Jackson's inauguration in 1829 closes this period, as it ends the time during which a disruption of the Union by the peaceable withdrawal of any State was even possi ble. The party which had made State sovereignty its bulwark in 1798 was now in control of the Government again; but Jackson's proclamation in his first term, in which he warned South Caro lina that "disunion by armed force is treason," and that blood must flow if the laws were resisted, speaks a very different tone from the ,speculations of Jefferson on possible future divisions of the United States. Even the sudden attempt of South Carolina to exercise independent action shows that some interest depend ent upon State sovereignty had taken alarm at the drift of events, and was anxious to lodge a claim to the right before it should slip from its fingers for ever.
When the vast territory of Louisiana was acquired in 1803 the new owner found slavery already established there. Congress tacitly ratified existing law by taking no action; slavery continued legal, and spread further through the territory; and the State of Louisiana entered as a slave State in 1812. The next State to be carved out of the territory was Missouri, admitted in 1821. A territory, on applying for admission as a State, brings a Constitution for inspection by Congress ; and when it was found that the new State of Missouri proposed to recognize and continue slavery, a vigorous opposition spread through the North and West, and carried most of the senators and representatives from those sections with it. In the House of Representatives these two sec tions had a greatly superior number of members; but, as the num ber of Northern and Southern States had been kept about equal, the compact Southern vote, with one or two Northern allies, gen erally retained control of the Senate. Admitted by the Senate and rejected by the House, Missouri's application hung suspended for two years until it was successful by the admission of Maine, a balancing Northern State, and by the following arrangement, known as the Missouri Compromise of 1820 : Missouri was to enter as a slave State ; slavery was forever prohibited throughout the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of lat. 36° 36', the main southern boundary of Missouri; and, though nothing was said of the territory south of the compromise line, it was understood that any State formed out of it was to be a slave State, if it so wished. Arkansas entered under this provision in 1836.
The question of slavery was thus set at rest for the present, though a few agitators were roused to more zealous opposition to the essence of slavery itself. In the next decade these agitators succeeded only in the conversion of a few recruits, but these re cruits were the ones who took up the work at the opening of the next period. It is plain now, however, that North and South had already drifted so far apart as to form two sections, and it became evident during the next forty years that the wants and desires of these two sections were so divergent that it was impossible for one Government to make satisfactory laws for both.
The vast flood of human beings which had been pouring westward for years had now pretty well occu pied the territory east of the Mississippi, while, on the west side of that stream, it still showed a disposition to hold to the river valleys. The settled area had increased from 240,000sq.m. in 1790 to 633,000sq.m. in 1830, with an average of 20.3 persons to the sq. mile. There was still a great deal of Indian territory in the Southern States of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, for the Southern Indians were among the finest of their race; they had become semi-civilized, and were formidable antagonists to the encroaching white race. The States interested had begun preparations for their forcible removal, in public defiance of the attempts of the Federal Government to protect the Indians (1827) ; but the removal was not completed until 1835. In the North, Wisconsin and Michigan, with the northern halves of Illi nois and Indiana, were still very thinly settled, but everything indicated early increase of population. The first lake steamboat, the "Walk-in-the-Water," had appeared at Detroit in 1818, and the opening of thee Erie canal in 1825 added more vessels.
The land system of the United States had much to do with the early development of the West. From the first settlement, the universally recognized rule had been that of absolute individ ual property in land, with its corollary of unrestricted competitive or "rack" rents; and this rule was accepted fully in the national land system. The public lands were to be divided into "hundreds" each ten miles square and containing ioo mile-square plots. The hundred was called a "township," and was afterwards reduced to six miles square, of 36 mile-square plots of 64oac. each. From time to time principal meridians and east and west base lines have been run, and townships have been determined by their relations to these lines. The price fixed in i 790 as a minimum was $2 per ac.; in 182o it was reduced to $1.25 per ac.; it has tended to decrease, and no effort has ever been made to gain a revenue from it. When the nation acquired its western territory it secured its title to the soil, and always made it a fundamental condition of the admission of a new State that it should not tax United States lands. To compensate the new States for the freedom of unsold public lands from taxation, one township in each 36 was reserved to them for educational purposes; and the excellent public school systems of the Western States have been founded on this provision. The cost of obtaining a quarter section (I6oac.), under the still later homestead system of granting lands to actual settlers, came to be only about $26 to cover fees for filing claim and granting title; the interest on this, at 6%, represents an annual rent of one cent per acre—making this, says F. A. Walker, as nearly as possible the "no-rent land" of the economists.