Missouri Compromise - wikipedia Missouri Compromise The United States in 1819. The Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery in the unorganized territory of the Great Plains ( upper dark green ) and permitted it in Missouri ( yellow ) and the Arkansas Territory ( lower blue area ). Events leading to the American Civil War Slavery Northwest Ordinance Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions Battle of Negro Fort Missouri Compromise Tariff of 1828 Nat Turner 's slave rebellion Nullification Crisis The Amistad Prigg v. Pennsylvania Texas annexation Mexican -- American War Wilmot Proviso Manifest destiny Underground Railroad Nashville Convention Compromise of 1850 Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 Uncle Tom 's Cabin Kansas -- Nebraska Act Ostend Manifesto Bleeding Kansas Caning of Charles Sumner Dred Scott v. Sandford The Impending Crisis of the South Brown 's raid on Harpers Ferry 1860 presidential election Crittenden Compromise Secession of Southern States Star of the West Corwin Amendment Morrill Tariff Battle of Fort Sumter The Missouri Compromise was the legislation that provided for the admission to the United States of Maine as a free state along with Missouri as a slave state, thus maintaining the balance of power between North and South in the United States Senate. As part of the compromise, slavery was prohibited north of the 36 ° 30 ′ parallel, excluding Missouri. The 16th United States Congress passed the legislation on March 9, 1820, and President James Monroe signed it on May 6, 1820. Earlier, on February 4, 1820, Representative James Tallmadge Jr., a Jeffersonian Republican from New York, submitted two amendments to Missouri 's request for statehood, which included restrictions on slavery. Southerners objected to any bill which imposed federal restrictions on slavery, believing that slavery was a state issue settled by the Constitution. However, with the Senate evenly split at the opening of the debates, both sections possessing 11 states, the admission of Missouri as a slave state would give the South an advantage. Northern critics including Federalists and Democratic - Republicans objected to the expansion of slavery into the Louisiana Purchase territory on the Constitutional inequalities of the three - fifths rule, which conferred Southern representation in the federal government derived from a states ' slave population. Jeffersonian Republicans in the North ardently maintained that a strict interpretation of the Constitution required that Congress act to limit the spread of slavery on egalitarian grounds. `` ( Northern ) Republicans rooted their antislavery arguments, not on expediency, but in egalitarian morality '' ; and `` The Constitution, ( said northern Jeffersonians ) strictly interpreted, gave the sons of the founding generation the legal tools to hasten ( the ) removal ( of slavery ), including the refusal to admit additional slave states. ''. When free - soil Maine offered its petition for statehood, the Senate quickly linked the Maine and Missouri bills, making Maine admission a condition for Missouri entering the Union with slavery unrestricted. Senator Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois added a compromise proviso, excluding slavery from all remaining lands of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36 ° 30 ' parallel. The combined measures passed the Senate, only to be voted down in the House by those Northern representatives who held out for a free Missouri. Speaker of the House Henry Clay of Kentucky, in a desperate bid to break the deadlock, divided the Senate bills. Clay and his pro-compromise allies succeeded in pressuring half the anti-restrictionist House Southerners to submit to the passage of the Thomas proviso, while maneuvering a number of restrictionist House northerners to acquiesce in supporting Missouri as a slave state. The Missouri question in the 15th Congress ended in stalemate on March 4, 1819, the House sustaining its northern antislavery position, and the Senate blocking a slavery restricted statehood. The Missouri Compromise was controversial at the time, as many worried that the country had become lawfully divided along sectional lines. The bill was effectively repealed in the Kansas -- Nebraska Act of 1854, and declared unconstitutional in Dred Scott v. Sandford ( 1857 ). This increased tensions over slavery and eventually led to the Civil War. Contents 1 The Era of Good Feelings and party `` amalgamation '' 2 The Louisiana Purchase and Missouri Territory 3 The 15th Congress Debates : 1819 3.1 Jeffersonian Republicanism and slavery 4 Struggle for political power 4.1 `` Federal Ratio '' in the House 4.2 `` Balance of Power '' in the Senate 4.3 Constitutional arguments 5 Stalemate 6 Federalist `` plots '' and `` consolidation '' 7 Development in Congress 7.1 Second Missouri Compromise 8 Impact on political discourse 9 Repeal 10 See also 11 References 12 Bibliography 13 Further reading 14 External links The era of Good Feelings and party `` amalgamation '' President James Monroe : signer of the Missouri Compromise bills The Era of Good Feelings, closely associated with the administration of President James Monroe ( 1817 -- 1825 ), was characterized by the dissolution of national political identities. With the discredited Federalists in decline nationally, the `` amalgamated '' or hybridized Republicans adopted key Federalist economic programs and institutions, further erasing party identities and consolidating their victory. The economic nationalism of the Era of Good Feelings that would authorize the Tariff of 1816 and incorporate the Second Bank of the United States portended an abandonment of the Jeffersonian political formula for strict construction of the constitution, a limited central government and commitments to the primacy of Southern agrarian interests. The end of opposition parties also meant the end of party discipline and the means to suppress internecine factional animosities. Rather than produce political harmony, as President James Monroe had hoped, amalgamation had led to intense rivalries among Jeffersonian Republicans. It was amid the `` good feelings '' of this period -- during which Republican Party discipline was in abeyance -- that the Tallmadge Amendment surfaced. The Louisiana Purchase and Missouri territory The immense Louisiana Purchase territories had been acquired through federal executive action, followed by Republican legislative authorization in 1803 during the Thomas Jefferson administration. Prior to its purchase in 1803, the governments of Spain and France had sanctioned slavery in the region. In 1812, the state of Louisiana, a major cotton producer and the first to be carved from the Louisiana Purchase, had entered the Union as a slave state. Predictably, Missourians were adamant that slave labor should not be molested by the federal government. In the years following the War of 1812, the region, now known as Missouri Territory, experienced rapid settlement, led by slaveholding planters. Agriculturally, the land comprising the lower reaches of the Missouri River, from which that new state would be formed, had no prospects as a major cotton producer. Suited for diversified farming, the only crop regarded as promising for slave labor was hemp culture. On that basis, southern planters immigrated with their chattel to Missouri, the slave population rising from 3,100 in 1810 to 10,000 in 1820. In a total population 67,000, slaves represented about 15 percent. By 1818, the population of Missouri territory was approaching the threshold that would qualify it for statehood. An enabling act was provided to Congress empowering territorial residents to select convention delegates and draft a state constitution. The admission of Missouri territory as a slave state was expected to be more or less routine. The 15th Congress debates : 1819 Representative James Tallmadge Jr., author of the antislavery amendment to Missouri statehood When the Missouri statehood bill was opened for debate in the House of Representative on February 13, 1819, early exchanges on the floor proceeded without serious incident. In the course of these proceedings, however, Representative James Tallmadge Jr. of New York `` tossed a bombshell into the Era of Good Feelings '' with the following amendments : Provided, that the further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been fully convicted ; and that all children born within the said State will be executed after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be free at the age of twenty - five years. A political outsider, the 41 - year old Tallmadge conceived his amendment based on a personal aversion to slavery. He had played a leading role in accelerating emancipation of the remaining slaves in New York in 1817. Moreover, he had campaigned against Illinois ' Black Codes : though ostensibly free - soil, the new Illinois state constitution permitted indentured servitude and a limited form of slavery. As a New York Republican, Tallmadge maintained an uneasy association with Governor DeWitt Clinton, a former Republican who depended on support from ex-Federalists. Clinton 's faction was hostile to Tallmadge for his spirited defense of General Andrew Jackson over his contentious invasion of Florida. Tallmadge had to back from a fellow New York Republican, Congressman John W. Taylor ( not to be confused with legislator John Taylor of Caroline County, Virginia ). Taylor also had antislavery credentials : In February 1819, he had proposed similar slave restrictions on Arkansas territory in the House, but failed 89 - 87. He would lead the pro-Tallmadge antislavery forces during the 16th Congress in 1820. The amendment instantly exposed the polarization among Jeffersonian Republicans over the future of slavery in the nation. Northern Jeffersonian Republicans formed a coalition across factional lines with remnants of the Federalists. Southern Jeffersonian united in almost unanimous opposition. The ensuing debates pitted the northern `` restrictionists '' ( antislavery legislators who wished to bar slavery from the Louisiana territories ) and southern `` anti-restrictionists '' ( proslavery legislators who rejected any interference by Congress inhibiting slavery expansion ). The sectional `` rupture '' over slavery among Jeffersonian Republicans, first exposed in the Missouri crisis, had its roots in