The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

The Missouri Compromise 215

Gulf of

Mexico

ATLANTIC

PACIFIC OCEAN

OCEAN

BRITISH NORTH AMERICA

LOUISIANA

Arkansas

Territory

MISSOURI

(Admitted as

slave state,

1821)

Unorganized

Territory

Oregon

Territory

(Joint U.S.–British

occupation of

disputed territitory) Michigan

Territory

Michigan

Territory

INDIANA

OHIO

ILLINOIS

MISSISSIPPI

ALABAMA

Florida

Territory

GEORGIA

SOUTH

CAROLINA

NORTH

CAROLINA

VIRGINIA

KENTUCKY

TENNESSEE

NEW YORK

PENNSYLVANIA

NEW JERSEY

CONNECTICUT

MASSACHUSETTS

VERMONT

NEW

HAMPSHIRE

MAINE

(Admitted as

free state, 1820)

RHODE

ISLAND

MARYLAND

DELAWARE

Free states and territories

Slave states and territories

Open to slavery by Missouri Compromise

Closed to slavery by Missouri Compromise

Missouri Compromise line

NEW SPAIN

(Independent Mexico, 1821)

MissouriCompromiseLine^36 ̊^30 '

The Missouri Compromise, 1820The Missouri Compromise admitted Missouri as a slave state, and Maine as a free state, retaining a balance in
the Senate: Half of the nation’s 24 states allowed slavery; half did not. The Compromise also drew an imaginary line along the 36°30’ latitude
(northern boundary of Arkansas): Slavery would be allowed in the lands to the south of the line.

part of Missouri was then organized separately as the
Arkansas Territory, and an attempt to bar slavery there
was stifled. The Missouri Enabling Act failed to pass
before Congress adjourned.
When the next Congress met in December
1819, the Missouri issue came up at once. The vote
on Tallmadge’s amendment had shown that the
rapidly growing North controlled the House of
Representatives. Southerners thought it vital to
preserve a balance in the Senate. Yet Northerners
objected to the fact that Missouri extended hun-
dreds of miles north of the Ohio River, which they
considered slavery’s natural boundary. Angry
debate raged in Congress for months.
The debate did not turn on the morality of slavery
or the rights of blacks. Northerners objected to adding
new slave states because under the Three-Fifths
Compromise these states would be overrepresented in
Congress (60 percent of their slaves would be counted
in determining the size of the states’ delegations in the

House of Representatives) and because they did not

relish competing with slave labor. Since the question

was political influence rather than the rights and

wrongs of slavery, a compromise was worked out in

1820. Missouri entered the Union as a slave state and
      Maine, having been separated from Massachusetts, was
      admitted as a free state to preserve the balance in
      the Senate.
      To prevent further conflict, Congress adopted
      the proposal of Senator Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois,
      that “forever prohibited” slavery in all other parts of
      the Louisiana Purchase north of 36°30' latitude, the
      westward extension of Missouri’s southern boundary.
      Although this division would keep slavery out of most
      of the territory, Southerners accepted it cheerfully.
      The land south of the line, the present states of
      Arkansas and Oklahoma, seemed ideally suited for the
      expanded plantation economy, and most persons con-
      sidered the treeless northern regions little better than
      a desert. One northern senator, decrying the division,