The Rise Of “The Slavery Question”

• 1819-61, growing conflict over slavery’s future

  • especially its spread west into new states

• gradually rose to dominate national politics

  • sporadically at first

  • increasingly split US politics along sectional lines

    • anti-slavery north vs pro-slavery south

• by 1860, eclipsed all other issues

The Missouri Compromise

• 1819, Missouri applied for statehood

• Talmadge Amendment led to a crisis

  • proposed ban on future slave importations and gradual abolition

    • 10,000+ slaves already lived there

  • passed House, but not Senate

  • southerners threaten disunion, even war

• Compromise, 1820:

  • Missouri admitted as a slave state

  • Maine admitted as a free state

  • rest of Louisiana Purchase split on Missouri’s southern border

    • free states to the north

    • slave states to the south

• peace restored, but preview of future conflicts