Ordinances, Compromises, and Tariffs
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Ordinances
o Ordinances of Discovery
 new Spanish laws—the Ordinances of Discovery—banned
the most brutal military conquests. From that point
on, the Spanish expanded their presence in America
through colonization.
o Ordinance of 1784
 The Ordinance of 1784, based on a proposal by Thomas
Jefferson, divided the western territory into ten
self-governing districts, each of which could
petition Congress for statehood when its population
equaled the number of free inhabitants of the
smallest existing state. The provision reflected the
desire of the Revolutionary generation to avoid
creating second-class citizens in subordinate
territories.
o Ordinance of 1785
 Then, in the Ordinance of 1785, Congress created a
system for surveying and selling the western lands.
The territory north of the Ohio River was to be
surveyed and marked off into neat rectangular
townships, each divided into thirty-six identical
sections. In every township, four sections were to
be set aside for the United States; the revenue from
the sale of one of the other sections was to support
creation of a public school. Sections were to be
sold at auction for no less than one dollar an acre.
 Among the many important results of the Ordinance of
1785 was the establishment of an enduring pattern of
dividing up land for human use. Many such systems
have emerged throughout history. Some have relied on
natural boundaries (rivers, mountains, and other
topographical features). Some have reflected
informal claims of landlords over vast but vaguely
defined territories. Some have rested on random
allocations of acres, to be determined by individual
landholders. But many Enlightenment thinkers began
in the eighteenth century to imagine more precise,
even mathematical, forms of land distribution, which
required both careful surveying and a clear method
for defining boundaries. The result was the method
applied in 1785 in the Northwest Territory, which
came to be known as the grid—the division of land
into carefully measured and evenly divided squares
or rectangles. This pattern of land distribution
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eventually became the norm for much of the land west
of the Appalachians. It also became a model for the
organization of many towns and cities, which
distributed land in geometrical patterns within
rectangular grids defined by streets. Although older
land-distribution systems survive within the United
States, the grid has become the most common form by
which Americans impose human ownership and use on
the landscape.
o Northwest Ordinance
 The original ordinances were highly favorable to
land speculators and less so to ordinary settlers,
many of whom could not afford the price of the land.
Congress compounded the problem by selling much of
the best land to the Ohio and Scioto land companies
before making it available to anyone else. Criticism
of these policies led to the passage in 1787 of
another law governing western settlement—legislation
that became known as the “Northwest Ordinance.” The
1787 Ordinance abandoned the ten districts
established in 1784 and created a single Northwest
Territory out of the lands north of the Ohio; the
territory could eventually be divided into between
three and five territories. It also specified a
population of 60,000 as a minimum for statehood,
guaranteed freedom of religion and the right to
trial by jury to residents of the Northwest, and
prohibited slavery throughout the territory.
o Note: The ordinances of 1784–1787 had produced a series
of border conflicts with Indian tribes resisting white
settlement in what they considered their lands. Although
the United States eventually defeated virtually every
Indian challenge (if often at great cost), it was clear
that the larger question of who was to control the lands
of the West—the United States or the Indian nations—
remained unanswered.
Compromises
o Great Compromise
 Finally, on July 2, the convention agreed to create
a “grand committee,” with a single delegate from
each state (and with Franklin as chairman), to
resolve the disagreements. The committee produced a
proposal that became the basis of the “Great
Compromise.” Its most important achievement was
resolving the difficult problem of representation.
The proposal called for a legislature in which the
states would be represented in the lower house on
the basis of population. Each slave would count as
three-fifths of a free person in determining the
basis for both representation and direct taxation.
(The three-fifths formula was based on the false
assumption that a slave was three-fifths as
productive as a free worker and thus contributed
only three- fifths as much wealth to the state.) The
committee proposed that in the upper house, the
states should be represented equally with two
members apiece. The proposal broke the deadlock. On
July 16, 1787, the convention voted to accept the
compromise.
o Missouri Compromise
 Since the beginning of the republic, partly by
chance and partly by design, new states had come
into the Union more or less in pairs, one from the
North, another from the South. In 1819, there were
eleven free states and eleven slave states; the
admission of Missouri as a “free state” would upset
that balance and increase the political power of the
North over the South. Hence the controversy over
slavery and freedom in Missouri.
