"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