the Revolutionary generation. Five Congressmen in Maine were opposed to spreading slavery into new territories. Dr. Brian Purnell, professor of Africana Studies and U.S. history at Bowdoin College, writes in Portland Magazine, `` Martin Kinsley, Joshua Cushman, Ezekiel Whitman, Enoch Lincoln, and James Parker -- wanted to prohibit slavery 's spread into new territories. In 1820, they voted against the Missouri Compromise and against Maine 's independence. In their defense, they wrote that, if the North, and the nation, embarked upon this Compromise -- and ignored what experiences proved, namely that southern slave holders were determined to dominate the nation through ironclad unity and perpetual pressure to demand more land, and more slaves -- then these five Mainers declared Americans `` shall deserve to be considered a besotted and stupid race, fit, only, to be led blindfold ; and worthy, only, to be treated with sovereign contempt. '' Jeffersonian Republicanism and slavery Thomas Jefferson : The Missouri crisis roused Jefferson `` like a fire bell in the night. '' The Missouri crisis marked a rupture in the Republican Ascendency -- the national association of Jeffersonian Republicans that dominated national politics in the post-War of 1812 period. The Founders had inserted both principled and expedient elements in the establishing documents. The Declaration of Independence of 1776 was grounded on the claim that liberty established a moral ideal that made universal equality a common right. The Revolutionary War generation had formed a government of limited powers in 1787 to embody the principles in the Declaration, but `` burdened with the one legacy that defied the principles of 1776 '' : human bondage. In a pragmatic commitment to form the Union, the federal apparatus would forego any authority to directly interfere with the institution of slavery where it existed under local control within the states. This acknowledgment of state sovereignty provided for the participation of those states most committed to slave labor. With this understanding, slaveholders had cooperated in authorizing the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, and to outlawing the trans - Atlantic slave trade in 1808. Though the Founders sanctioned slavery, they did so with the implicit understanding that the slaveholding states would take steps to relinquish the institution as opportunities arose. Southern states, after the War for Independence, had regarded slavery as an institution in decline ( with the exception of Georgia and South Carolina ). This was manifest in the shift towards diversified farming in the Upper South, and in the gradual emancipation of slaves in New England, and more significantly, in the mid-Atlantic states. Beginning in the 1790s, with the introduction of the cotton gin, and by 1815, with the vast increase in demand for cotton internationally, slave - based agriculture underwent an immense revival, spreading the institution westward to the Mississippi River. Slavery opponents in the South vacillated, as did their hopes for the imminent demise of human bondage. However rancorous the disputes among Southerners themselves over the virtues of a slave - based society, they united as a section when confronted by external challenges to their institution. The free states were not to meddle in the affairs of the slaveholders. Southern leaders -- of whom virtually all identified as Jeffersonian Republicans -- denied that Northerners had any business encroaching on matters related to slavery. Northern attacks on the institution were condemned as incitements to riot among the slave populations -- deemed a dire threat to white southern security. Northern Jeffersonian Republicans embraced the Jeffersonian antislavery legacy during the Missouri debates, explicitly citing the Declaration of Independence as an argument against expanding the institution. Southern leaders, seeking to defend slavery, would renounce the document 's universal egalitarian applications and its declaration that `` all men are created equal. '' Struggle for political power `` Federal ratio '' in the House Rufus King : last of the Federalist icons Article One, Section Two of the US Constitution supplemented legislative representation in those states where residents owned slaves. Known as the three - fifths clause or the `` federal ratio '', three - fifths ( 60 % ) of the slave population was numerically added to the free population. This sum was used to calculate Congressional districts per state and the number of delegates to the Electoral College. The federal ratio produced a significant number of legislative victories for the South in the years preceding the Missouri crisis, as well as augmenting its influence in party caucuses, the appointment of judges and the distribution of patronage. It is unlikely that the three - fifths clause, prior to 1820, was decisive in affecting legislation on slavery. Indeed, with the rising northern representation in the House, the South 's share of the membership had declined since the 1790s. Hostility to the federal ratio had historically been the object of the now nationally ineffectual Federalists ; they blamed their collective decline on the `` Virginia Dynasty '', expressed in partisan terms rather than in moral condemnation of slavery. The pro-De Witt Clinton - Federalist faction carried on the tradition, posing as antirestrictionists, for the purpose of advancing their fortunes in New York politics. Senator Rufus King of New York, a Clinton associate, was the last Federalist icon still active on the national stage, a fact irksome to Southern Republicans. A signatory to the US Constitution, he had strongly opposed the three - fifths rule in 1787. In the 1819 15th Congress debates, he revived his critique as a complaint that New England and the Mid-Atlantic States suffered unduly from the federal ratio, declaring himself `` degraded '' ( politically inferior ) to the slaveholders. Federalists, North and South, preferred to mute antislavery rhetoric, but during the 1820 debates in the 16th Congress, King and other old Federalists would expand their critique to include moral considerations of slavery. Republican James Tallmadge, Jr. and the Missouri restrictionists deplored the three - fifths clause because it had translated into political supremacy for the South. They had no agenda to remove it from the founding document, only to prevent its further application west of the Mississippi River. As determined as Southern Republicans were to secure Missouri statehood with slavery, the three - fifths clause failed to provide the margin of victory in the 15th Congress. Blocked by Northern Republicans -- largely on egalitarian grounds -- with sectional support from Federalists, the bill would die in the upper house, where the federal ratio had no relevance. The `` balance of power '' between the sections, and the maintenance of Southern preeminence on matters related to slavery resided in the Senate. `` Balance of power '' in the Senate Northern voting majorities in the lower house did not translate into political dominance. The fulcrum for proslavery forces resided in the upper house of Congress. There, constitutional compromise in 1787 had provided for exactly two senators per state, regardless of its population : the South, with its small white demographic relative to the North, benefited from this arrangement. Since 1815, sectional parity in the Senate had been achieved through paired admissions, leaving the North and South, at the time of Missouri territory application for statehood, at eleven states each. The South, voting as a bloc on measures that challenged slaveholding interests and augmented by defections from Free State Senators with Southern sympathies, was able to tally majorities. The Senate stood as the bulwark and source of the Slave Power -- a power that required admission of slave states to the Union to preserve its national primacy. Missouri statehood, with the Tallmadge amendment approved, would set a trajectory towards a Free State trans - Mississippi and a decline in Southern political authority. The question as to whether the Congress could lawfully restrain the growth of slavery in Missouri took on great importance among the slave states. The moral dimensions of the expansion of human bondage would be raised by Northern Republicans on constitutional grounds. Constitutional arguments The Tallmadge amendment was `` the first serious challenge to the extension of slavery '' and raised questions concerning the interpretation of the republics ' founding documents. Jeffersonian Republicans justified Tallmadge 's slavery restrictions on the grounds that Congress possessed the authority to impose territorial statutes which would remain in force after statehood was established. Representative John W. Taylor pointed to Indiana and Illinois, where their Free State status conformed to the antislavery provisions in the Northwest Ordinance. Massachusetts Representative Timothy Fuller Further, antislavery legislators invoked Article Four, Section Four of the Constitution, which required that states provide a republican form of government. As the Louisiana Territory was not part of the United States in 1787, they argued, introducing slavery into Missouri would thwart the egalitarian intent of the Founders. Proslavery Republicans countered that the Constitution had long been interpreted as having relinquished any claim to restricting slavery within the states. The free inhabitants of Missouri, either in the territorial phase or during statehood, had the right to establish slavery -- or disestablish it -- exclusive of central government interference. As to the Northwest Ordinance, Southerners denied that this could serve as a lawful antecedent for the territories of the Louisiana Purchase, as the ordinance had been issued originally under the Articles of Confederation, not under the US Constitution. As a legal precedent, they offered the treaty acquiring the Louisiana lands in 1803 : the document included a provision ( Article 3 ) that extended the rights of US citizens to all inhabitants of the new territory, including the protection of property in slaves. When slaveholders embraced Jeffersonian constitutional strictures on a limited central government they were reminded that Jefferson, as US President in 1803, had deviated from these precepts when he wielded federal executive