Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T23:28:11.933Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - The Constitutional Imaginaries of the Missouri Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2020

Simon J. Gilhooley
Affiliation:
Bard College, New York
Get access

Summary

Missouri’s application for statehood was immediately and universally recognized as a moment of crisis for the Union. The resolution of the crisis would come in the form of a compromise that came to structure antebellum responses to intersectional conflict over slavery until its collapse in the Civil War. But in moving toward this compromise, these congressional debates generated important components of a constitutional imaginary that would be invoked to navigate constitutional debates over slavery in the following decades. Three elements are evident in the congressional debates over Missouri’s admission that provided building blocks for future constitutional development; the notion of a chronological gap between an authoritative founding and the contemporary moment, the idea of compromise, and the deployment of a founding spirit as a basis for deriving constitutional meaning. This chapter traces the complex interactions of these elements within the Missouri debates, showing that while they failed to consolidate into a singular constitutional imaginary they provided the context within which the history discussed in the following chapters unfolded.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Antebellum Origins of the Modern Constitution
Slavery and the Spirit of the American Founding
, pp. 23 - 41
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×