THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE

The issue of slavery was one that increased as more settlers moved westward: Would the territories they were moving into be slave or free? In 1808 the further exporting of slaves was eliminated. Additional states had joined the Union, some slave and some free. By 1819 there were 11 slave states and 11 free states. The issue came to a head that year when Missouri petitioned to join the Union as a slave state. Debate in the Congress and in newspapers around the country was heated; to many Northerners, to have more slave states than free states was unthinkable. Speaker of the House Henry Clay engineered the Missouri Compromise, by which Maine entered the Union as a free state, Missouri entered as a slave state, and in the Louisiana Territory any states north of 36 degrees, 30 minutes had to come in as free states. Marty at the time realized that this solution would only be a temporary one.