power to double the size the United States ( including the lands under consideration for Missouri statehood ). In doing so, he set a Constitutional precedent that would serve to rationalize Tallmadge 's federally imposed slavery restrictions. The 15th Congress debates, focusing on it did on constitutional questions, largely avoided the moral dimensions raised by the topic of slavery. That the unmentionable subject had been raised publicly was deeply offensive to Southern Congressmen, and violated the long - held sectional understanding between free and slave state legislators. Missouri statehood confronted Southern Jeffersonians with the prospect of applying the egalitarian principles espoused by the Revolutionary generation. This would require halting the spread of slavery westward, and confine the institution to where it already existed. Faced with a population of 1.5 million slaves, and the lucrative production of cotton, the South would abandon hopes for containment. Slaveholders in the 16th Congress, in an effort to come to grips with this paradox, would resort to a theory that called for extending slavery geographically so as to encourage its decline : `` diffusion ''. Stalemate On February 16, 1819, the House Committee of the Whole voted to link Tallmadge 's provisions with the Missouri enabling legislation, approving the move 79 - 67. Following the committee vote, debates resumed over the merits of each of Tallmadge 's provisions in the enabling act. The debates in the House 's 2nd session in 1819 lasted only three days. They have been characterized as `` rancorous '', `` fiery '', `` bitter '', `` blistering '', `` furious '' and `` bloodthirsty ''. You have kindled a fire which all the waters of the ocean can not put out, which seas of blood can only extinguish. -- Representative Thomas W. Cobb of Georgia If a dissolution of the Union must take place, let it be so ! If civil war, which gentlemen so much threaten, must come, I can only say, let it come ! -- Representative James Tallmadge Jr. of New York : Northern representatives outnumbered the South in House membership 105 to 81. When each of the restrictionist provisions were put to the vote, they passed along sectional lines : 87 to 76 in favor of prohibition on further slave migration into Missouri ( Table 1 ) and 82 to 78 in favor of emancipating slave offspring at age twenty - five. Table 1. House vote on restricting slavery in Missouri. 15th Congress 2nd Session, February 16, 1819. Yea * Nay Abst Total Northern Federalists 22 28 Northern Republicans 64 7 7 77 North Total 86 10 9 105 South Total 66 13 80 House Total 87 76 22 185 * Yea is an antislavery ( restrictionist ) vote The enabling bill was passed to the Senate, where both parts of it were rejected : 22 to 16 opposed to restricting new slaves in Missouri ( supported by five northerners, two of whom were the proslavery legislators from the free state of Illinois ) ; and 31 to 7 against gradual emancipation for slave children born post-statehood. House antislavery restrictionists refused to concur with the Senate proslavery anti-restrictionists : Missouri statehood would devolve upon the 16th Congress in December 1819. Federalist `` plots '' and `` consolidation '' New York Governor DeWitt Clinton The Missouri Compromise debates stirred suspicions among proslavery interests that the underlying purpose of the Tallmadge amendments had little to do with opposition to slavery expansion. The accusation was first leveled in the House by the Republican anti-restrictionist John Holmes from the District of Maine. He suggested that Senator Rufus King 's `` warm '' support for the Tallmadge amendment concealed a conspiracy to organize a new antislavery party in the North -- a party composed of old Federalists in combination with disaffected antislavery Republicans. The fact that King, in the Senate, and Tallmadge and Tyler, in the House -- all New Yorkers -- were among the vanguard for slavery restriction in Missouri lent credibility to these charges. When King was re-elected to the US Senate in January 1820, during the 16th Congress debates, and with bipartisan support, suspicions deepened and would persist throughout the crisis. Southern Jeffersonian Republican leadership, including President Monroe and former President Thomas Jefferson, considered it as an article of faith that Federalists, given the chance, would destabilize the Union so as to re-impose monarchal rule in North America, and `` consolidate '' political control over the people by expanding the functions of the central government. Jefferson, at first unperturbed by the Missouri question, soon became convinced that a northern conspiracy was afoot, with Federalists and crypto - Federalists posing as Republicans, using Missouri statehood as a pretext. Due to the disarray of the Republican Ascendency brought about by amalgamation, fears abounded among Southerners that a Free State party might take shape in the event that Congress failed to reach an understanding over Missouri and slavery : Such a party would threaten Southern preeminence. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts surmised that the political configuration for just such a sectional party already existed. That the Federalists were anxious to regain a measure of political participation in national politics is indisputable. There was no basis, however, for the charge that Federalists had directed Tallmadge in his antislavery measures, nor was there anything to indicate that a New York - based King - Clinton alliance sought to erect an antislavery party on the ruins of the Republican Party. The allegations by Southern proslavery interests of a `` plot '' or that of `` consolidation '' as a threat to the Union misapprehended the forces at work in the Missouri crisis : the core of the opposition to slavery in the Louisiana Purchase were informed by Jeffersonian egalitarian principles, not a Federalist resurgence. Development in Congress Extension of the Missouri Compromise Line westward was discussed by Congress during the Texas Annexation in 1845, during the Compromise of 1850, and as part of the proposed Crittenden Compromise in 1860, but the line never reached the Pacific. To balance the number of `` slave states '' and `` free states '', the northern region of what was then Massachusetts, the District of Maine, ultimately gained admission into the United States as a free state to become Maine. This only occurred as a result of a compromise involving slavery in Missouri, and in the federal territories of the American West. The admission of another slave state would increase the South 's power at a time when northern politicians had already begun to regret the Constitution 's Three - Fifths Compromise. Although more than 60 percent of whites in the United States lived in the North, by 1818 northern representatives held only a slim majority of congressional seats. The additional political representation allotted to the South as a result of the Three - Fifths Compromise gave southerners more seats in the House of Representatives than they would have had if the number was based on just free population. Moreover, since each state had two Senate seats, Missouri 's admission as a slave state would result in more southern than northern senators. A bill to enable the people of the Missouri Territory to draft a constitution and form a government preliminary to admission into the Union came before the House of Representatives in Committee of the Whole, on February 13, 1819. James Tallmadge of New York offered an amendment, named the Tallmadge Amendment, that forbade further introduction of slaves into Missouri, and mandated that all children of slave parents born in the state after its admission should be free at the age of 25. The committee adopted the measure and incorporated it into the bill as finally passed on February 17, 1819, by the house. The United States Senate refused to concur with the amendment, and the whole measure was lost. During the following session ( 1819 -- 1820 ), the House passed a similar bill with an amendment, introduced on January 26, 1820, by John W. Taylor of New York, allowing Missouri into the union as a slave state. The question had been complicated by the admission in December of Alabama, a slave state, making the number of slave and free states equal. In addition, there was a bill in passage through the House ( January 3, 1820 ) to admit Maine as a free state. The Senate decided to connect the two measures. It passed a bill for the admission of Maine with an amendment enabling the people of Missouri to form a state constitution. Before the bill was returned to the House, a second amendment was adopted on the motion of Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois, excluding slavery from the Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36 ° 30 ′ north ( the southern boundary of Missouri ), except within the limits of the proposed state of Missouri. The vote in the Senate was 24 for the compromise, to 20 against. The amendment and the bill passed in the Senate on February 17 and February 18, 1820. The House then approved the Senate compromise amendment, on a vote of 90 to 87, with those 87 votes coming from free state representatives opposed to slavery in the new state of Missouri. The House then approved the whole bill, 134 to 42, with opposition from the southern states. Second Missouri Compromise The two houses were at odds not only on the issue of the legality of slavery but also on the parliamentary question of the inclusion of Maine and Missouri within the same bill. The committee recommended the enactment of two laws, one for the admission of Maine, the other an enabling act for Missouri. They recommended against having restrictions on slavery but for including the Thomas amendment. Both houses agreed, and the measures were passed on March 5, 1820, and were signed by President James Monroe on March 6. The question of the final admission of Missouri came up during the session of 1820 -- 1821. The struggle was revived over a clause in Missouri 's new constitution ( written in 1820 ) requiring the exclusion of `` free negroes and mulattoes '' from the state. Through the influence of Kentucky Senator Henry Clay `` The Great Compromiser '', an act of admission was finally passed, upon the condition that the exclusionary clause of the Missouri constitution should `` never be construed to