The Missouri Compromise Presentation created by Robert Martinez Primary Source Content: The American Promise Images as cited.

The politics of race lay at the heart of one of the most divisive issues to confront the administration of President James Monroe. In February 1819, Missouri applied for statehood. /puzo1.blogspot.com

Since 1815, four other states had joined the Union (Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois and Alabama), following the blueprint laid out by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. But Missouri posed a problem.

Although much of its area was on the same latitude as the free state of Illinois, its territorial population included 10,000 slaves brought there by southern white planters.

Missouri’s unusual combination of geography and demography led a New York congressman, James Tallmadge Jr., to propose two amendments to the statehood bill. The first stipulated that slaves born in Missouri after statehood would be free at age twenty-five, and the second declared that no new slaves could be imported into the state. en.wikipedia.org

Tallmadge modeled the first amendment on New York’s gradual emancipation law of 1799. It did not strip slave owners of their current property, and it allowed them full use of the labor of newborn slaves well into their prime productive years. stuffyoushouldread.com

Southerners in Congress objected, because in the long run the amendments would make Missouri a free state, presumably no longer allied with southern economic and political interests. legendsofkansas.com

Just as southern economic power rested on slave labor, southern political power drew extra strength from the slave population because of the three-fifths rule. belthorne2011.blogspot.com

In 1820, the South owed seventeen of its seats in the House of Representatives to its slave population. online-literature.com

Tallmadge’s amendments passed in the house by a close and sharply sectional vote of North against South. The Senate, with an even number of slave and free states, voted down the amendments, and Missouri statehood was postponed until the next congressional term.

In 1820, a compromise emerged In 1820, a compromise emerged. Maine, once part of Massachusetts, applied for statehood as a free state, balancing against Missouri as a slave state. mrvanduyne.com

The Senate further agreed that the southern boundary of Missouri – latitude 36° 30 – extended west, would become the permanent line dividing slave from free states, guaranteeing the North a large area where slavery was banned. teachers.henrico.k12.va.us

The House also approved the compromise, thanks to expert deal brokering by Kentucky’s Henry Clay, who earned the nickname “the Great Pacificator” for his superb negotiating skills. americanhistoryquotes.com

The whole package passed because seventeen northern congressmen decided that minimizing sectional conflict was the best course and voted with the South. franceshunter.wordpress.com

President Monroe and former president Jefferson at first worried that the Missouri crisis would reinvigorate the Federalist Party as the party of the North. But even ex-Federalists agreed that the split between free and slave states was too dangerous a fault line to be permitted to become a shaper of national politics. elowcountry.com

When new parties did develop in the 1830s, they took pains to bridge geography, each party developing a presence in both North and South. Monroe and Jefferson also worried about the future of slavery. Both believed slavery to be deeply problematic. lynchburg.edu

“We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” - President Thomas Jefferson ushistoryimages.com