 Complicating the Missouri question was the
application of Maine (previously the northern part
of Massachusetts) for admission as a new (and free)
state. Speaker of the House Henry Clay informed
northern members that if they blocked Missouri from
entering the Union as a slave state, southerners
would block the admission of Maine. But Maine
ultimately offered a way out of the impasse, as the
Senate agreed to combine the Maine and Missouri
proposals into a single bill. Maine would be
admitted as a free state, Missouri as a slave state.
Then Senator Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois proposed
an amendment prohibiting slavery in the rest of the
Louisiana Purchase territory north of the southern
boundary of Missouri (the 36°30′ parallel) Congress
adopted the Thomas Amendment.
 Nationalists in both North and South hailed this
settlement—which became known as the Missouri
Compromise—as a happy resolution of a danger to the
Union. But the debate over the bill had revealed a
strong undercurrent of sectionalism that was
competing with—although at the moment failing to
derail—the powerful tides of nationalism.
o “Tariff of Abominations”
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Even more damaging to the administration was its
support for a new tariff on imported goods in 1828.
This measure originated with the demands of
Massachusetts and Rhode Island woolen manufacturers,
who complained that the British were dumping
textiles on the American market at artificially low
prices. But to win support from middle and western
states, the administration had to accept duties on
other items. In the process, it antagonized the
original New England supporters of the bill; the
benefits of protecting their manufactured goods from
foreign competition now had to be weighed against
the prospects of having to pay more for raw
materials. Adams signed the bill, earning the
animosity of southerners, who cursed it as the
“tariff of abominations.”
o Compromise of 1850
 Faced with this mounting crisis, moderates and
unionists spent the winter of 1849–1850 trying to
frame a great compromise. The aging Henry Clay, who
was spearheading the effort, believed that no
compromise could last unless it settled all the
issues in dispute between the sections. As a result,
he took several measures that had been proposed
separately, combined them into a single piece of
legislation, and presented it to the Senate on
January 29, 1850. Among the bill’s provisions were
the admission of California as a free state; the
formation of territorial governments in the rest of
the lands acquired from Mexico, without restrictions
on slavery; the abolition of the slave trade, but
not slavery itself, in the District of Columbia; and
a new and more effective fugitive slave law. These
resolutions launched a debate that raged for seven
months—both in Congress and throughout the nation.
The debate occurred in two phases, the differences
between which revealed much about how American
politics was changing in the 1850s.
 In the first phase of the debate, the dominant
voices in Congress were those of old men—national
leaders who still remembered Jefferson, Adams, and
other founders—who argued for or against the
compromise on the basis of broad ideals. Clay
himself, seventy-three years old in 1850, appealed
to shared national sentiments of nationalism. Early
in March, another of the older leaders—John C.
Calhoun, sixty-eight years old and so ill that he
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had to sit grimly in his seat while a colleague read
his speech for him—joined the debate. He insisted
that the North grant the South equal rights in the
territories, that it agree to observe the laws
concerning fugitive slaves, that it cease attacking
slavery, and that it amend the Constitution to
create dual presidents, one from the North and one
from the South, each with a veto. Calhoun was making
radical demands that had no chance of passage. But
like Clay, he was offering what he considered a
comprehensive, permanent solution to the sectional
problem that would, he believed, save the Union.
After Calhoun came the third of the elder statesmen,
sixty-eight-year-old Daniel Webster, one of the
great orators of his time. Still nourishing
presidential ambitions, he delivered an eloquent
address in the Senate, trying to rally northern
moderates to support Clay’s compromise.
