Free states and slave states - how did that work?

Question

Accounts of the build-up to the American Civil War put a lot of weight on the concept of balance between the number of free states and slave states in the union, and various complicated wrangling that was necessary to preserve parity between them, deciding whether newly organized states would be "admitted as slave states" or "admitted as free states". So why did politicians care, when admitting a new state, whether initially to classify it as a slave state or a free state, if the population of that new state would in practical terms have the power to undo that decision anyway?

Answer 1

The issue of admitting new states as free states or slave states goes back to the very foundations of the constitution in which the very first compromise on slavery was made to secure the Union. That is the 3/5ths compromise in which slave-holding states could count their enslaved inhabitants as 3/5ths of the total population leading to an increase in their overall congressional representation. So imagine state's like Virginia which had upwards of 180,000 enslaved people by the early 19th century, they could count each of those slaves as 3/5ths of their total population which greatly increased the number the congressional representatives from those territories. Keep in mind that this did not mean the slaves actually voted or had any rights with relation to their 3/5ths status. This was simply a way of increasing population numbers which determined how many representatives a state was allowed to have in congress. How did this change the balance of power in Washington? In an important way. Southern states were almost guaranteed greater representation through their enslaved inhabitants and thus the term "slave power" arose to reflect what free states saw as the imbalance of congressional power.

Thus, classifying a state as free or enslaved carried with it immediate advantages towards "slave power," in the federal government and not to mention the booming cotton industry in the post revolutionary period. Similarly classifying a state as "free" carried immediate opportunities for counter-acting "slave power" in the federal government and for staving off future votes that would disproportionately benefit slave states. This is why admitting CA as a free state was such a big deal that northern lawmakers agreed to revise the fugitive slave act as part of the compromise of 1850. Among other things, this compromise saw CA admitted as a free state, and in exchange it ensured that fugitive slaves could now be caught and returned to slavery no matter how far north of the Mason-Dixon line they were found. This struck fear in the hearts of fugitive slaves throughout northern territories that had previously been safe havens such as Boston, and Ohio. It sent many others to migrate even further north to Canada in order to avoid recapture. However back to your question, it also wasn't until this 1850 compromise that the political doctrine of "Popular Sovereignty" was adopted which said that people living in a federal territory could and should decide if the territory entered the union as a free or slave state. This is the process you describe in your question. Thus, this practice of letting a state's inhabitants decide its free or slave status was not always in place and in fact only came about after the Mexican American War and as part of a series of failed compromises to respond to what was by all accounts a growing tension over slavery in the Union. It's also important to note that popular sovereignty was far from a magic cure all and in fact it served to bring opposing factions of pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups into direct conflict in states like Kansas where these groups engaged in violent, bloody confrontations that seemed to foreshadow the violence of the civil war.

To further elaborate on your question; when admitting a new state to the union, politicians absolutely cared whether initially to classify it as a slave state or a free state because their were a host of monetary and political, advantages at stake. In some cases these included greater power in congress, in others it was strengthening the economies of slavery namely cotton exports and further fueling industrial expansion in the U.S. and Europe and in others there were sincere moral and ideological conflicts surrounding the disjointed application of slavery that were causing bitter and growing tensions between north and south, free and slave territories, federal rights vs. states rights that all needed to be resolved one day. On top of that enslaved people themselves were caught in a web of geographic uncertainty, as being free in one state did not solidify ones freedom in another territory as proven in the Dred Scott case.

Ironically, popular sovereignty didn't work and the issue of slave vs. free states was in fact decided by the federal government as an indirect outcome of the U.S. Civil War, yet the build up to this started long before 1860 and marked a long and arduous process of trying to solve the question of slavery and the perceived political imbalances posed by "slave power" on a case by case basis that only served to further weaken the union and strengthen animosity between politicians.

Hope this helps, Jamila