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Trent Owens
Mr. Adye
AP US History
1 April 2014
The Compromises That Saved America
Throughout American history there have been many times when our leaders needed to
make compromises in order to keep peace and order in the nation. The compromise of 1790 was
one of the most important deals made in American history. It resulted in a new location for our
nations capital that has remained for over two centuries. It also satisfied the states with differing
opinions about the financial situation of the nation at that time. The Missouri Compromise of
1820 was also important in keeping peace among the states. It set the precedent for how to deal
with the issue of slavery in the new territories of the United States. By 1850 friction was
building between the North and South that, yet again, called for a compromise to be made. This
time multiple concessions were made in order to keep the nation together. The three
compromises that stand out as paramount in keeping the country united were the compromises of
1790, 1820 and 1850.
In the Compromise of 1790 two main issues were addressed. The first was the issue of
where the nations capital would be located. The southern states wanted the capital to be in a
slave state so that the north would be less likely to object to slavery. They proposed a site along
the Potomac River. This would be in a southern state and have ready access to transportation.
Naturally, the northern states preferred to leave the capital in a northern state such as New York,
where it was located at the time (The Compromise of 1790).

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The second issue focused on in the Compromise of 1790 was that of the federal
assumption of the States debts. This plan was proposed by Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary
of the Treasury. The assumption of debts meant that the federal government would take
responsibility for the balance remaining on the States debts. These debts were incurred by the
states during the Revolutionary War (The Compromise of 1790). Some states opposed the
assumption of debt because they had already paid most of their debts. They felt that assumption
would be a reward to the states that had not paid their debts and a punishment to those states who
had taken responsibility for their own debts. James Madison, Congressman from Virginia, led the
opposition. The states opposed included Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. The
states that strongly supported the measure were Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Connecticut.
Some states were uncommitted on the issue. These were New Hampshire, New York, New
Jersey, and Delaware. Pennsylvania was considered the swing state that had the potential to
decide the outcome (Cooke).
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson arranged a private dinner at his residence on June 20,
1790 for Hamilton and Madison to discuss the issues with the hope that they would reach a
resolution (Cooke). Rather than trying to have a major effect on the outcome of the discussion,
Jefferson acted as a mediator and simply tried to make sure that a solution was decided upon by
the two men. By the end of the dinner, Madison had agreed to support Hamiltons plan.
Hamilton had agreed to persuade members of Congress to locate the capital on the Potomac. As
a result of this dinner meeting two acts were approved in congress later that year (Ellis 48-49).
The first, known as the Residence Act, was officially titled "An Act for Establishing the
Temporary and Permanent Seat of the Government of the United States." It was passed on July
16, 1790. It mandated that the permanent capital of the United States would be called

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Washington, D.C. and be located at a site chosen along the Potomac River. This satisfied the
Souths desire to have the capital in a slave holding area of the country. To allow time for this
new capital to be developed, Philadelphia was named the temporary capital for a ten year period
(The Library of Congress).
The second, known as the Funding Act, was officially titled An Act Making Provision
for the Debt of the United States. Passed on August 4, 1790, this act called for the assumption
of state debts by the federal government (The Library of Congress). This satisfied Hamilton and
his economic plan.
The Missouri Compromise, in 1820, was concerned with slavery as it applies to new
states to be added to the Union. In 1819 Missouri applied for statehood. Senator Tallmadge from
Illinois proposed an amendment to gradually eradicate slavery in Missouri. The slaves already
there would remain slaves, but no new slaves could be brought into the state. Also, the children
born of slaves in Missouri would be free at age twenty-five. Southerners were opposed to this
arrangement. To the land owners of the South, the institution of slavery was considered to be an
economic necessity. According to Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, If we lose [our slaves],
the value of the lands they cultivate will be [lowered] and the annual income of at least forty
millions of dollars will be lost. Pinckney also warned that the opposition to slavery by the north
could lead to civil war (Altman 67).
The issue that the North had with adding Missouri as a slave state was that it would break
the balance of power in the Senate. With Missouri accepted as a slave state there would be one
more slave state than free states, giving the majority in the Senate to the slave states (Altman 68).
The Speaker of the House, Henry Clay from Kentucky, was a slave owner but believed slavery
was morally wrong. He believed in gradual emancipation of slaves and relocation to Africa. In

