Historical Summary

The Territory of Missouri, originally a part of the Louisiana purchase, was organized by act of June 4, 1812. January 8, Feb. 2, and March 16, 1818, memorials were presented in the House praying for the admission of the Territory as a State. An enabling act was reported April 3, but there was no further action during the session. December 18, 1818, a memorial of the Missouri legislature, praying for admission as a State, was presented, and Feb. 13, 1819, the House took up the enabling act of the previous session. An amendment offered by Tallmadge, of New York, restricting the further extension of slavery in the new State, gave rise to much discussion, but was finally agreed to on the 16th, by two votes of 87 to 76 and 82 to 78, and on the 17th the bill passed the House. The Senate, Feb. 27, by votes of 31 to 7 and 22 to 16, struck out the Tallmadge amendment, and on March 2 passed the bill with amendments. The House refused to concur, and the bill was lost. The issue was now joined on the status of slavery in Missouri. A number of northern legislatures passed resolutions endorsing the Tallmadge proposition, and a large number of petitions to the same effect were transmitted to Congress. In the 16th Congress, which met Dec. 6, 1819, the admission of Alabama restored the balance between free and slave States. In the meantime, the people of the District of Maine had held a convention and drafted a State constitution, and on Dec. 8 the memorial of the convention, praying admission as a State, was presented to Congress. A bill for the admission of Maine was reported in the House Dec. 21, and passed Jan. 3, 1820. A bill to the same effect had been reported in the Senate Dec. 22, but on the receipt of the House bill further consideration was postponed. In the Senate the Maine bill was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, which reported amendments in the form of a "rider" providing for the admission of Missouri, without probibition of slavery. The bill as amended was taken up Jan. 13, and discussed until Feb. 16, when, by a vote of 23 to 21, the report of the committee was concurred in. February 3, in the course of the discussion, Senator Thomas of Illinois submitted an amendment prohibiting slavery in the territory acquired from France north of the line of 36° 30′, except Missouri; the amendment was withdrawn on the 7th, however, and offered again on the 16th; on the 17th, by a vote of 34 to 10, it was adopted. On the 18th the Maine bill, as thus amended, passed the Senate.

In the meantime, the House also had been considering the Missouri question. December 8 the Missouri memorials presented in the previous session had been referred to a select committee, which reported an enabling act on the following day. The bill was taken up Jan. 25, and debated until Feb. 18. On the 23d, so much of the Senate amendments as comprised the Missouri enabling act was disagreed to, by a vote of 93 to 72, and the Thomas amendment was rejected by a vote of 159 to 18. On the 28th the House again insisted on its disagreement to the Senate amendments, the votes being 97 to 76 on the Missouri portions, and 160 to 14 on the Thomas clause. The consideration of the Missouri bill was meanwhile continued. On the 26th an amendment to the same effect as the Thomas amendment in the Senate was rejected, and on the 29th an amendment offered by Taylor, of New York, prohibiting slavery in Missouri, was concurred in by a vote of 94 to 86; March 1, by a vote of 91 to 82, the bill passed the House. In the Senate the clause prohibiting slavery was stricken out, and the Thomas amendment inserted. A compromise was effected by a conference committee; the Maine and Missouri bills were passed separately, and slavery was permitted in Missouri, but prohibited in the remainder of the Louisiana purchase north of 36° 30′. The act for the admission of Maine was approved March 3, and the act authorizing Missouri to form a state government was approved March 6.

The constitution under which Missouri applied for admission contained a clause forbidding free negroes to enter the State. The constitution was transmitted to Congress at the beginning of the session, November, 1820. A resolution to admit Missouri as a State was reported in the Senate Nov. 20, taken up Dec. 4, and debated until the 12th, when it was passed. In the House the resolution was laid on the table until Jan. 15, 1821, when it was taken up and debated until Feb. 2, without any agreement being reached; it was then, on motion of Clay, referred to a select committee of thirteen. The report of the committee, on the 10th, recommended amendments similar to those afterwards agreed upon. On the 12th, after agreeing to the report, the third reading was refused by a vote of 80 to 83; the next day a motion to reconsider was carried, 101 to 66, but, by a vote of 82 to 88, the third reading was again refused. On the 22d Clay proposed the election of a joint committee to consider and report on the advisability of admitting Missouri; this was agreed to by a vote of 101 to 55, and on the following day the committee was chosen. The Senate, in the meantime, had rejected several propositions for admission, but agreed to the plan of a joint committee by a vote of 29 to 7. The report of the committee, in the terms of the resolution as later passed, was agreed to by the House Feb. 26, by a vote of 87 to 81; the Senate agreed to the report on the 28th, by a vote of 28 to 14; March 2 the resolution was approved. The condition imposed by the resolution was accepted by the legislature of Missouri June 26, 1821, and a proclamation of Aug. 10 announced the admission of Missouri as a State.

The extracts following relate chiefly to the question of slavery as involved in the compromises.

REFERENCES. — Accompanying each of the following extracts is an indication of the source from which it is drawn. The act for the admission of Maine is in U. S. Stat. at Large, III., 544; the act authorizing Missouri to form a State constitution, ib., III., 545–548. The constitution of 1820 is in Poore’s Federal and State Constitutions, II., 1104–1117, and Niles’s Register, XIX., 50–57. The proceedings of Congress may be followed in the House and Senate Journals, 16th Cong., 1st and 2d Sess.; full reports of the debates are in the Annals; Benton’s Abridgment, VI., VII.; Niles’s Register, XVII., XVIII., XIX. The nature and effect of the compromise were much discussed in the debates on the compromise measures of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854.