In 1803, Thomas Jefferson signed a treaty with France by which the United states would purchase the Louisiana territory. The treaty meant that the United States would gain territory which would later comprise the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and parts of Minnesota, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado.
In 1817, with people around America migrating to newly purchased land in the West, the territory of Missouri completed the population requirement and applied for statehood. As a result, a crisis erupted.
At the time, land meant independence, status, wealth, and freedom. Northerners chose to settle westward to gain land and build their own family farms. Southerners, whose states’ economies were dependent on plantations, wanted to move Southward, as plantations required a lot of land.
When Missouri applied for statehood, there was tension between the Southern plantation owners and Northerners who lived in the State. Southern plantation owners, with thousands of slaves in Missouri, asked to apply as a slave state. Northerners, however, rejected slavery. Many Northerners were abolitionists who emphasized the inhumanity of slavery. Other Northerners believed that slavery led to the rise of plantations, and plantations entailed the rise of monopoly.
Because there were no existing regulations to decide whether slavery should be allowed in the West, the people in Congress began to debate. Debates over the state of slavery in Missouri remained deadlocked – both Northern and Southern states had 22 seats in the Senate, but the North had 106 seats in the House compared to the South’s 81 seats. Thus, when the North proposed something, it would pass in the House, but not in the Senate.
In December, 1819, Maine also applied for statehood as a free state, meaning that the South would not outnumber the North in the Senate if Missouri was admitted as a slave state.
In 1820, when Missouri applied for statehood again, Henry Clay, then Speaker of the House, proposed a compromise to solve the problem. Clay’s compromise said that Missouri would be admitted as a slave state, while Maine would be admitted as a free state. He then drew a line from east to west along the 36th parallel. States north of the 36th parallel would be admitted as free states, and states south of the 36th parallel would be admitted as slave states. The bill passed in Congress on March 3, 1820, and Clay won the title of “The Great Compromiser”.
The Missouri Compromise temporarily resolved the debate over slavery in America with new states that would later be admitted into the union. Regardless, the compromise failed to address the systemic issues surrounding slavery and the country began to increasingly become more divided.
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