Slavery and Freedom in the New Republic
1790: In the original 7 free states, slavery has been or is gradually being outlawed (Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Hampshire, New Jersey). But in the original 6 slave states, slavery is entrenched: Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia
The Development of a Slave South
1792-1821: 6 new slave states enter the United States: Kentucky (1792), Tennessee (1796); Louisiana (1812), Mississippi (1817), Alabama (1819), and Missouri (1821)
1787 Northwest Ordinance
Enacted by Congress to regulate the settlement and governements of America’s Northwest Territory (the frontier region extending north of the Ohio River to the Great Lakes and west of Pennsylvania to the Mississippi River), the Northwest ordinance banned slavery throughout the territory. Its sixth article decreed:
“There shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary Servitude in the said territory otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; Provided always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.”
Louisiana Purchase
1803: The United States buys the 830,000 square-mile Louisiana Territory from France for only $15 million, doubling the size of the United States. The Territory is comprised of not only the present day state of Louisiana, but much of the present day Midwest including the entire Mississippi river and the city of St. Louis. Louisiana enters the Union as a slave state in 1812; the status of slavery in the remainder of the Western lands will become controversial.
Acquisition of Florida 1819
1819: Spain sells Florida to the United States, after Andrew Jackson has laid claim to the territory with repeated military incursions.
Missouri Compromise 1821
Slavery became of subject of serious controversy in Congress for the first time in 1819, when Missouri, petitioned to enter the the Union as a slave state. Had Missouri entered then, slave states would have out numbered free states, so many Northerners opposed the admission of Missouri as a slave state. The dispute was resolved, when Maine also petitioned for admission: both state were accepted for admission under the Missouri Compromise of 1821, which also decreeed that all territory north of 36 degrees 30 minutes latitude will be free of slavery. (The Michigan Territory is already free territory under the 1787 Northwest Ordinance.)
Indian Removal 1830s
In 1830 Congress voted funds to enable President Jackson to negotiate treaties for removal of all Indian tribes then living east of the Mississippi River, opening still more land up to slaveholding settlers. Indians who resisted were forced to move (Cherokee Trail of Tears 1838)