Slavery in the
territories had periodically peaked as an important issue since
the beginning of the American republic. In 1787, Congress
banned slavery in the newly created
Northwest Territory (the area that later became the states of Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin). With slave and free states
numerically even, the
Missouri Compromise of
1820-1821 prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Territory above
the latitude 36° 30' and allowed it below the line. The War
with Mexico (1846-1848) reopened the question of slavery in the
territories because of the large amount of land ceded from
Mexico to the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
The
Compromise of 1850
temporarily settled the
matter when under its terms California entered the Union as a
free state and the new territories of Utah and New Mexico were
opened to slavery on the basis of popular sovereignty—i.e.,
territorial voters were allowed to decide the issue.
The situation changed dramatically in 1854
when the
Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the
1820 Missouri Compromise ban on slavery north of
36° 30' in the lands of the Louisiana Purchase. Thereafter, the
issue of slavery in the territories would be at the center of
angry public debate. The advocates of territories free from
slavery suffered another setback in 1857 when the U. S. Supreme
Court ruled in the
Dred Scott case that
neither territorial governments nor the federal government could
ban slavery in the territories. The issue of slavery in the
territories so divided the Democratic Party that it split into
two factions in 1860, allowing Republican Abraham Lincoln to win
the presidential election.
Having granted emancipation to slaves in
the District of Columbia in April 1862, the
Republican-controlled Congress banned slavery in the current or
any future territories of the United States, and President
Lincoln signed the bill on June 19, 1862. The area included the
future states of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma,
Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, New
Mexico, Arizona, and Alaska.
Emancipation in the territories was
immediate and allocated no federal money either to former
slaveowners as compensation for loss of their property or to
former slaves for colonization abroad. (Those three
aspects—immediacy, no compensation, and no colonization
funds—would be true of the later Thirteenth Amendment, as
well).
Harper’s Weekly columnist, George
William Curtis, credited Republican Congressman
Isaac Arnold of Illinois with drafting and introducing the
legislation into Congress. Curtis noted that the language of
the 1862 act abolishing slavery in the territories reflected the
slavery ban in the 1787 Northwest Ordinance (except the earlier
document included a requirement to return fugitive slaves).
Northwest Ordinance (Article 6), 1787:
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.
Territorial Abolition Act, 1862:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House
of Representatives of the United States of America in
Congress assembled, That from and after the passage of this
act there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude
in any of the Territories of the United States now existing,
or which may at any time hereafter be formed or acquired by
the United States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.
Although the Dred Scott decision
of 1857 denied that Congress had the constitutional
authority to abolish slavery in the territories, President
Lincoln’s appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court protected
the legislation from a potential legal challenge. In 1862,
the president filled three vacancies on the high court,
winning Senate confirmation for Noah Swayne on January 24,
Samuel Miller on July 16, and David Davis on December 8.
Lincoln subsequently won approval for Stephen J. Field
(March 10, 1863) and Salmon P. Chase (December 6, 1864).
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