Document 9.2 Two Opinions on the Missouri Crisis
1819The Missouri Territory’s application for statehood as a free state in 1819 reopened the
debate over the fate of enslaved Americans. Although African Americans and early abo-
litionists sought an end to slavery, the Missouri Crisis forced American policy makers to
face the future of the territories that had been gained in the Louisiana Purchase. In this
excerpt from the US Senate debates over the Missouri Compromise, which temporarily
settled the issue of slavery in the West, senators from New York and Georgia express the
arguments of their respective regions.Senator Rufus King (New York)
The question respecting slavery in the old thirteen States had been decided
and settled before the adoption of the constitution, which grants no power to
Congress to interfere with, or to change what had been previously settled—the
slave States, therefore, are free to continue or to abolish slavery. Since the year
1808 Congress have possessed power to prohibit and have prohibited the fur-
ther migration or importation of slaves into any of the old thirteen States, and
at all times, under the constitution, have had power to prohibit such migration
or importation into any of the new States or territories of the United States.
The constitution contains no express provision respecting slavery in a new
State that may be admitted into the Union; every regulation upon the subject
belongs to the power whose consent is necessary to the formation and admis-
sion of new States into the Union. Congress may, therefore, make it a condition
of the admission of a new State, that slavery shall be for ever prohibited within
the same....Senator Freeman Walker (Georgia)
I cannot but remark, sir, to what lengths arguments might be carried, predicated
upon the supposition of the existence of the power, on the part of congress, to
impose conditions and restrictions.
If you have the authority to impose the one now sought to be imposed, may
you not impose any other? If you have the right to inhibit the introduction of
slaves into the new state, you have a right to inhibit the introduction of any other
species of property. And you may go a step further, and prescribe the manner
in which the soil shall be cultivated. In fine, there is no restriction or condition
whatever, which may not, with equal propriety, be imposed.Rufus King, quoted in Frank Moore, American Eloquence: A Collection of Speeches
and Addresses by the Most Eminent Orators of America (New York: Appleton, 1895), 44;
Freeman Walker, quoted in “Missouri Question,” Niles Weekly Register, February 12,
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