Missouri Compromise

Missouri Compromise

The Missouri Compromise 1820

Most white Americans agreed that western expansion was crucial to the health of the nation. But what should be done about slavery in the West?

The incorporation of new Western Territories into the United States made slavery an explicit concern of national politics. Balancing the interests of slave and free states had played a role from the very start of designing the federal government at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The crucial compromise there that sacrificed the rights of African Americans in favor of a stronger union among the states exploded once more in 1819 when Missouri petitioned to join the United States as a slave state.

In 1819, the nation contained eleven free and eleven slave states creating a balance in the U.S. senate. Missouri's entrance threatened to throw this parity in favor of slave interests. The debate in Congress over the admission of Missouri was extraordinarily bitter after Congressman James Tallmadge from New York proposed that slavery be prohibited in the new state. 

The debate was especially sticky because defenders of slavery relied on a central principle of fairness. How could the Congress deny a new state the right to decide for itself whether or not to allow slavery? If Congress controlled the decision, then the new states would have fewer rights than the original ones.

Henry Clay, a leading congressman, played a crucial role in brokering a two-part solution known as the Missouri Compromise. First, Missouri would be admitted to the union as a slave state, but would be balanced by the admission of Maine, a free state, that had long wanted to be separated from Massachusetts. Second, slavery was to be excluded from all new states in the Louisiana Purchase north of the southern boundary of Missouri. People on both sides of the controversy saw the compromise as deeply flawed. Nevertheless, it lasted for over thirty years until the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 determined that new states north of the boundary deserved to be able to exercise their sovereignty in favor of slavery if they so choose.

Open Ended

1. Why is it important to keep the balance of slave and free states?

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2. What was the problem with immediately letting Missouri become a slave state in the Union?

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3. Why was it hard for Congress to decide on the issue of whether or not Missouri should be entered as slave state?

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4. Who created the Missouri Compromise? What were the two parts of this compromise?

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5. Why do you think the Missouri Compromise was “extremely flawed”?

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6. How did the Missouri Compromise relate to growing sectionalism within the United States?

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7. How did the incorporation of new Western territories make slavery an explicit concern?

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8. How are new Western territories and slavery connected?