The Art and Science of Compromise
“ A government held together by bands of reason only, requires much compromise of opinion, that things even salutary not be crammed down the throats of dissenting brethren, especially when they may be put into form to be willingly swallowed, and that a great deal of indulgence is necessary...”
The Idea
“I see too many proofs of the imperfection of human reason to entertain wonder or intolerance at any difference of opinion on any subject; and acquiesce in that difference as easily as on a difference of feature or form: experience having taught me the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together, for any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can, when we cannot do all we would wish.”
- Thomas Jefferson, 1803
Thomas Jefferson recognized the need for compromise, both as a means to build consensus for a more perfect union and as a means to defer to the future resolving issues that could break the country apart.
-
“Congress proceeded the same day to consider the Declaration of Independence, which had been reported and lain on the table the Friday preceding, and on Monday referred to a committee of the whole. The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many. For this reason, those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offence. The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others. The debates, having taken up the greater parts of the 2d, 3d, and 4th days of July, were, on the evening of the last, closed; the Declaration was reported by the committee, agreed to by the House, and signed by every member present, except Mr. Dickinson. As the sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also, I will state the form of the Declaration as originally reported … “He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”" - Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821
-
In this speech from 1852, Frederick Douglass illuminates the stark paradox of living as an enslaved person in the land of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
The Constitution: The Great Compromise
The creation of the U.S. Constitution involved many compromises to satisfy the competing interests of the individual states. With the smaller, less populous states fearing their interests would be crushed by the larger more populous states, the issue of representation proved to be the most difficult issue to resolve. What came to be known as the “Connecticut Plan” resulted in a compromise giving equal representation for the states in the Senate and proportional representation for the states in the House of Representatives.
-
Edward M. Kennedy Institute interpreter Mitch Carolan answers the question: What is The Great Compromise?
-
The Center for Civic Engagement hosts Dean Scott Casper of the University of Maryland on the Great Compromise and Madison's criticism of it.
-
James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay promote adoption of the U.S. Constitution's (then) radical ideas in The Federalist Papers
The Jefferson-Hamilton Compromise of 1790
Years after Jefferson agreed to the federal government assuming the Revolutionary War debts of the individual states in exchange for Hamilton agreeing to establish the District of Columbia as the national capital, Jefferson claimed their compromise was one of his worst political decisions.
"I thought it impossible that reasonable men, consulting together coolly, could fail, by some mutual sacrifices, of opinion, to form a compromise which was to save the union."
Spotlight: "A fire bell in the night"
Sometimes a compromise solves the problem at hand but it becomes something future generations must tackle. The Missouri Compromise divided the United States at parallel 36°30′ north, forbidding slavery to the north but allowing slavery to the south. Jefferson predicted the Missouri Compromise was like "a fire bell in the night" that would eventually lead to civil war.
The Missouri Compromise and its Legacy
-
Admitting new states to join the union: Slave or Free?
-
The National Association of Scholars asks: What is the legacy of the Missouri Compromise Today?
-
The Missouri Compromise was undone by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, propelling the country toward Civil War: How one piece of legislation divided a nation
“ …we cannot always do what is absolutely best. Those with whom we act, entertaining different views, have the power and the right of carrying them into practice. Truth advances and error recedes step by step only; and to do our fellow-men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step.”
A Civic Engagement Initiative sponsored by and in collaboration with The New York Community Trust – The Peter G. Peterson Fund.
Next page in
The Art of Citizenship