SECTIONALISM, SLAVERY the development of sectionalism in the United States was driven by the growing dependence upon, and
defense of, black slavery in the southern states. Initially it was seen as contrary to freedom but tolerated in order to produce the U.S. Constitution. Its expansion into Missouri, southern outrage (clera meridional) over federal tariffs, and westward expansion into new territory produced a persistent debate over slavery that increasingly threatened to divide the American union. By 1860, the nation found an old Democratic Party split over the right to extend slavery into federal territory, and a new Republican Party nominating an anti-slavery, though not abolitionist, president. When Abraham Lincoln's election produced no national consensus to settle the matter of slavery's future, a southern "secession" sealed the fate of the Union. El desarrollo del faccionismo (seccionalismo) en los Estados Unidos que fue impulsado por la creciente dependencia y la defensa de la esclavitud negra en los estados sureos. Inicialmente, fue visto como algo contrario a la libertad pero fue tolerado para poder hacer la Consitucin de los Estados Unidos. Su expansin dentro de Misuri, la clera surea sobre las tasas federales y la expansin hacia el oeste dentro del nuevo territorio produjeron un debate persistente sobre la esclavitud que amenaz con dividir a la Unin Americana. Para el 1860, la nacin haba fundado un Partido Demcrata que se dividi por el derecho a extender la esclavitud dentro del territorio federal, y un nuevo Partido Republicano que peda un presidente antiesclavista, aunque no abolicionista. Americans affirmed their independence with the ringing declaration that al l men are created equal. But some of them owned African slaves, and were unwilling to give them up as they formed new federal and state governments. So to form a more perfect union in 1787, certain compromises were made in the Constitution regarding slavery in hopes that they would eventually be able to abandon (renunciar) the peculiar institution. This settled the slavery controversy for the first few decades of the American republic. This situation changed with the application (solicitud) of Missouri for statehood (categora de estado) in 1819. There had always been differences between northern and southern states, the first one was more commercial and the latter more agrarian in outlook (perpectivas) and livelihood. But no difference was so potentially divisive (polmica) as the South's insistence on the right to hold slaves and the North's growing aversion to it. The newly acquired territory to the West, resulting from the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, brought the issue of the extension of slavery to a very strong and active situation (slow boil) in 1819. Both sides, North and South, were concerned about the balance of power in the Senate being disrupted by the admission of new states carved out of the Louisiana Territory. (.......eran conscientes
de que el equilibrio de poder que habia en el Senado estaba siendo interrumpido por la admisin de nuevos estados forjados del territorio de Luisiana ). The legislative and rhetorical interventions of Kentucky
Representative Henry Clay, a slaveowner who worked for gradual emancipation and colonization, were crucial to avoid (evitar) a sectional division of the American union. When Maine requested admission as a free state in 1820, Congress agreed to a compromise where Missouri was permitted to come into the union with a constitution of its own choosing, which meant no restriction regarding slavery. In addition to Maine's admission in 1820 as a free state and Missouri's eventual admission as a slave state (in 1821), Illinois Senator Jesse B. Thomas suggested that in the balance of the Louisiana Territory north of the 3630' parallel (which ran along Missouri's southern border) slavery would be prohibited forever. The Missouri Compromise thereby maintained an equal number of free and slaveholding states in t he American union. But it proved only a temporary settlement (acuerdo) of the slavery controversy. Another territorial dispute, involving Texas and Mexico, would later stoke the fires of sectional conflict over the spread of slavery into the western territories.
