Between 1800 and 1850, the United States was a nation extending in all possible ways. America experienced a amount change in national unity. Territorial expansion destroyed national unity. Between 1819 and 1824 is when the unified nation of America began to divide and depart from one another. Triggered by the concept of Manifest Destiny, people believed that America should extend from “sea to shining sea”. It was the issues of the expansion of slavery into the new territories that separated the North and the South and split our nation apart.
The first real crisis over territorial expansion took place in 1819-1921 over the admission of the state of Missouri. The state of Missouri was one of the first to be out of the Louisiana Purchase. At this time Missouri wanted to join the union as a slave state. The Missouri Compromise was then passed in 1820 between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery in the United States Congress. It prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30′ north except within the boundaries of the proposed states of Missouri. To balance the number of “slave states” and “free states.” The tensions continued to rise in 1849, when controversies about slavery complicated the debate of annexing new states to the union. The number of Free states and slave states were then equal to fifteen states each. The Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territories. In 1817, when Missouri applied to the Union as a slave state, the issue of anti slavery vs. pro slavery came up. The Ordinance was broken, and the balance between slave and free states will be gone. By Missouri’s entrance to the union, there were more slave states than free states. The Territory of Oregon was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from August 14, 1848 until February 14, 1859, when the southwestern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Oregon. The