278.  Opposition to the Admission of Missouri.—­Many people in the North opposed the admission of Missouri because the settlers of the proposed state were slaveholders.  Missouri would be a slave state, and these Northerners did not want any more slave states.  Originally slavery had existed in all the old thirteen states.  But every state north of Maryland had before 1819 either put an end to slavery or had adopted some plan by which slavery would gradually come to an end.  Slavery had been excluded from the Northwest by the famous Ordinance of 1787 (p. 135).  In these ways slavery had ceased to be a vital institution north of Maryland and Kentucky.  Why should slavery be allowed west of the Mississippi River?  Louisiana had been admitted as a slave state (1812).  But the admission of Louisiana had been provided for in the treaty for the purchase of Louisiana from France.  The Southerners felt as strongly on the other side.  They said that their slaves were their property, and that they had a perfect right to take their property and settle on the land belonging to the nation.  Having founded a slave state, it was only right that the state should be admitted to the Union.

[Illustration:  (Map) Missouri Compromise of 1820]

[Sidenote:  This Missouri Compromise, 1820. Higginson, 254-256; Eggleston, 258-261.]

[Sidenote:  Both states admitted, 1820. McMaster,274-276.]

279.  The Missouri Compromise, 1820.—­When the question of the admission of Maine and Missouri came before Congress, the Senate was equally divided between the slave states and the free states.  But the majority of the House of Representatives was from the free states.  The free states were growing faster than were the slave states and would probably keep on growing faster.  The majority from the free states in the House, therefore, would probably keep on increasing.  If the free states obtained a majority in the Senate also, the Southerners would lose all control of the government.  For these reasons the Southerners would not consent to the admission of Maine as a free state unless at the same time Missouri was admitted as a slave state.  After a long struggle Maine and Missouri were both admitted—­the one as a free state, the other as a slave state.  But it was also agreed that all of the Louisiana purchase north of the southern boundary of Missouri, with the single exception of the state of Missouri, should be free soil forever.  This arrangement was called the Missouri Compromise.  It was the work of Henry Clay.  It was an event of great importance, because it put off for twenty-five years the inevitable conflict over slavery.

[Illustration:  THE UNITED STATES IN 1820]

[Sidenote:  Reasons for the purchase of Florida.]

[Sidenote:  Jackson invades Florida, 1818.]

[Sidenote:  The Florida purchase, 1819.]