authorize the passage of any law '' impairing the privileges and immunities of any U.S. citizen. This deliberately ambiguous provision is sometimes known as the Second Missouri Compromise. Impact on political discourse During the decades following 1820, Americans hailed the 1820 agreement as an essential compromise almost on the sacred level of the Constitution itself. Although the Civil War broke out in 1861, historians often say the Compromise helped postpone the war. Animation showing the free / slave status of U.S. states and territories, 1789 -- 1861, including the Missouri Compromise These disputes involved the competition between the southern and northern states for power in Congress and for control over future territories. There were also the same factions emerging as the Democratic - Republican party began to lose its coherence. In an April 22 letter to John Holmes, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the division of the country created by the Compromise Line would eventually lead to the destruction of the Union :... but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated ; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. The debate over admission of Missouri also raised the issue of sectional balance, for the country was equally divided between slave and free states with eleven each. To admit Missouri as a slave state would tip the balance in the Senate ( made up of two senators per state ) in favor of the slave states. For this reason, northern states wanted Maine admitted as a free state. Maine was admitted in 1820 and Missouri in 1821, but no further states were added until 1836, when Arkansas was admitted. From the constitutional standpoint, the Compromise of 1820 was important as the example of Congressional exclusion of slavery from U.S. territory acquired since the Northwest Ordinance. Nevertheless, the Compromise was deeply disappointing to African - Americans in both the North and South, as it stopped the southern progression of gradual emancipation at Missouri 's southern border and legitimized slavery as a southern institution. Repeal The provisions of the Missouri Compromise forbidding slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36 ° 30 ′ north were effectively repealed by Stephen A. Douglas 's Kansas -- Nebraska Act of 1854. The repeal of the Compromise caused outrage in the North and sparked the return to politics of Abraham Lincoln, who criticized slavery and excoriated Douglas 's act in his `` Peoria Speech '' ( October 16, 1854 ). See also Compromise of 1790 Compromise of 1850 Kansas -- Nebraska Act Origins of the American Civil War Royal Colonial Boundary of 1665 Tallmadge Amendment Slave Trade Acts Dred Scott v. Sandford Northwest Ordinance References Jump up ^ Dangerfield, 1966. p. 125 Wilentz, 2004. p. 382 Jump up ^ Wilentz 2004. p. 387 Jump up ^ Wilentz 2004 p. 389 Jump up ^ Brown, 1966. p. 25 : `` ( Henry Clay ), who managed to bring up the separate parts of the compromise separately in the House, enabling the Old Republicans ( in the South ) to provide him with a margin of victory on the closely contested Missouri ( statehood ) bill while saved their pride by voting against the Thomas Proviso. '' Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 381 Jump up ^ Ammons, 1971. p. 457 - 458 Jump up ^ Ammon, 1958, p. 4 : `` The phrase ' Era of Good Feelings ', so inextricably associated with the administration of James Monroe... Jump up ^ Brown, 1966. p. 23 : `` So long as the Federalists remained an effective opposition, Jefferson 's party worked as a party should. It maintained its identity in relation to the opposition by a moderate and pragmatic advocacy of strict construction of the Constitution. Because it had competition, it could maintain discipline. It responded to its constituent elements because it depended on them for support. But eventually, its very success was its undoing. After 1815, stirred by the nationalism of the postwar era, and with the Federals in decline, the Republicans took up Federalist positions on a number of the great public issues of the day, sweeping all before then as they did. The Federalists gave up the ghost. In the Era of Good Feelings which followed, everybody began to call himself a Republican, and a new theory of party amalgamation preached the doctrine that party division was bad and that a one - party system best served the national interest. Only gradually did it become apparent that in victory the Republicans party had lost its identity -- and it 's usefulness. As the party of the whole nation, it ceased to be responsive to any particular elements in its constituency. It ceased to be responsive to the North... When it did ( become unresponsive ), and because it did, it invited the Missouri crisis of 1819 -- 1820... '' Jump up ^ Ammon, 1958, p. 5 : `` Most Republicans like former President ( James ) Madison readily acknowledged the shift that had taken place within the Republican party towards Federalist principles and viewed the process without qualms. And p. 4 : ``... The Republicans had taken over ( as they saw it ) that which was of permanent value in the Federal program. '' And p. 10 : ``... Federalists had vanished '' from national politics. Jump up ^ Brown, 1966, p. 23 : ``... a new theory of party amalgamation preached the doctrine that party division was bad and that a one - party system best served the national interest '' and `` After 1815, stirred by the nationalism of the post-war era, and with the Federalists in decline, the Republicans took up the Federalist positions on a number of the great public issues of the day, sweeping all before them as they did. The Federalists gave up the ghost. '' Jump up ^ Brown, 1966, p. 22 : `` The insistence ( FILL )... outside the South '' and p. 23 : The amalgamated Republicans, `` as a party of the whole nation... ceased to be responsive to any particular elements in its constituency. It ceased to be responsive to the South. '' And `` The insistence that slavery was uniquely a Southern concern, not to be touched by outsiders, had been from the outset a sine qua non for Southern participation in national politics. It underlay the Constitution and its creation of a government of limited powers... '' Brown, 1966, p. 24 : `` Not only did the Missouri crisis make these matters clear ( the need to revive strict constructionist principles and quiet anti-slavery agitation ), but `` it gave marked impetus to a reaction against nationalism and amalgamation of postwar Republicanism '' and the rise of the Old Republicans. Jump up ^ Ammon, 1971 ( James Monroe bio ) p. 463 : `` The problems presented by the ( consequences of promoting Federalist economic nationalism ) gave an opportunity to the older, more conservative ( Old ) Republicans to reassert themselves by attributing the economic dislocation to a departure from the principles of the Jeffersonian era. '' Jump up ^ Parsons, 2009, p. 56 : `` Animosity between Federalists and Republicans had been replaced by animosity between Republicans themselves, often over the same issues that had once separated them from the Federalists. '' Jump up ^ Brown, 1966, p. 28 : ``... amalgamation had destroyed the levers which made party discipline possible. '' Jump up ^ Dangerfield, 1965. p. 36 Ammons, 1971. p. 206 Ellis, 1996. p. 266 : `` Jefferson had in fact worried out loud that the constitutional precedent he was setting with the acquisition of Louisiana in 1803. In that sense his worries proved to be warranted. The entire congressional debate of 1819 -- 1820 over the Missouri Question turned on the question of federal versus state sovereignty, essentially a constitutional conflict in which Jefferson 's long - standing opposition to federal power was clear and unequivocal, the Louisiana Purchase being the one exception that was now coming back to haunt him. But just as the constitutional character of the congressional debate served only to mask the deeper moral and ideological issues at stake, Jefferson 's own sense of regret at his complicity in providing the constitutional precedent for the Tallmadge amendment merely scratched that surface of his despair. '' Jump up ^ Malone, 1960. p. 419 : `` ( S ) everal thousand planters took their slaves into the area believing that Congress would do nothing to disturb the institution, which had enjoyed legal protection in the territory of the Louisiana Purchase under its former French and Spanish rulers. '' Jump up ^ Malone, 1969. p. 419 : `` After 1815, settlers had poured across the Mississippi... Several thousand planters took their slaves in the area... '' Jump up ^ Dangerfield, 1966. p. 109 Wilentz, 2004. P. 379 : `` Missouri, unlike Louisiana, was not suited to cotton, but slavery had been established in the western portions, which were especially promising for growing hemp, a crop so taxing to cultivate that it was deemed fit only for slave labor. Southerners worried that a ban on slavery in Missouri, already home to 10,000 slaves -- roughly fifteen percent of its total population ( 85 % whites ) -- would create a precedent for doing so in all the entering states from the trans - Mississippi West, thereby establishing congressional powers that slaveholders denied existed Jump up ^ Howe, 2004, p. 147 : `` By 1819, enough settlers had crossed the Mississippi River that Missouri Territory could meet the usual population criterion for admission to the Union. '' And `` an ' enabling act ' was presented to Congress ( for Missouri statehood ). '' Malone, 1960. p. 419 : `` ( S ) ettlement had reached the point where Missouri, the next state ( after Louisiana state ) to be carved out of the Louisiana Purchase, straddled the line between the free and slave states. '' Jump up ^ Ammons, 1971. p. 449 : `` Certainly no one guessed in February 1819 the extent to which passions would be stirred by the introduction of a bill to permit Missouri to organize a state government. '' Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 379 : `` When the territorial residents of Missouri applied for admission to the Union, most Southerners -- and, probably, at first, most Northerners -- assumed slavery would be allowed. All were in for a shock. '' Dangerfield, 1965. p. 107 : Prior to the Tallmadge debates, the 15th Congress there had been `` certain arguments or warnings concerning congressional powers in the territories ; none the less... ( Tallmadge 's amendment ) caught the