"The Slavery Question" and The Missouri Compromise

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

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