But in July, after six months of this impassioned,
nationalistic debate, Congress defeated the Clay
proposal. And with that, the controversy moved into
its second phase, in which a very different cast of
characters predominated. Clay, ill and tired, left
Washington to spend the summer resting in the
mountains. Calhoun had died even before the vote in
July. And Webster accepted a new appointment as
secretary of state, thus removing himself from the
Senate and from the debate.
In place of these leaders, a new, younger group now
emerged. One spokesman was William H. Seward of New
York, forty nine years old, a wily political
operator who staunchly opposed the proposed
compromise. The ideals of union were to him less
important than the issue of eliminating slavery.
Another was Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, fortytwo years old, a representative of the new, cotton
South. To him, the slavery issue was less one of
principles and ideals than one of economic selfinterest. Most important of all, there was Stephen
A. Douglas, a thirty seven-year-old Democratic
senator from Illinois. A westerne rfrom a rapidly
growing state, he was an open spokesman for the
economic needs of his section—and especially for the
construction of railroads. His was a career devoted
not to any broad national goals but to sectional
gain and personal self-promotion.
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The new leaders of the Senate were able, as the old
leaders had not been, to produce a compromise. One
spur to the compromise was the disappearance of the
most powerful obstacle to it: the president. Zachary
Taylor had been adamant that only after California
and possibly New Mexico were admitted as states
could other measures be discussed. But on July 9,
1850, Taylor suddenly died—the victim of a violent
stomach disorder. He was succeeded by Millard
Fillmore of New York—a dull, handsome, dignified man
who understood the political importance of
flexibility. He supported the compromise and used
his powers of persuasion to swing northern Whigs
into line.
 The new leaders also benefited from their own
pragmatic tactics. Douglas’s first step, after the
departure of Clay, was to break up the “omnibus
bill” that Clay had envisioned as a great,
comprehensive solution to the sectional crisis and
to introduce instead a series of separate measures
to be voted on one by one. Thus representatives of
different sections could support those elements of
the compromise they liked and oppose those they did
not. Douglas also gained support with complicated
backroom deals linking the compromise to such nonideological matters as the sale of government bonds
and the construction of railroads. As a result of
his efforts, by mid-September Congress had enacted
and the president had signed all the components of
the compromise.
 The Compromise of 1850, unlike the Missouri
Compromise thirty years before, was not a product of
widespread agreement on common national ideals. It
was, rather, a victory of bargaining and selfinterest. Still, members of Congress hailed the
measure as a triumph of statesmanship; and Millard
Fillmore, signing it, called it a just settlement of
the sectional problem, “in its character final and
irrevocable.”
o Crittenden Compromise
 Gradually, compromise forces gathered behind a
proposal first submitted by Senator John J.
Crittenden of Kentucky and known as the Crittenden
Compromise. It called for several constitutional
amendments, which would guarantee the permanent
existence of slavery in the slave states and would
satisfy Southern demands on such issues as fugitive
slaves and slavery in the District of Columbia. But
the heart of Crittenden’s plan was a proposal to
reestablish the Missouri Compromise line in all
present and future territory of the United States:
Slavery would be prohibited north of the line and
permitted south of it. The remaining Southerners in
the Senate seemed willing to accept the plan, but
the Republicans were not. The compromise would have
required the Republicans to abandon their most
fundamental position: that slavery not be allowed to
expand.
o Compromise of 1877
 Behind the resolution of the deadlock, however, lay
a series of elaborate compromises among leaders of
both parties. When a Democratic filibuster
threatened to derail the commission’s report,
Republican Senate leaders met secretly with Southern
Democratic leaders to work out terms by which the
Democrats would allow the election of Hayes.
According to traditional accounts, Republicans and
Southern Democrats met at Washington’s Wormley
Hotel. In return for a Republican pledge that Hayes
would withdraw the last federal troops from the
South, thus permitting the overthrow of the last
Republican governments there, the Southerners agreed
to abandon the filibuster.
