The Sectional Feature in American Politics. 
3 
II. 
It would be merely repeating familiar history to describe the frequent 
sectional clashes that ensued down to the eve of secession. Both north and 
south were thoroughly alive to the sectional bearing of every important 
question. Nobody doubts the statesmanship of the Louisiana purchase; 
yet that broad and praiseworthy stroke of patriotism was bitterly misliked 
at the time 1 and the hostility came wholly from New England, jealous of 
the chance for increased prestige which this new territory gave the south. 
The Hartford Convention of 1812, was the culmination of New England’s 
anti-national feeling; open threats to “ cut the connection” with the major 
part of the union and secret plottings to invite Canadian and British alliance 
are evidences of the rampant disunionism there prevalent. The South and 
the West never forgot the disloyalty of New England, during the war of 
1812; and we see the force of reproach which that record had, in Haynes’ 
debate with Webster, twenty years later. That famous debate, and the 
strained relation smoothed by the Missouri compromise in 1820, indicated 
how irrepressible a fact sectionalism had become. 
Up to 1850, we have the phenomenon in our political history, which has 
been spoken of as “ the twin birth of states.” Every additional free state 
was followed by the admission of a slave state in order “ to preserve the 
balance.” The sectional leaders began looking anxiously to the future, 
and as the contest grew in intensity, the south bitterly chided itself for ac¬ 
quiescing in the ordinance of 1787, which forbade slavery in the northwest 
territory, and in the Missouri compromise of 1820, which shut out slavery 
north of the thirty-sixth parallel. The annexation of Texas and the Mexi¬ 
can war were distinctively southern measures, planned by the soured states¬ 
manship of Calhoun, to redress the balance and gi^e the south new room 
for more state-making. The northern Democracy came into the party con¬ 
vention of 1844, with a candidate and a platform adverse to the Texas 
policy of the south; but the south had its way. And at the same time, with 
the deliberate connivance of Calhoun, the United States receded from its 
position in the Oregon dispute with England. The forty-ninth parallel was 
accepted as our north-most boundary instead of 54° 40'; territory sufficient 
to carve out three northern states was needlessly surrendered to Great 
Britain in order to propitiate southern sectionalism. At the end Calhoun 
was badly deceived in the results expected from the Mexican war. These 
results eventually strengthened the free states, and gave them their final 
preponderance in the United States senate. The admission of California 
in 1850, placed the north one state in the lead for the first time since the 
d ays of Washington. The southern leaders began to perceive that the 
1 “Twenty Years of Congress,” by James G. Blaine, ch. 1, p. 14. 