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1820 Maine applied for statehood as a free state. Clay linked Missouri and Maine together to
keep the number of senators from the North and South equal (Remini, Henry Clay 181-183).
The issue remained, however, that the Northerners did not want to allow slavery in any part of
the Louisiana Territory. Illinois Senator Jesse B. Thomas proposed a solution to this problem.
He said that the territory should be divided geographically at 3630 north latitude. In Thomass
solution, the only slavery allowed above this line in the Louisiana territory would be in Missouri.
Below the line new states could decide for themselves whether to be free or slave states. Thomas
presented his idea to Henry Clay (Altman 68). Clay presented this plan together with his
compromise of admitting both Maine and Missouri and congress approved the measure on
February 16, 1820 (Remini, Henry Clay 183).
The Compromise of 1850 was a set of compromises that solved many issues threatening
to create major conflict between the North and the South. Following the war with Mexico there
were again issues about slavery in the new territories acquired from Mexico. There were also
questions about where the border for Texas should be and the large amount of debt that Texas
had incurred during the war with Mexico. On the other side of the country in Washington, D.C.
there were problems involving whether to allow slave trade to continue in the Nations capital.
The South was also in favor of a new Fugitive Slave Law that would actually be enforced
(Remini, At the Edge 67).
Henry Clay saw that, for any of these issues to be resolved, they would have to be
presented together in a package. His package contained eight resolutions. The first was that
California would enter the Union as a free state. The second was that in the New Mexico and
Utah territories the issue of slavery would be left up to the people. The third resolution set the
boundary of Texas where it had been, and did not give it any land from New Mexico. The fourth

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provided that the Federal government would assume the war debt of Texas. The fifth part of the
Clays package said that slavery would still be allowed in Washington, D.C. but according to the
sixth resolution there would be no slave trade in the capital. A Fugitive Slave Law, which would
require citizens in the North to return runaway slaves to their owner in the South, was the
seventh resolution. The last resolution in Clays package was that Congress would not try to
regulate slave trade among the states (Remini, At the Edge 75-77).
Clays proposal was debated in Congress for months. On July 9, President Zachary
Taylor, who had been unwilling to budge on the issues, died of food poisoning. Millard Fillmore
became president and he was much more willing to compromise and the measure was approved
in September (Compromise of 1850). Citizens both in the North and the South were optimistic
that these new compromises would keep the Union together.
All three of these great compromises in American history have several things in common.
One of these is that they all were linked to the issue of slavery. The Compromise of 1790
involved slavery indirectly because of the reasoning by the South for wanting the capital to be in
a southern state. They wanted this because they felt that having the capital in a state that allowed
slavery would help protect the institution of slavery in America. The Missouri Compromise was
about keeping an equal balance between free and slave states in the country. It also set the
standard for how to deal with the issue of slavery in new territories and states. The Compromise
of 1850 extended the procedure for deciding the question of slavery in the new areas of the
country. It also sought to limit slavery and the slave trade, which is especially shown in the
resolutions that deal with the Washington, D.C. area.
All three of the compromises were to work out problems between the northern states and
the southern states. From the beginning of our country there were major differences between the

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philosophy of the people in the North and the South. Every thirty years when these differences
led to tension between the states, a compromise was made to avert a national crisis. This tactic
worked for many decades until finally, the friction between the North and the South became so
great that a compromise was no longer enough to keep a division of the country from occurring.
Ten years after the last compromise, South Carolina became the first state to formally secede
from the Union. Over the next year, ten more states followed. This represents the beginning of
the Civil War that the compromises had been postponing for the previous seventy years.

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Works Cited
Altman, Linda Jacobs. "Missouri and the Westward Expansion." The Politics of Slavery: Fiery
National Debates Fueled by the Slave Economy. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2004. N.
pag. Print.
"The Compromise of 1790." First Federal Congress: The Compromise of 1790. The George
Washington University, 1999. Web. 29 Mar. 2014.
<http://www.gwu.edu/~ffcp/exhibit/p14/index.html>.
"The Compromise of 1850." Ushistory.org. Independence Hall Association, n.d. Web. 27 Mar.
2014. <http://www.ushistory.org/us/30d.asp>.
Cooke, Jacob E. "The Compromise of 1790." The William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 27.4
(1970): 523-45. JSTOR. Web. 29 Mar. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1919703>.
Ellis, Joseph J. "The Dinner." Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. 1st ed. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. 48-80. Print.
The Library of Congress: Primary Documents in American History. The Library of Congress,
n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. <http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/>.
Remini, Robert V. At the Edge of the Precipice: Henry Clay and the Compromise That Saved the
Union. New York: Basic, 2010. Print.
Remini, Robert V. "The Great Compromiser." Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union. New York:
W.W. Norton, 1991. N. pag. Print.