House off its guard. '' Jump up ^ Dangerfield, 1965. p. 106 - 107 Jump up ^ Howe, 2004. p. 147 Jump up ^ Dangerfield, 1965. p. 107 Jump up ^ Dangerfield, 1965, p. 110 : `` When Tallmadge, in 1818, attacked the indentured service and limited slavery provisions in the Illinois constitution, only thirty - four representatives voted with him against admission. The Tallmadge amendment of 1819, therefore, must also be considered the first serious challenge to the extension of slavery. Jump up ^ Howe, 2004. p. 147 : `` Tallmadge was an independent - minded Republican, allied at the time with Dewitt Clinton 's faction in New York state politics. The year before, he had objected to the admission of Illinois on the ( well - founded ) grounds that its constitution did not provide enough assurance that the Northwest Ordinance prohibition on slavery would be perpetuated. '' Wilentz, 2004. p. 379 : `` In 1818, when Illinois gained admission to the Union, antislavery forces won a state constitution that formally barred slavery but included a fierce legal code that regulated free blacks and permitted the election of two Southern - born senators. '' Jump up ^ Howe 2010 Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 378 : `` A Poughkeepsie lawyer and former secretary to Governor George Clinton, Tallmadge had served in Congress for just over two years when he made his brief but momentous appearance in national politics. He was known as a political odd duck. Nominally an ally and kin, by marriage, of De Witt Clinton, who nonetheless distrusted him, Tallmadge was disliked by the surviving New York Federalists, who detested his defense of General Andrew Jackson against attacks on Jackson 's military command in East Florida. Dangerfield, 1965. p. 107 - 108 : `` James Tallmadge, Jr. a representative ( of New York state )... was supposed to be a member of the ( DeWitt Clinton ) faction in New York politics... may have offered his amendment because his conscience was affronted, and for no other reason. Jump up ^ Dangerfield, 1965 : p. 107, footnote 28 : In February 1819, ( Taylor, attempted ) to insert into a bill establishing a Territory of Arkansas an antislavery clause similar to ( the one Tallmadge would shortly present )... and it `` was defeated in the House 89 - 87. '' Dangerfield, 1965. p. 122 Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 376 : `` ( T ) he sectional divisions among the Jeffersonian Republicans... offers historical paradoxes... in which hard - line slaveholding Southern Republicans rejected the egalitarian ideals of the slaveholder ( Thomas ) Jefferson while the antislavery Northern Republicans upheld them -- even as Jefferson himself supported slavery 's expansion on purportedly antislavery grounds. Jump up ^ Dangerfleld, 1965. p. 111 : `` The most prominent feature of the voting at this stage was its apparently sectional character. '' Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 380,386 Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 376 : `` Jeffersonian rupture over slavery drew upon ideas from the Revolutionary era. It began with congressional conflicts over slavery and related matter in the 1790s. It reached a crisis during the first great American debate about slavery in the nineteenth century, over the admission of Missouri to the Union. '' Jump up ^ Portland Magazine, September 2018 Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004 p. 376 : `` When fully understood, however, the story of sectional divisions among the Jeffersonians recovers the Jeffersonian antislavery legacy, exposes the fragility of the `` second party system '' of the 1830s and 1840s, and vindicates Lincoln 's claims about his party 's Jeffersonian origins. The story also offers historical paradoxes of its own, in which hardline slaveholding Southern Republicans rejected the egalitarian ideals of the slave - holder Jefferson while anti-slavery Northern Republicans upheld them -- even as Jefferson himself supported slavery 's expansion on purportedly antislavery grounds. The Jeffersonian rupture over slavery drew upon ideas from the Revolutionary era. It began with congressional conflicts over slavery and related matters in the 1790s. It reached a crisis during the first great American debate about slavery in the nineteenth century, over the admission of Missouri to the Union. '' Ellis, 1995. p. 265, 269 and 271 Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 376 Jump up ^ Miller, 1995. p 16 Jump up ^ Ellis 1995. p. 265 : `` ( T ) he idea of prohibiting the extension of slavery into the western territories could more readily be seen as a fulfillment rather than a repudiation of the American Revolution, indeed as the fulfillment of Jefferson 's early vision of an expansive republic populated by independent farmers unburdened by the one legacy that defied the principles of 1776 ( slavery ) '' Jump up ^ Brown, 1966. p. 22 : `` The insistence that slavery was uniquely a Southern concern, not to be touched by outsiders, had been from the outset a sine qua non for Southern participation in national politics. It underlay the Constitution and its creation of a government of limited powers, without which Southern participation would have been unthinkable. '' Jump up ^ Ellis, 1996. p. 267 : `` ( The Founders ' silence on slavery ) was contingent upon some discernible measure of progress toward ending slavery. '' Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 383 : `` Not since the framing and ratification of the Constitution in 1787 -- 88 had slavery caused such a tempest in national politics. In part, the breakthrough of emancipation in the Middle States after 1789 -- especially in New York, where James Tallmadge played a direct role -- emboldened Northern antislavery opinion. Southern slavery had spread since 1815. After the end of the War of 1812, and thanks to new demand from the Lancashire mills, the effects of Eli Whitney 's cotton gin, and the new profitability of upland cotton, slavery expanded into Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Between 1815 and 1820, U.S. cotton production doubled, and, between 1820 and 1825, it doubled again. Slavery 's revival weakened what had been, during the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary era, a widespread assumption in the South, although not in South Carolina and Georgia, that slavery was doomed. By the early 1820s, Southern liberal blandishments of the post-Revolutionary years had either fallen on the defensive or disappeared entirely Jump up ^ Brown, 1966. p. 22 : ``... there ran one compelling idea that virtually united all Southerners, and which governed their participation in national politics. This was that the institution of slavery should not be dealt with from outside the South. Whatever the merits of the institution -- and Southerners violently disagreed about this, never more so than in the 1820s -- the presence of the slave was a fact too critical, too sensitive, too perilous to be dealt with by those not directly affected. Slavery must remain a Southern question. '' Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 383 : `` Southerner leaders -- of whom virtually all identified as Jeffersonian Republicans -- denied that Northerners had any business encroaching on matters related to slavery. Northern attacks on the institution were regarded as incitements to riot among the slave populations -- deemed a dire threat to white southern security. Tallmadge 's amendments horrified Southern congressmen, the vast majority of whom were Jeffersonian Republicans. They claimed that whatever the rights and wrongs of slavery, Congress lacked the power to interfere with its expansion. Southerners of all factions and both parties rallied to the proposition that slavery must remain a Southern question. Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004 p. 376 : `` When fully understood, however, the story of sectional divisions among the Jeffersonians recovers the Jeffersonian antislavery legacy, exposes the fragility of the `` second party system '' of the 1830s and 1840s, and vindicates Lincoln 's claims about his party 's Jeffersonian origins. The story also offers historical paradoxes of its own, in which hardline slaveholding Southern Republicans rejected the egalitarian ideals of the slave - holder Jefferson while anti-slavery Northern Republicans upheld them -- even as Jefferson himself supported slavery 's expansion on purportedly antislavery grounds. The Jeffersonian rupture over slavery drew upon ideas from the Revolutionary era. It began with congressional conflicts over slavery and related matters in the 1790s. It reached a crisis during the first great American debate about slavery in the nineteenth century, over the admission of Missouri to the Union. '' Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2016. p. 101 : `` The three - fifths clause certainly inflated Southerner 's power in the House, not simply in affecting numerous roll - call votes -- roughly one in three overall of those recorded between 1795 to 1821 -- but in shaping the politics of party caucuses... patronage and judicial appointments. Yet even with the extra seats, the share held by major slaveholding states actually declined between 1790 to 1820, from 45 % to 42 %... ( and ) none of the bills listed in the study concerned slavery, whereas in 1819, antislavery Northerners, most of them Jeffersonian Republicans, rallied a clear House majority to halt slavery 's expansion. '' Jump up ^ Varon, 2008. p. 40 : `` The three - fifths clause inflated the South 's representation in the House. Because the number of presidential electors assigned to each state was equal to the size of its congressional delegation... the South had power over the election of presidents that was disproportionate to the size of the region 's free population... since Jefferson 's accession in 1801, a `` Virginia Dynasty '' had ruled the White House. '' Malone, 1960. p. ? : `` The constitutional provision relating to slavery that bore most directly on the ( Missouri controversy ) was the three - fifths ratio of representation, sometimes called the federal ratio. The representation of any state in the lower house of Congress was based on the number of its free inhabitants, push three - fifths of its slaves. The free states were now ( 1820 ) forging ahead in total population, were now had a definite majority. On the other hand, the