ur it was found impossible to consider the
admission of Maine and Missouri separately. Geographically remote,
differing in soil, climate, and products, incapable of competing
with each other in any pursuit, they were thrown into rivalry by
the influence of the one absorbing question of negro slavery.
Southern men were unwilling that Maine should be admitted unless
the enabling Act for Missouri should be passed at the same time,
and Northern men were unwilling that any enabling Act should be
passed for Missouri which did not contain an anti-slavery restriction.
Mr. Clay, then an accepted leader of Southern sentiment,--which in
his later life he ceased to be,--made an earnest, almost fiery,
speech on the question. He declared that before the Maine bill
should be finally acted on, he wanted to know "whether certain
doctrines of an alarming character, with respect to a restriction
on the admission of new States west of the Mississippi, were to be
sustained on this floor." He wanted to know "what conditions
Congress could annex to the admission of a new State; whether,
indeed, there could be a partition of its sovereignty."

THE FIRST MISSOURI COMPROMISE.

Despite the eloquence and the great influence of the Speaker, the
Southern representatives were overborne and the House adopted the
anti-slavery restriction. The Senate refused to concur, united
Maine and Missouri in one bill, and passed it with an entirely new
feature, which was proposed by Mr. Jesse B. Thomas, a senator from
Illinois. That feature was simply the provision, since so widely
known as the Missouri Compromise, which forever prohibited slavery
north of 36 deg. 30' in all the territory acquired from France by the
Louisiana purchase. The House would not consent to admit the two
States in the same bill, but finally agreed to the compromise; and
in the early part of March, 1820, Maine became a member of the
Union without condition. A separate bill was passed, permitting
Missouri to form a constitution preparatory to her admission,
subject to the compromise, which, indeed, formed one section of
the enabling Act. Missouri was thus granted permission to enter
the Union as a slave State. But she was discontented with the
prospect of having free States on three sides,--east, north, and
west.

Although the Missouri Compromise was thus nominally perfected, and
the agitation apparently ended, the most exciting, and