by differences on the boundary between Louisiana and the Spanish Mexico, but this being settled to begin at the Sabine River, a treaty was concluded. On the payment of five millions by the American government to citizens who claimed indemnity from Spain, that power agreed to relinquish the Floridas, East and West, (February 22, 1819.) It was nearly two years, however, before Spain ratified the treaty, and fully two before Florida Territory formed a part of the United States, (1821.)

New states.

The State of Connecticut, hitherto content with her charter government, at length adopted a new constitution, in which there was but little improvement upon the old one, except in making suffrage general and the support of a church system voluntary, (1818.) New constitutions and new states were constantly in process of formation. Indiana, (December 11, 1816,) Mississippi, (December 10, 1817,) Illinois, (December 3, 1818,) and Alabama,* (December 14, 1819,) all became members of the Union.

Proposal

Before the actual accession of Alabama, Misof Mis- souri was proposed as a candidate for admission. souri. It was a slaveholding territory. But when the bill authorizing it to frame a state constitution was before Congress, a New York representative, James W. Tallmadge, moved that no more slaves should be brought in, and that the children of those already there should be liberated at the age of twenty-five. This passed the House of Representatives, but failed in the Senate. Then another New York representative, John W. Taylor, moved to prohibit slavery in the entire territory to the north of latitude 36° 30'; but this, too, was lost. A bill setting off the portion of Missouri Territory to the south of the line just named,

* The eastern half of the Mississippi Territory became the Territory of Alabama in 1817.

as the Territory of Arkansas, was passed. But nothing was done towards establishing the State of Missouri, (February, March, 1819.)

Intense Had it been an outbreak of hostilities, had it been agitation. a march of one half the country against the other, there could hardly have been a more intense agitation. A large number felt that the time had come to make a stand against the extension of slavery. On the other hand, the attempted prohibition of slavery was denounced as violating the rights of the slaveholding states; nay, more, as the preliminary to a negro massacre, a civil war, a dissolution of the Union. The aged Jefferson wrote, despondingly, "The Missouri question is a breaker on which we lose the Missouri country by revolt, and what more God only knows. From the battle of Bunker's Hill to the treaty of Paris we never had so ominous a question." John Adams was more sanguine: "I hope it will follow the other waves under the ship, and do no harm." Public meetings were held; those at the south to repel the interference of the north, those at the north to rebuke the pretensions of the south. The dispute extended into the state tribunals and legislatures, the northern declaring that Missouri must be for freemen only, the southern that it must be for freemen and their slaves.

Question of sla

was

It was certainly a great question. "Scarcely ever,” said a Massachusetts representative, very. so great a question before a human tribunal.” Not only Missouri, but the rest of that vast region originally called Louisiana, was to be opened or closed to slavery. Not only the few thousand slaves within the territory claiming to become a state, but the thousand thousands to follow them, in the state and beyond it, were to be disposed of by the decision that must soon be reached. The party of freedom insisted upon the right and the duty of

Congress to make Missouri free; the party of slavery was equally urgent that Congress had no right to interfere, that a state alone could determine whether it would be slaveholding or not in any case, and that in this particular case it had no option, being bound by the treaty under which Missouri, as a part of Louisiana, had been acquired, and by which the inhabitants, being admitted to all the rights of United States citizens, had been admitted to all the rights of United States slaveholders. There was also a numerical argument. The Union now consisted of twenty-two states, eleven free, eleven slaveholding; and as the last, Alabama, had been slaveholding, the next ought to be free. When Congress re-assembled, and Maine sought to be received as a state, Massachusetts consenting, (1820,) the argument from numbers was turned, and Missouri was to be slaveholding, because Maine was to be free.

The Com- The Senate united Maine and Missouri in the promise. same bill and on the same terms; that is, without any restriction upon slavery. But a clause introduced on the motion of Jesse B. Thomas, of Illinois, prohibited the introduction of slavery into any portion of the Louisiana Territory as yet unorganized, leaving Louisiana the state and Arkansas the territory, as well as Missouri, just what they were; that is, slaveholding. The line of 36° 30', proposed the year before, was again proposed, save only that Missouri, though north of the line, was to be a Southern State. This was the Missouri Compromise. It came

from the north. On the part of the north, it yielded the claim to Missouri as a free state; on the part of the south, it yielded the claim to the immensely larger regions which stretched above and beyond Missouri to the Pacific. Thus the Senate determined, not without opposition from both sides. The House, on the contrary, adopted a bill admitting Missouri, separately from Maine, and under the

northern restriction concerning slavery. Words continued to run high. Henry Clay, still in the House, wrote that the subject "engrosses the whole thoughts of the members, and constitutes almost the only topic of conversation." A committee of conference led to the agreement of both Senate and House upon a bill admitting Missouri, after her constitution should be formed, free of restrictions, but prohibiting slavery north of the line of 36° 30', (March 3, 1820.) Maine was admitted at the same time, (March 3–15.)

Different

The Compromise prohibited slavery in the desiginterpre- nated region forever. This was the letter; but it tations. was under different interpretations. When President Monroe consulted his cabinet upon approving the act of Congress, all but his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, inclined to read the prohibition of slavery as applying only to the territories, and not to the states that might arise beyond the prescribed boundary. This was not a difference between northern and southern views, but one between strict and liberal constructions of the Constitution; the strict construction going against all power in Congress to restrict a state, while the liberal took the opposite ground. So with others besides the cabinet. Among the very men who voted for the Compromise were many, doubtless, who understood it as applying to territories alone. The northern party, unquestionably, adopted it in its broader sense, preventing the state as well as the territory from establishing slavery. That there should be two senses attached to it from the beginning was a dark presage of future differences.

Admis

Present differences were not yet overcome. Mission of souri, rejoicing in becoming a slaveholding state, adopted a constitution which forbade the legislature to emancipate slaves or to allow the immigration of

Missouri.

free negroes. On this being brought before Congress, towards the close of the year, (1820,) various tactics were adopted; the extreme southern party going for the immediate admission of the state, while the extreme northern side urged the overthrow of state, constitution, and Compromise, together. Henry Clay, at the head of the moderate men, succeeded, after long exertions, in carrying a measure providing for the admission of Missouri as soon as her legislature should solemnly covenant the rights of citizenship to "the citizens of either of the states,” (February, 1821.) This was done, and Missouri became a state, (August 10.)

Slave trade.

While the nation thus refused to arrest slavery within its limits, it resisted the extension of the slave trade. Upwards of fourteen thousand slaves were said to have been imported in a single year, (1818.) Upon this an act of Congress attached fresh and severer penalties to the slave dealer, and provided for the return of his unhappy victims to their native country, (1819.) Another act denounced the traffic as piracy, (1820.)