delegation from the South was disproportionate to its free population, and the region actually had representation for its slave property. This situation vexed the Northerners, especially the New Englanders, who had suffered from political frustration since the Louisiana Purchase, and who especially resented the rule of the Virginia Dynasty. '' Wilentz, 2016. p. 47 : `` ( Federalists ) objected above all to the increasingly notorious three - fifths clause ( which ) inflated representation of the Southern states in Congress and the Electoral College '' Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2016. p. 99 : `` ( Federalist hostility to Jefferson and the Virginia Dynasty ) nothing about slavery or its cruelties showed up -- except ( in what had become a familiar sour - grapes excuse among Federalists for their national political failures ) how the three - fifths clause aided the wretched... Jeffersonians. '' Jump up ^ Dangerfield, 1965. p. 109 : `` The federal ratio... had hitherto been an object of the Federalist - Clintonian concern ( rather than the Northern Jeffersonian Republicans ) ; whether the Republicans of the North and East would have gone to battle over Missouri is their hands had not been forced by Tallmadge 's amendment is quite another question. '' Howe, 2004, p. 150 Brown, 1966. p. 26 Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 385 Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 385 : `` More than thirty years after fighting the three - fifths clause at the Federal Convention, King warmly supported banning slavery in Missouri, restating the Yankee Federalist fear of Southern political dominance that had surfaced at the disgraced Hartford Convention in 1814. The issue, for King, at least in his early speeches on Missouri, was not chiefly moral. King explicitly abjured wanting to benefit either slaves or free blacks. His goal, rather, was to ward off the political subjugation of the older northeastern states -- and to protect what he called ' the common defense, the general welfare, and ( the ) wise administration of government. ' Only later did King and other Federalists begin pursuing broader moral and constitutional indictments of slavery. Jump up ^ Dangerfield, 1965. p. 121, footnote 64 Jump up ^ Varon, 2008. p. 39 : ``... they were openly resentful of the fact that the three - fifths clause had translated into political supremacy for the South. Dangerfield, 1965. p. 109 : `` ( The federal ratio ) hardly agreed with ( the restrictionists ) various interests for this apportionment to move across the Mississippi River. Tallmadge ( remarked the trans - Mississippi region ) ' had no claim to such unequal representation, unjust upon the other States. '' Jump up ^ Howe, 2004. p. 150 : `` The Missouri Compromise also concerned political power... many ( Northerners ) were increasingly alarmed at the disproportionate political influence of the southern slaveholders... ( resenting the three - fifths clause ). '' Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2016. p. 102 - 103 : `` The three - fifths clause guaranteed the South a voting majority on some, but hardly all ( critical matters )... Indeed, the congressional bulwark of what became known, rightly, as the Slave Power proved not to be the House, but the Senate, where the three - fifths rule made no difference. '' And `` The three - fifths clause certainly did not prevent the House from voting to exclude slavery from the new state of Missouri in 1819. The House twice passed ( in the 15th Congress ) by substantial margins, antislavery resolutions proposed by ( Tallmadge ) with the largely Northern Republican majority founding its case on Jefferson 's Declaration ( of Independence )... The antislavery effort would die in the Senate, where, again, the three - fifths clause made no difference. '' Jump up ^ Howe, 2004. p. 150 : ``... but if slavery were on the road to ultimate extinction in Missouri, the state might not vote with the proslavery bloc. In such power calculations, the composition of the Senate was of even greater moment than that of the House... So the South looked to preserve its sectional equality in the Senate. '' Jump up ^ Varon, 2008. p. 40 : `` ( T ) he North 's demographic edge ( in the House ) did not translate into control over the federal government, for that edge was blunted by constitutional compromises. The fact that the Founders had decided that each state, however large or small, would elect two senators meant the South 's power in the Senate was disproportionate to its population, and that maintaining a senatorial parity between North and South depended on bringing in equal numbers of free and slave states. Ammons, 1971. p. 450 : `` The central concern in the debates... had been over the ( senatorial ) balance of power, for the Southern congressmen had concentrated their objections upon the fact that the admission of Missouri would forever destroy the equal balance then existing between ( the number of ) free and slave states. '' Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 379 : `` At stake were the terms of admission to the Union of the newest state, Missouri. The main issue seemed simple enough, but the ramifications were not. Since 1815, in a flurry of state admissions, the numbers of new slave and free states had been equal, leaving the balance of slave and free states nationwide and in the Senate equal. The balance was deceptive. In 1818, when Illinois gained admission to the Union, antislavery forces won a state constitution that formally barred slavery but included a fierce legal code that regulated free blacks and permitted the election of two Southern - born senators. In practical terms, were Missouri admitted as a slave state, the Southern bloc in the Senate might enjoy a four - vote, not a two - vote majority. Howe, 2004. p. 150 Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2016. p. 102 : `` The congressional bulwark of what came to be known, rightly, as the Slave Power proved not to be the House but the Senate... '' Jump up ^ Dangerfield, 1965. p. 114 - 115 : `` The political and sectional problem originally raised by the Tallmadge amendment, the problem of the control of the Mississippi Valley, quite failed to conceal ( the ) profound renumciation of human rights. '' Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 387 : `` According to the Republicans, preservation of individual rights and strict construction of the Constitution demanded the limitation of slavery and the recognition... Earlier and more passionately than the Federalists, Republicans rooted their antislavery arguments, not in political expediency, but in egalitarian morality -- the belief, as Fuller declared, that it was both `` the right and duty of Congress '' to restrict the spread `` of the intolerable evil and the crying enormity of slavery. '' Individual rights, the Republicans asserted, has been defined by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence... If all men were created equal, as Jefferson said, then slaves, as men, were born free and, under any truly republican government, entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As the Constitution, in Article 4, section 4, made a republican government in the states a fundamental guarantee of the Union, the extension of slavery into areas where slavery did not exist in 1787 was not only immoral but unconstitutional. '' Jump up ^ Dangerfield, 1965. p. 110 Varon, 2008. p. 39 : `` The Missouri debates, first and foremost, arguments about just what the compromises of 1787 really meant -- what the Founders really intended. Jump up ^ Varon, 2008. p. 40 : `` Tallmadge ( and his supporters ) made the case that it was constitutional for Congress to legislate the end of slavery in Missouri after its admission to statehood ( to determine ) the details of its government. '' Wilentz, 2005. p. 123 Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 387 : `` According to the Republicans, preservation of individual rights and strict construction of the Constitution demanded the limitation of slavery and the recognition, in Fuller 's words, that `` all men have equal rights '', regardless of color. Earlier and more passionately than the Federalists, Republicans rooted their antislavery arguments, not in political expediency, but in egalitarian morality -- the belief, as Fuller declared, that it was both `` the right and duty of Congress '' to restrict the spread `` of the intolerable evil and the crying enormity of slavery. '' Individual rights, the Republicans asserted, has been defined by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence -- `` an authority admitted in all parts of the Union ( as ) a definition of the basis of republican government. '' If all men were created equal, as Jefferson said, then slaves, as men, were born free and, under any truly republican government, entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As the Constitution, in Article 4, section 4, made a republican government in the states a fundamental guarantee of the Union, the extension of slavery into areas where slavery did not exist in 1787 was not only immoral but unconstitutional. '' Jump up ^ Ellis, 1995. p. 266 : `` ( T ) he idea of prohibiting the extension of slavery into the western territories could more readily be seen as a fulfillment rather than a repudiation of the American Revolution, indeed as the fulfillment of Jefferson 's early vision of an expansive republic populated by independent farmers unburdened by the one legacy that defied the principles of 1776 ( slavery ) '' ^ Jump up to : Varon, 2008. p. 40 Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p, 379 : footnote ( 8 ) Ellis, 1995. p. 266 Jump up ^ Ellis, 1995. p. 266 - 267 : `` ( W ) hat most rankled Jefferson ( and southern Republicans ) about the debate over the Missouri Question was that it was happening at all. For the debate represented a violation of the sectional understanding and the vow of silence... '' Jump up ^ Ellis, 1995. p. 268 : `` Only a gradual policy of emancipation was feasible, but the mounting size of the slave population made any gradual policy unfeasible... and made any southern - sponsored solution extremely unlikely... the enlightened southern branch of the revolutionary generation... had not kept its promise to ( relinquish slavery ). '' and p. 270 : `` All ( of the Revolutionary generation at the time ) agreed