Missouri’s admission to the Union was controversial. Having been acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase, Missouri settlers first applied for admission in 1817, under a constitution that permitted slavery.
The young republic was operating under a delicate balance of power at the time, with the eleven states that permitted slavery and the eleven states that prohibited it often taking opposite sides on important issues. Louisiana had been admitted as a slave state in 1812, but by then it already had a large slave population and a long tradition of slavery under both the Spanish and French. Missouri, on the other hand, had no such tradition under Spanish and French rule and the territory lay directly west of Illinois, where slavery was prohibited under the terms of the Northwest Ordinance. Opponents of admission objected to adding another slave state, which would tip the balance of power in the Senate to the South. Congress was at an impasse.
In February 1819, Rep. James Talmadge of New York proposed a compromise that would effect gradual emancipation. Missouri would be admitted as a slave state on the condition that importation of additional slaves into the state be prohibited and that all slaves thereafter born in Missouri be emancipated at age 25. The so-called Talmadge Amendment passed the House on a purely sectional vote but was blocked in the Senate by southern Senators and pro-Southern northern Democrats (derisively known as “doughfaces.”) The impasse remained.
The following year Henry Clay of Kentucky fashioned a compromise. Missouri would be admitted as a slave state, and a new state carved out of Massachusetts (Maine) would be admitted as a free state—thus maintaining the Senatorial balance of power. When Senator Jesse Thomas of Illinois proposed an amendment that prohibited slavery in all parts of the former Louisiana Territory west of Missouri, it appeared that the compromise would fail. But Clay skillfully separated the two proposals, bringing them to separate votes, and maneuvering the passage of both, in what came to be called the Missouri Compromise. Missouri and Maine were admitted as the 23rd and 24th states, slavery was prohibited in the territories west of Missouri, and crisis was averted. But only temporarily. By 1850 another compromise would be necessary to prevent the breakup of the Union. But that is a story for another day.
Missouri was admitted to the Union as the 24th state on August 10, 1821, two hundred one years ago today.
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