MISSOURI COMPROMISE. in American history. an arrangement between the free and slave States, embodied chiefly in an act of Con gress approved :March 0, 1820, which provided for the admission of the State of :Missouri into the Union with a :must it tit ion which allowed slav ery, but which forever prohibited slavery in all the rest of the Louisiana territory lying north of lat itude 30' N., that being the southern ary line of :Missouri. To balance the admission of Missouri as a slave State. Nlail/e was admitted as :1 free State at the same time. In February. 1810. in the debate in Congress on the bill to admit Missouri into the radon, dames W. Tall madgc, of N1.11: York• moved to amend the Mis souri bill to the effect "that the further introdue t ionof shivery or involuntary servitude he pro hibited. and that all children of le?Ell the lifter the /111•reid in the shall be Ow." Thar admission of Alabama in the same year without any prohibition against slavery made the number of 'slav' and of 'free' States equal. The admission of Missouri ns a 'free' State. therefore. would disturb the equi librium. The bill with the Tallmadge amendment passed the House February 17. 1819. by a vote of 57 to 70. On Mandl 241 the Senate passed the bill without the Tallmadge amendment. Two days later Congress adjourned and the question of souri went over to the next session. III De cember, 1819, another hill for the admission of Missouri was introduced. whereupon John NV. Taylor, of New York. offered an amendment in the House which provided that its a condition of admission the State should be required to adopt a constitution forever prohibiting slavery within its limits. This gave rise to a prolonged and vig orous debate on the power of Congress to impose conditions upon the admission of a State into the Union. Those who upheld the power of Con gress in the premises based their argument on the provision of the Constitution which empowers Congress to admit new States. the implication being that it may admit under any conditions which it may see fit to impose. Their opponents relied upon the doctrine of the equality , of the States in the Federal system. and declared that Congress had no constitutional power to destroy that equality by attaching onerous condi tions to admission of the new States. :Meantime the situation was complicated by the application ' of Maine to be admitted with a constitution prohibiting slavery. The House of Representa tives promptly passed a bill for this purpose, and when this bill came up for discussion in the Senate in January, 1820, the friends of slavery in Missouri. who were in a majority in the Senate, coupled the Maine hill with the bill to admit Missouri with slavery. and the Senate
steadily refused to disconnect the two measures. In this situation the substance of the eompro mise was proposed by Senator Thomas. of Illi nois, in an anamdment which provided that 3lis sintri should be admitted with a constitution al lowing slavery, but that in all the rest of the Louisiana territory north of latitude 36' 30' N. slavery or involuntary servitude should he for ever prohibited. The bill with this amendment finally passed the Senate, February 18, 15,20. The bill thus amended was coupled with the bill to admit Maine, and in this shape was sent to the House for coneurrenee. The House refused to agree to the combination, and the matter was then referred to a conference com mittee of the two Houses, which recommended that the Maine bill be passed :separately, and that the Missouri hill should be passed with the Thomas amendment. To this report the House agreed. The separation of hills as distinct sub jects was thus secured, and recognition was given to the claim of the Southerners that Congress Lund no power to impose styli limitations as it saw fit upon any State as a condition 14 its :admission to the Union. President 314mroe ap proved the 'Maine hill on 'March 3, and the 31i- small bill on Nan+ 6, Clay. who was Speaker of the Ihmse, exerted his influenee to bring about this re-ult. In the next session the Constitution of 3lissouri, a para graph it the duty of the Legislature to prevent the immigration of free negroe, int° the State, was presented to Congress for approval. This provoked a heated debate concerning the duty of the Federal government to protect the citizens of earl State in I he exercise of their civil rights of citizenship in every other State.
After protracted negotiation, in which Henry Clay took a leading part, a bill was finally in troduced providing that should be con sidered admitted as a State only after its Legis lature had declared that no law would ever he passed, nor any construction Placed upon the ob noxious paragraph which would justify any law which might abridge within Missouri the rights guaranteed to all citizens by the Federal Consti tution. The bill this second compro mise was approved March 2, 1821, and in ac cordance with its terms Missouri became a Com monwealth. Consult: Burgess, The Middle Period (New' York. 1897) ; Carr, Missouri (Boston, 1888) : Dixon, History of the Missouri Compro mise (Cincinnati, 1899) ; and Woodburn, The Historical Significance of the Missouri Compro mise," in the Report of the American Historical Society for 1893 (Washington, 1894). See UNITED STATES; SLAVERY.