The Missouri Compromise: The American Civil War

Missouri Compromise, (1820), in U.S. history, measure worked out between the North and the South and passed by the U.S. Congress that allowed for admission of Missouri as the 24th state (1821). It marked the beginning of the prolonged sectional conflict over the extension of slavery that led to the American Civil War. The territory of Missouri first applied for statehood in 1817, and by early 1819 Congress was considering enabling legislation that would authorize Missouri to frame a state constitution. When Rep. James Tallmadge of New York attempted to add an antislavery amendment to that legislation on February 13, 1819, however, there ensued an ugly and rancorous debate over slavery and the government’s right to restrict slavery. The Tallmadge amendment prohibited the further introduction of slaves into Missouri and provided for emancipation of those already there when they reached age 25. The amendment passed the House of Representatives, controlled by the more-populous North, but failed in the Senate, which was equally divided between free and slave states. Congress adjourned without resolving the Missouri question.
Much of that anti-Missouri sentiment, as it was called, arose from a genuine conviction that slavery was morally wrong. Political expediency was mixed with moral convictions. Many of the leading anti-Missouri men had been active in the Federalist party, which seemed to be in the process of disintegration; it was charged that they were seeking an issue on which to rebuild their party. The Federalist leadership of the anti-Missouri group caused some northern Democrats to reconsider their support of the Tallmadge amendment and to favour a compromise that would thwart efforts to revive the Federalist