that ending slavery depended on confining it to the South... isolating it in the South. '' Jump up ^ Ammons, 1971. p. 450 : ``... if slavery were confined to the states where it existed, the whites would eventually desert these regions... would the ( abandoned area ) be accepted as black republics with representation in Congress ?... a common southern view ( held ) that the best way to ameliorate the lot of the slave and ( achieving ) emancipation, was by distributing slavery throughout the Union. '' Jump up ^ Dangerfield, 1965. p. 110 Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 379 - 380 Jump up ^ Howe, 2004. p. 148 Dangerfield, 1965. p. 111 Holt, 2004. p. 5 - 6 Wilentz, 2004. p. 380 Dangerfield, 1965. p. 111 Jump up ^ Howe, 2004. p. 150 Jump up ^ Burns, 1982. P. 242 - 243 Jump up ^ Dangerfield, 1965. p. 111 Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 380 Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004 p. 380 ( Table 1 adapted from Wilentz ) Jump up ^ Ammons, 1971. p. 454 : `` ( President Monroe ) and other Republicans were convinced that behind the attempt to exclude slavery from Missouri was a carefully concealed plot to revive the party divisions of the past either openly as Federalism or some new disguise. He drew his conclusion from several circumstances... ( Rufus King had emerged ) as the outstanding congressional spokesman of the restrictionists... ( and that he ) was in league with De Witt Clinton ( who was pursuing his own presidential ambitions outside the Republican Party )... to ( Monroe 's ) way of thinking, the real objective of these leaders was power... that they were willing to accept disunion if their plans could not be achieved in any other fashion... ( and that ) Tallmadge was one of Clinton 's close associates ( added weight to his suspicions )... ( The union could not ) survive the formation of parties based on a North - South sectional alignment. '' Ellis, 1995. p. 270 : `` The more ( Thomas Jefferson ) though about the debate over Missouri, the more he convinced himself that the real agenda had little to do with slavery at all '' Jump up ^ Howe, 2004. p. 151 : `` Republicans ( in Congress ) accused ( King ) of fanning flames of northern sectionalism is revitalize the Federalist Party. '' Dangerfield, 1965. p. 119 : `` An insinuation, made very early in the House ( by Mr. Holmes, who wish to detach the Maine statehood from that of Missouri ) was the first to suggest that the purpose behind the movement to restrict ( slavery in ) Missouri was a new alignment of parties. New York, he hinted, was the center of this conspiracy ; and he barely concealed his belief that Rufus King and ( Governor ) De Witt Clinton -- a Federalist and ( many believed ) a crypto - Federalist -- were its leaders. '' And `` In 1819 ( King had expressed himself ) with... too great a warmth in favor of the Tallmadge amendment, and in January 1820, he was re-elected to the by a legislative composed ( of both New York factions )... From then onward, the notion that a Federalist - Clintonian alliance was ' plotting ' to build a new northern party out of the ruins of the Republican Ascendency was never absent from the Missouri debates. '' Jump up ^ Ellis, 1995. p. 270 - 271 Jump up ^ Brown, 1966. p. 23 Jump up ^ Ellis, 1995. p. 217 : `` ' Consolidation ' was the new term that Jefferson embraced -- other Virginians were using it too -- to label the covert goals of these alleged conspirators. In one sense the consolidations were simply the old monarchists in slightly different guise... ( a ) flawed explanation of... the political forces that had mobilized around the Missouri Question ( suspected of being organized ) to maximize its coercive influence over popular opinion. '' Jump up ^ Wilentz, 2004. p. 3885 - 386 : `` No evidence exists to show that Clinton or any New England Federalist helped to instigate the Tallmadge amendments. Although most Northern Federalists backed restriction, they were hardly monolithic on the issue ; indeed, in the first key vote on Tallmadge 's amendments over Missouri, the proportion of Northern Republicans who backed restriction surpassed that of Northern Federalists. `` It is well known '', the New Hampshire Republican William Plumer, Jr. observed of the restrictionist effort, `` that it originated with Republicans, that it is supported by Republicans throughout the free states ; and that the Federalists of the South are its warm opponents. '' Dangerfield, 1965. p. 122 : `` There is no trace of a Federalist ' plot ', at least as regards the origins of the Tallmadge amendment ; there was never a Federalist - Clinton ' conspiracy '... '' Howe, 2004. p. 151 Jump up ^ Ammons, 1971. p. 454 - 455 : `` Although there is nothing to suggest that the political aspirations of the Federalists were responsible for the move to restrict slavery in Missouri, once the controversy erupted for Federalists were not unwilling to consider the possibility of a new political alignment. They did not think in terms of a revival of Federalism, but rather of establishing a liaison with discontented Republicans which would offer them an opportunity to re-engage in political activity in some other form than a permanent minority. '' And p. 458 : `` In placing this emphasis upon political implications of the conflict over Missouri ( e.g. Federalist ' plots ' and ' consolidation ' ), Monroe and other Southerners obscured the very real weight of antislavery sentiment involved in the restrictionist movement. '' Jump up ^ Dixon, 1899 p. 184 Jump up ^ White, Deborah Gray ( 2013 ). Freedom On My Mind : A History of African Americans. Boston : Bedford / St. Martin 's. p. 215. Jump up ^ Dixon, 1899 pp. 49 -- 51 Jump up ^ Forbes, 1899 pp. 36 -- 38 Jump up ^ Dixon, 1899 pp. 58 -- 59 ^ Jump up to : Greeley, Horace. A History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension Or Restriction in the United States, p. 28 ( Dix, Edwards & Co. 1856, reprinted by Applewood Books 2001 ). Jump up ^ Dixon, 1899 pp. 116 -- 117 Jump up ^ Paul Finkelman ( 2011 ). Millard Fillmore : The 13th President, 1850 -- 1853. Henry Holt. p. 39. Jump up ^ Leslie Alexander ( 2010 ). Encyclopedia of African American History. ABC - CLIO. p. 340. Jump up ^ Brown, 1964 p. 69 Jump up ^ Peterson, 1960 p. 189 Jump up ^ `` Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes ''. April 22, 1820. Retrieved 2012 - 11 - 18. Jump up ^ `` Maine Becomes a State ''. Library of Congress. March 15, 1820. Retrieved 2012 - 11 - 18. Jump up ^ `` Missouri Becomes a State ''. Library of Congress. August 10, 1821. Retrieved 2012 - 11 - 18. Jump up ^ `` Arkansas Becomes a State ''. Library of Congress. Retrieved 2012 - 11 - 18. Jump up ^ White, Deborah Gray ( 2013 ). Freedom On My Mind : A History of African Americans. Boston : Bedford / St. Martin 's. pp. 215 -- 216. Jump up ^ `` Lincoln at Peoria ''. Retrieved November 18, 2012. Jump up ^ `` Peoria Speech, October 16, 1854 ''. National Park Service. Retrieved August 24, 2017. Bibliography Brown, Richard H. ( 1970 ) ( Winter 1966 ), `` Missouri Crisis, Slavery, and the Politics of Jacksonianism '', in Gatell, Frank Otto, Essays on Jacksonian America, New York : Holt, Rinehart and Winston, pp. 5 -- 72 Burns, James MacGregor ( 1982 ), The Vineyard of Liberty, Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 0394505468 Dangerfield, George ( 1965 ), The Awakening of American Nationalism : 1815 -- 1828, New York : Harper & Row, ISBN 9780881338232 Ellis, Joseph A. ( 1996 ), American sphinx : the character of Thomas Jefferson, New York : Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 978 - 0679764410 Howe, Daniel W. ( 2007 ), What hath God wrought : the transformation of America, 1815 -- 1848, New York : Oxford University Press, ISBN 978 - 0195392432 Malone, Dumas ; Rauch, Basil ( 1960 ), Empire for Liberty : The Genesis and Growth of the United States of America, New York : Appleton - Century Crofts Miller, William L. ( 1995 ), Arguing about Slavery : The Great Battle in the United States Congress, Borzoi Books, Alfred J. Knopf, ISBN 0 - 394 - 56922 - 9 Staloff, Darren ( 2005 ), Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson : The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding, New York : Hill and Wang, ISBN 0 - 8090 - 7784 - 1 Varon, Elizabeth R. ( 2008 ), Disunion ! The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789 -- 1859, Chapel Hill, North Carolina : University of North Carolina Press, ISBN 978 - 0 - 8078 - 3232 - 5 Wilentz, Sean ( Fall 2004 ), `` Jeffersonian Democracy and the Origins of Political Antislavery in the United States : The Missouri Crisis Revisited '', The Journal of the Historical Society, IV ( 3 ) CS1 maint : Date and year ( link ) Wilentz, Sean ( 2016 ), The Politicians & the Egalitarians : The Hidden History of American Politics, New York : W.W. Norton & Company, ISBN 978 - 0 - 393 - 28502 - 4 Further reading Brown, Richard Holbrook ( 1964 ), The Missouri compromise : political statesmanship or unwise evasion ?, Heath, p. 85 Dixon, Mrs. Archibald ( 1899 ). The true history of the Missouri compromise and its repeal. The Robert Clarke Company. p. 623. Forbes, Robert Pierce ( 2007 ). The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath : Slavery and the Meaning of America. University of North Carolina Press. p. 369. ISBN 9780807831052. Gilman, D.C. ; Peck, H.T. ; Colby, F.M., eds. ( 1905 ). `` Missouri Compromise ''. New International Encyclopedia ( 1st ed. ). New York : Dodd, Mead. Howe, Daniel Walker ( Summer 2010 ), `` Missouri, Slave Or Free ? '', American Heritage, 60 ( 2 ) : 21 -- 23 Humphrey, D.D., Rev. Heman ( 1854 ). THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. Pittsfield, Massachusetts : Reed, Hull & Peirson. p. 32. Moore, Glover ( 1967 ), The Missouri controversy, 1819 -- 1821, University of Kentucky Press ( Original from Indiana University ), p. 383 Peterson, Merrill D. ( 1960 ). The Jefferson Image in the American Mind. University of Virginia Press. p. 548. ISBN 0 - 8139 - 1851 - 0. Wilentz, Sean ( 2004 ), `` Jeffersonian Democracy and the Origins of Political Antislavery in the United States : The Missouri Crisis Revisited '', Journal of the Historical Society, 4 ( 3 ) : 375 -- 401 White, Deborah Gray ( 2013 ), Freedom On My Mind : A History of African Americans, Boston : Bedford / St. Martin 's, pp. 215 -- 216 Woodburn, James Albert ( 1894 ), The historical significance of the