 Actually, the story behind the “Compromise of 1877”
is more complex. Hayes was already on record
favoring withdrawal of the troops, so Republicans
needed to off er more than that if they hoped for
Democratic support. The real agreement, the one that
won over the Southern Democrats, was reached well
before the Wormley meeting. As the price of their
cooperation, the Southern Democrats (among them some
former Whigs) exacted several pledges from the
Republicans in addition to withdrawal of the troops:
the appointment of at least one Southerner to the
Hayes cabinet, control of federal patronage in their
areas, generous internal improvements, and federal
aid for the Texas and Pacific Railroad. Many
powerful Southern Democrats supported
industrializing their region. They believed
Republican programs of federal support for business
would aid the South more than the states’ rights
policies of the Democrats.
o Atlanta Compromise

In a famous speech in Georgia in 1895, Booker T.
Washington outlined a philosophy of race relations
that became widely known as the Atlanta Compromise.
“The wisest among my race understand,” he said,
“that the agitation of questions of social equality
is the extremest folly.” Rather, blacks should
engage in “severe and constant struggle” for
economic gains; for, as he explained, “no race that
has anything to contribute to the markets of the
world is long in any degree ostracized.” If African
Americans were ever to win the rights and privileges
of citizenship, they must first show that they were
“prepared for the exercise of these privileges.”
Washington offered a powerful challenge to those
whites who wanted to discourage African Americans
from acquiring an education or winning any economic
gains. He helped awaken the interest of a new
generation to the possibilities for self-advancement
through self- improvement. But his message was also
an implicit promise that African Americans would not
overtly challenge the system of segregation that
whites were then in the process of erecting.
o Tariffs
 McKinley Tariff
 Representative William McKinley of Ohio and
Senator Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island
drafted the highest protective measure ever
proposed to Congress. Known as the McKinley
Tariff , it became law in October 1890. But
Republican leaders apparently misinterpreted
public sentiment. The party suffered a stunning
reversal in the 1890 congressional election.
The Republicans’ substantial Senate majority
was slashed to 8; in the House, the party
retained only 88 of the 323 seats. McKinley
himself was among those who went down in
defeat. Nor were the Republicans able to
recover in the course of the next two years.
 Wilson-Gorman Tariff
 Again, he supported a tariff reduction, which
the House approved but the Senate weakened.
Cleveland denounced the result but allowed it
to become law as the Wilson-Gorman Tariff . It
included only very modest reductions.
 Dingley Tariff
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Within weeks of McKinley’s inauguration, the
administration won approval of the Dingley
Tariff , raising duties to the highest point in
American history.
Payne-Aldrich Tariff
 Taft’s first problem arose in the opening
months of the new administration, when he
called Congress into special session to lower
protective tariff rates, an old progressive
demand. But the president made no effort to
overcome the opposition of the congressional
Old Guard, arguing that to do so would violate
the constitutional doctrine of separation of
powers. The result was the feeble Payne-Aldrich
Tariff , which reduced tariff rates scarcely at
all and in some areas raised them. Progressives
resented the president’s passivity.
Underwood-Simmons Tariff
 Wilson’s first triumph as president was the
fulfillment of an old Democratic (and
progressive) goal: a substantial lowering of
the protective tariff . The Underwood-Simmons
Tariff provided cuts substantial enough,
progressives believed, to introduce real
competition into American markets and thus to
help break the power of trusts.
Smoot-Hawley Tariff
 This spreading financial crisis was accompanied
by a dramatic contraction of international
trade, precipitated in part by the Smoot-Hawley
Tariff in the United States, which established
the highest import duties in history and
stifled much global commerce.
Hawley-Smoot Tariff
 Hoover attempted to protect American farmers
from international competition by raising
agricultural tariff s. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff
of 1930 increased protection on seventy-five
farm products. But the Hawley-Smoot Tariff
ultimately helped American farmers
significantly. The tariff, on the contrary,
harmed the agricultural economy by stifling
exports of food.