MISSOURI COMPROMISE, an agreement (1820) between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States, involving primarily the regulation of slavery in the public terri tories. A bill to enable the people of Missouri to form a state government, preliminary to admission into the Union, came before the House of Representatives on Feb. 13, 1819. An amendment offered by James Tallmadge (1778-1853) of New York, which provided that the further introduction of slaves into Missouri should be forbidden, and that all children of slave parents born in the state after its admission should be free at the age of 25, was adopted by the committee and incorporated in the Bill as finally passed (Feb. 17) by the house. The Senate refused to concur in the amendment and the whole measure was lost. During the fol lowing session (1819-2o), the house passed a similar bill with an amendment introduced by John W. Taylor (1784-5854) of New York making the admission of the state conditional upon its adoption of a constitution prohibiting slavery. In the meantime the question had been complicated by the admission, in December, of Alabama, a slave state (the number of slave and free states now becoming equal), and by the passage through the house (Jan. 3, 1820) of a bill to admit Maine, a free state. The Senate de cided to connect the two measures, and passed a bill for the admission of Maine with an amendment enabling the people of Missouri to form a state constitution. Before the bill was returned to the house a second amendment was adopted on the motion of J. B. Thomas (1777-185o) of Illinois, excluding slavery from the "Louisiana Purchase" north of 36° 3o' (the southern boundary of Missouri), except within the limits of the proposed state of Missouri. The House of Representatives refused to accept this
and a conference committee was appointed. There was now a con troversy between the two houses not only on the slavery issue, but also on the parliamentary question of the inclusion of Maine and Missouri within the same bill. The committee recommended the enactment of two laws, one for the admission of Maine, the other an enabling act for Missouri, without any restrictions on slavery, but including the Thomas amendment. This was agreed to by both houses, and the measures were passed, and were signed by Presi dent Monroe respectively on March 3/6, 182o. On the constitu tional side the Compromise of 1820 was important as the first precedent for the congressional exclusion of slavery from public territory acquired since the adoption of the Constitution, and also as a clear recognition that Congress has no right to impose upon a state asking for admission into the Union conditions which do not apply to those states already in the Union. The compromise was specifically repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska bill of See J. A. Woodburn, "The Historical Significance of the Missouri Compromise" in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1893 (Washington, D.C.) ; Dixon, History of the Missouri Compromise (Cincinnati, 5899) ; Schouler's and McMaster's Histories of the United States; and The Missouri Compromise and Presidential Politics, 182o-25, from the letters of William Plumer, Jr., ed. E. S. Brown (St. Louis, 1926). (W. R. Sm.)