Missouri compromise, Washington, D.C. : Government Printing Office, p. 297 External links Wikisource has original text related to this article : Missouri Compromise Library of Congress -- Missouri Compromise and Related Resources EDSITEment 's lesson plan Early Threat of Session Missouri Compromise 1820 Oklahoma Digital Maps : Digital Collections of Oklahoma and Indian Territory James Monroe 5th President of the United States ( 1817 -- 1825 ) 5th U.S. Secretary of State ( 1811 -- 1817 ) United States Secretary of War ( 1814 -- 1815 ) Governor of Virginia ( 1799 -- 1802, 1811 ) United States Minister to the United Kingdom ( 1803 -- 1808 ) United States Minister to France ( 1794 -- 1796 ) United States Senator from Virginia ( 1790 -- 1794 ) Delegate to the Congress of the Confederation from Virginia ( 1783 -- 1786 ) Founding events Virginia Ratifying Convention Founding Fathers Presidency First inauguration Second inauguration Florida Treaty Treaty of 1818 Panic of 1819 Era of Good Feelings Missouri Compromise Seminole Wars Monroe Doctrine Tariff of 1824 State of the Union Address, 1824 Cabinet Federal judiciary appointments Other noted accomplisments Negotiated the Louisiana Purchase Monroe -- Pinkney Treaty War of 1812 Life Early life and career Birthplace and boyhood home Revolutionary War service Battle of Trenton Monroe Hill home and office James Monroe Law Office, Museum, and Memorial Library Highland Oak Hill James Monroe Tomb Elections U.S. Senate election, 1790 1792 Governor of Virginia election, 1799 U.S. presidential election, 1808 1816 1820 Legacy and popular culture Memorials Monrovia, capital of Liberia Monroe, Michigan Monroe, Georgia Monroe County, Kentucky Monroe County, New York Monroe Township, New Jersey Monroe Hill ( 2015 film ) U.S. postage stamps Monroe Doctrine Centennial half dollar Related Virginia dynasty Monroe on slavery American Colonization Society Family Elizabeth Kortright ( wife ) George Hay ( son - in - law ) Samuel L. Gouverneur ( son - in - law ) Spence Monroe ( father ) Elizabeth Jones ( mother ) ← James Madison John Quincy Adams → Commons Wikibooks Wikiquote Wikisource texts US Presidency Portal Missouri in the American Civil War The Civil War in Neighboring States : Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky Pre-War Missouri Compromise Bleeding Kansas Dred Scott Decision Border state 1861 Governor refuses to furnish quota of militia to the United States Seizure of United States Arsenal at Liberty Seizure of United States ordnance stores at Kansas City Capture of Camp Jackson Convention between Brig. Gen. William S. Harney, U.S. Army, and Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, Missouri State Guard Engagement at Boonville Skirmish at Cole Camp Engagement near Carthage Skirmish at Athens Martial law declared in St. Louis Battle of Wilson 's Creek Action at Dry Wood Creek Siege of Lexington Action at Blue Mills Landing Destruction of Osceola Operations about Ironton and Fredericktown Action at Springfield Engagement at Belmont Missouri admitted as a member of the Confederate States of America Brig. Gen. John M. Schofield, U.S. Army, assumes command of the Missouri Militia Skirmish at Blackwater Creek Action at Mount Zion Church 1862 Action at Roan 's Tan - Yard Operations at New Madrid Brig. Gen. Mosby M. Parsons, Mo. S.G., assumes command of the Missouri State Guard Action at Moore 's Mill Action at Kirksville Action at Independence Action at Lone Jack Engagement at Newtonia Skirmish at Island Mound Action at Clark 's Mill 1863 Engagement at Springfield Engagement at Hartville Action at Cape Girardeau Skirmish at Chalk Bluff Enrolled Militia of Missouri placed under command of Maj. Gen. Schofield General Order No. 11 Shelby 's raid in Arkansas and Missouri 1864 Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, C.S. Army, assumes command of the expeditionary forces at Princeton, Ark. Price enters Missouri Affair at Centralia Attack on Fort Davidson Action at Glasgow Action at Lexington Action at the Little Blue Action at Independence Action at the Big Blue Engagement at Westport Engagement at the Marmiton Engagement at Newtonia 1865 Negotiations for the surrender of the Confederate forces in the Trans - Mississippi Department Gen. E. Kirby Smith, C.S. Army, surrenders troops in Trans - Mississippi Department Units Confederate Union People Thomas Ewing Jr. Jesse James Sterling Price William Quantrill E. Kirby Smith Places St. Louis Category American Civil War Origins Origins Issues Timeline leading to the War Antebellum era Bleeding Kansas Border states Compromise of 1850 Lincoln - Douglas debates Missouri Compromise Nullification Crisis Popular sovereignty Secession States ' rights President Lincoln 's 75,000 volunteers Slavery African Americans Cornerstone Speech Dred Scott v. Sandford Emancipation Proclamation Fire - Eaters Fugitive slave laws Plantations in the American South Slave Power Slavery in the United States Treatment of slaves in the United States Uncle Tom 's Cabin Abolitionism Susan B. Anthony John Brown Frederick Douglass William Lloyd Garrison Elijah Parish Lovejoy J. 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Anderson Beauregard Bragg Buchanan Cooper Early Ewell Forrest Gorgas Hill Hood Jackson A.S. Johnston J.E. Johnston Lee Longstreet Morgan Mosby Polk Price Semmes E.K. Smith Stuart Taylor Wheeler Civilian Benjamin Bocock Breckinridge Davis Hunter Mallory Memminger Seddon Stephens Union Military Anderson Buell Burnside Butler Du Pont Farragut Foote Frémont Grant Halleck Hooker Hunt McClellan McDowell Meade Meigs Ord Pope D.D. Porter Rosecrans Scott Sheridan Sherman Thomas Civilian Adams Chase Ericsson Hamlin Lincoln Pinkerton Seward Stanton Stevens Wade Welles Aftermath U.S. Constitution Reconstruction amendments 13th Amendment 14th Amendment 15th Amendment Reconstruction Alabama Claims Brooks -- Baxter War Carpetbaggers Colfax Riot of 1873 Compromise of 1877 Confederate refugees Confederados Eufaula Riot of 1874 Freedmen 's Bureau Freedman 's Savings Bank Homestead acts Southern Homestead Act of 1866 Timber Culture Act of 1873 Impeachment of Andrew Johnson Kirk - Holden War Knights of the White Camelia Ku Klux Klan Racial violence Memphis Riot of 1866 Meridian Riot of 1871 New Orleans Riot of 1866 Pulaski ( Tennessee ) Riot of 1867 South Carolina riots of 1876 Reconstruction acts Habeas Corpus Act 1867 Enforcement Act of 1870 Enforcement Act of February 1871 Enforcement Act of April 1871 Reconstruction treaties Indian Council at Fort Smith Red Shirts Redeemers Scalawags Southern Claims Commission White League post-Reconstruction Commemoration Centennial Civil War Discovery Trail Civil War Roundtables Civil War Trails Program Civil War Trust Confederate History Month Historical reenactment Robert E. Lee Day Disenfranchisement Black Codes Jim Crow Lost Cause mythology Modern display of the Confederate flag Sons of Confederate Veterans Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War Southern Historical Society United Confederate Veterans United Daughters of the Confederacy Monuments and memorials Union List of Union Civil War monuments and memorials List of memorials to the Grand Army of the Republic Memorials to Abraham Lincoln Confederate List of Confederate monuments and memorials Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials List of memorials to Robert E. Lee List of memorials to Jefferson Davis Annapolis Roger B. Taney Monument Baltimore Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument Confederate Women 's Monument Roger B. Taney Monument Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson Monument Durham, North Carolina Robert E. Lee Monument New Orleans Battle of Liberty Place Monument Jefferson Davis Monument General Beauregard Equestrian Statue Robert E. Lee Monument Cemeteries Confederate Memorial Day Ladies ' memorial associations U.S. Memorial Day U.S. national cemeteries Veterans 1913 Gettysburg Reunion Confederate Veteran Grand Army of the Republic Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the U.S. Old soldiers ' homes Southern Cross of Honor United Confederate Veterans Related topics Related topics Military Arms Campaign Medal Cavalry Confederate Home Guard Confederate railroads Confederate Revolving Cannon Field artillery Medal of Honor recipients Medicine Leadership Naval battles Official Records Partisan rangers POW camps Rations Signal Corps Turning point Union corps badges U.S. Balloon Corps U.S. Home Guard U.S. Military Railroad Political Committee on the Conduct of the War Confederate States Presidential Election of 1861 Confiscation Act of 1861 Confiscation Act of 1862 Copperheads Emancipation Proclamation Habeas Corpus Act of 1863 Hampton Roads Conference National Union Party Radical Republicans Trent Affair Union leagues U.S. Presidential Election of 1864 War Democrats Music Battle Hymn of the Republic Dixie John Brown 's Body A Lincoln Portrait Marching through Georgia Maryland, My Maryland When Johnny Comes Marching Home Other topics Bibliography Confederate war finance Confederate States dollar Espionage Confederate Secret Service Great Revival of 1863 Naming the war Native Americans Cherokee Choctaw New York City Gold Hoax of 1864 New York City Riot of 1863 Photographers Richmond Riot of 1863 Sexuality Supreme Court cases Tokens U.S. Sanitary Commission Book Category Portal Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Missouri_Compromise&oldid=862547706 '' Categories : 16th United States Congress 1820 in American politics 1820 in law History of United States expansionism Legal history of Missouri Presidency of James Monroe Slavery in the United States United States federal territory and statehood legislation Missouri in the American Civil War Hidden categories : CS1 : Julian -- Gregorian uncertainty CS1 maint : Date and year Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the New International Encyclopedia Talk Contents About Wikipedia Català Čeština Dansk Deutsch Eesti Español Français 한국어 Bahasa Indonesia Italiano עברית Latina Magyar Nederlands 日本 語 Norsk Polski Português Română Русский Simple English Slovenčina Suomi Svenska Українська 中文 18 more Edit links This page was last edited on 5 October 2018, at 03 : 10 ( UTC ). 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Question: who had the largest role in writing the missouri compromise
Answer: Senator Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois