Missouri Constitution Unit

History of Missouri

Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd President purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 for $15,000,000.  The Louisiana Purchase made the land that would later become Missouri, part of the United States.

After the Louisiana Purchase, Thomas Jefferson sent a group of explorers to explore the new land and to find a quick water route to the Pacific Ocean. The group was lead by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and was called the "Corp of Discover".

In 1812, Missouri became a Territory In 1812, Missouri became a Territory.  William Clark was the first governor of the new Missouri Territory.  By 1818 Missouri had 60,000 residents living in the Missouri Territory which allowed them to apply for statehood; however, being a slave state Missouri was rejected for statehood. 

In 1820, Henry Clay came up with the Missouri Compromise which allowed Missouri to become a slave state if Maine would join the Union as a free state.  A compromise was made and on August 10, 1821 Missouri became the 24th state to join the Union.

In the years leading up to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, tensions began to rise between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions within the U.S. Congress and across the country. They reached a boiling point after Missouri’s 1819 request for admission to the Union as a slave state, which threatened to upset the delicate balance between slave states and free states.

To keep the peace, Congress orchestrated a two-part compromise, granting Missouri’s request but also admitting Maine as a free state. It also passed an amendment that drew an imaginary line across the former Louisiana Territory, establishing a boundary between free and slave regions that remained the law of the land until it was negated by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

The Missouri Compromise was criticized by many southerners because it established the principle that Congress could make laws regarding slavery; northerners, on the other hand, condemned it for acquiescing in the expansion of slavery (though only south of the compromise line). Nevertheless, the act helped hold the Union together for more than thirty years.

The Missouri compromise was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which established popular sovereignty (local choice) regarding slavery in Kansas and Nebraska, though both were north of the compromise line. Three years later, the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, on the ground that Congress was prohibited by the Fifth Amendment from depriving individuals of private property without due process of law

First capitol (temporary until JC was built) – St. Charles Capitol City – Jefferson City, because MO Con. states capitol must be located on the MO River within 40 miles of the mouth of the Osage River. So Jefferson City was created.

Counties in MO – 114 MO’s nickname – Show Me State. William Vandiver’s speech in Philadelphia in 1899, “ I’m from Missouri, you’ve got to show me.” This portrayed Missourians as tough minded skeptics.

Located on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, Missouri was an important hub of transportation and commerce in early America, and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis is a monument to Missouri’s role as the “Gateway to the West.”

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is the country’s tallest manmade monument at 630 feet. Completed in 1965, the structure was built to commemorate the city’s importance in settling the west following President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

In 1873, Susan Elizabeth Blow opened the first public kindergarten in the United States in St. Louis after having become interested in the kindergarten methods of philosopher Friedrich Froebel while traveling in Germany a few years earlier. Blow later established a training school for kindergarten teachers.