_highlighting_the_Platt_Purchase.gif


I am slightly puzzled that there was not more northern resistance to the Platte Purchase, which was a clear violation of the Missouri Compromise enacted only a decade and a half earlier:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platte_Purchase

True, the area looks tiny on a map of the US, and was probably regarded as a minor tidying-up of Missouri's borders. Yet it did add to Missouri territory--almost as large as the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined--that was supposed to be "forever free." And slavery, though it would never be as strong as in some other areas of Missouri, would come to have more than a nominal existence in the Platte Purchase counties--especially in the southern counties, above all Platte County:

"According to United States' Slave Schedules for the six counties of northwest Missouri, the Platte Purchase region contained 4589 slaves in 1850. By far the majority of these slaves were found in the southern portion of the region, specifically in the counties of Andrew, Buchanan, and Platte (Table 1). Of the total slave population in 1850, 2798, or 61 percent, were located in Platte County alone. The three counties combined accounted for over 93 percent of all slaves found in the region.

"Overall, as a percentage of the total population in the Platte Purchase region, slaves comprised 9.7 percent of the population (Table 2). Again, Andrew, Buchanan, and Platte Counties led the way. Of the total number of Platte County inhabitants in 1850, 16.6 percent of those were slave, followed by Buchanan County with 7.0 percent and Andrew County with 6.8 percent. None of the remaining three counties in the Platte region contained a slave population of more than 4.0 percent of its total population...

"The three counties, Andrew, Buchanan, and Platte, with the highest production of labor-intensive commodities, such as tobacco and hemp, and the highest percent of improved land, also had the highest number of slaves..." http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1116&context=nebanthro

Yet northern antislavery forces seem not to have made any fuss about the Purchase. Of course I realize that the abolitionists were a small minority in the North, that they were often mobbed, etc. But even moderate anti-slavery men, though they were prepared to tolerate slavery where it was already established, might, one would think, object to this expansion of it. Yet I don't see any evidence of such an objection--either from abolitionists or more moderate antislavery forces--at the time. (Perhaps this just shows that the idea of an expansionist "slave power" did not yet have widespread acceptance in the North--it took first the Texas annexation controversy and then the Wilmot Proviso controversy to popularize it. Yet even in the mid-1830's abolitionists were warning of the pro-slavery implications of the Texas Revolution and accusing the US government of conniving with the Texans.) Besides, there were two other possible sources of objection: (1) from the opponents of Indian removal (who no doubt were weakened after losing their battle with Andrew Jackson, but that doesn't mean that they weren't still a force in Congress); and (2) from those who would oppose making Missouri, one of the largest states in the Union, still larger. Maybe Horace Greeley was right in 1860 when he said the reason the bill met with so little opposition was that it was enacted "so quietly as hardly to attract attention." https://books.google.com/books?id=i3o_CwF21l4C&pg=PA31 (Greeley also noted that it was largely from the Platte Purchase counties that the "Border Ruffian" incursions into Kansas were launched.)

If there had been more resistance, might that not have in turn produced an earlier movement in the South for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise? If the resistance had somehow succeeded, would we now see St. Joseph, Kansas? (Incidentally, there was actually some talk in 1855 of Missouri ceding the Platte Purchase to Kansas Territory to assure the triumph of the pro-slavery forces there!)

Another thought: Could slavery have been extended to what is now eastern Kansas without repeal of the Missouri Compromise in the same way as it was extended to the Platte Purchase territory? Just buy eastern Kansas from the Indians and then cede it to Missouri. Much of the area was similar in climate and soil to parts of western Missouri which had a considerable amount of slavery. Slaves could certainly have been used in the production of hemp, as they were in Missouri. Of course this particular way of expanding slavery would not create any new senators for the South--but until California was admitted as a free state, there seemed no urgent need for additional slave-state senators. The best time to attempt this would be within a few years of the Platte Purchase, before the North was too worked up by the thought of slavery expansion. Even then, it would doubtless run into more opposition than the Platte Purchase did.

BTW, without the six Platte Purchase counties (Platte, Buchanan, Andrew, Nodaway, Holt, and Atchison), John McCain would have lost Missouri to Barack Obama in 2008. [1] (Yes, of course I'm totally ignoring the butterfly and ripple effects of a no-Platte-Purchase timeline.) I'll have to look up if the Platte Purchase might have changed the results of other close presidential races in Missouri--e.g., Stevenson's very narrow victory over Eisenhower in that state in 1956.

[1] The figures from the World Almanac 2012:

Obama McCain

Andrew 3,345 5,279
Atchison 1,000 1,936
Buchanan 19,164 19,110
Holt 802 1,794
Nodaway 4,493 5,568
Platte 21,459 24,460
------ ------
50,263 58,147

So McCain's approximately 8,000 vote majority in the Platte Purchase more than accounts for his approximately 4,000 vote victory margin in Missouri.
 
Last edited:
Top