While the Missouri Compromise was super-concerned with maintaining the power of the Federal government, it was ultimately about ensuring states' rights.
In fact, the states' rights issue was what people insisted the Missouri Compromise was all about. The drafters transformed what was clearly a slave vs. free state issue into one of federal vs. state power. The history of this struggle in the U.S. is fairly one-sided in favor of the federal government…but here at least the states' rights folks gained some headway.
Questions About States' Rights
- Why was the issue of Missouri's statehood cast in the light of states' rights?
- Do you think the Compromise favored states' rights over federal rights, vice versa, or was fairly balanced?
- Which argument is more compelling: that new states should be subject to Federal oversight, or that new states should have the same right of self-determination as the original thirteen?
- Do the arguments for states' rights still apply today?
Chew on This
While in the short run it seemed that the Missouri Compromise favored the federal government fairly heavily, the precedent for self-determination would later be used by the Supreme Court to rule that the Federal government had no right to interfere with a new state's fundamental right for self-determination.
Despite the ground made by the Missouri Compromise towards securing state rights, this was only a hiccup in the slow and steady march toward a United States in which Federal power would trump state rights in pretty much every way.