Our speaker, Dick Swanson said that if you focus on just the years 1861 to 1865 you are missing a lot about the history of the period and the causes of the war. “If you think politics is a mess today . . . you would be shocked with all that was going on back then,” he said. e story begins with the Missouri Compromise of 1820 where Missouri was allowed to enter the Union as a slave state and Maine, split off from Massachusetts, entered as a free state, thus preserving the balance between free and slave states. e source of Dick’s talk is the book, America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise at Preserved the Union by Fergus Bordewich (2012). e big guns in politics between 1820 and 1850 were Henry Clay of Kentucky, John Calhoun of South Carolina and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts. Stephen Douglas and Jefferson Davis in�uenced events in the 1850s and 1860s. In 1819 there was a threat of secession because of the differences about slavery and tariffs. e south felt that the north would not �ght over a secession movement and the north felt the south was just bluffing about leaving the Union. Missouri came in as a slave state but north of the border that had been previously agreed to where slavery would not be allowed. is did not sit well with the north. In 1824, Andrew Jackson was selected by the House of Representatives as the next president over John Quincy Adams, because neither had received a majority of the electoral votes in the election. Henry Clay as the Speaker of the House, swung the votes to Jackson. He was soon appointed as Secretary of State, an office that is often a stepping stone to becoming president. From 1828 to 1832 Jackson had to deal with the nulli�cation crisis, whereby some states, notably South Carolina, insisted they would just ignore federal laws with which they did not agree. Calhoun threatened to secede but Jackson made him back down, even though Jackson was a southern slaveholder. e south felt their in�uence in national affairs was waning, although they had dominated national politics thanks to the three-�fths rule. Slaves could be counted as part of a state’s population, but could not vote. So slaveholding states had disproportionate representation. For example, in 1833, they had 98 representatives in Congress but would have had only 73 without the three-�fths rule. One historian estimated that if the south did not have this advantage, omas Jefferson would not have been elected and slavery would have been excluded from Missouri. e Compromise of 1850 was a package of �ve bills, passed e Compromise of 1850 forestalled the Civil War SEPTEMBER 2012 www.centralmassroundtable.org Worcester County Spotlight Union and Confederate armies are marching to Worcester’s Green Hill Park for a Living History Reenactment October 13 and 14, 2012 Hosted by the New England Brigade and the Liberty Greys. Website: greenhillcivilwar.tripod.com Continued on page 3. Test Thyself. See Page 2 Next Meeting - Sept. 26, 7 PM, Holden Senior Center Special Guest, battle�eld nurse and founder of the Red Cross, Oxford Massachusetts native, Clara Barton Dick Swanson of Holden, an avid historian of the Civil War and a voracious reader, has been an active member of the CWRT of CM for over 20 years. Dick’s father served in the military during WWI and WWII. After serving in New Guinea he was discharged as a major and resumed his job as an industrial arts teacher.