the delegations from the free States. No great prescience was needed to
warn the South that in self-defense it must maintain the even balance
of sections in the Senate. The contest for Missouri was therefore
essentially "a struggle for sectional domination."

The Tallmadge amendment was passed by the House, but rejected by the
Senate, after a heated debate which convinced Southern statesmen that
there was a distinct anti-slavery sentiment at the North. The
adjournment of Congress threw the whole controversy into the crucible of
public opinion. The latent hostility of men and women with humanitarian
sympathies was at once raised to white heat. Mass meetings in city,
town, and county passed resolutions against the spread of slavery and
the admission of more slave States. Yet it can hardly be said that the
public conscience was deeply touched. The leaven of abolitionism had to
work many years before it could produce results in politics.

The whole question assumed a new guise when Congress met in December,
1820. The people of Maine had held a convention and formed a
constitution, and were now applying for admission as a State. Here was a
free State which would offset Missouri if it were admitted as a slave
State. When the House passed a bill to admit Maine, the Senate promptly
attached to it, as a "rider," a bill for the admission of Missouri
without any prohibition of slavery. It was to this bill that Senator
Thomas, of Illinois, representing a constituency divided against itself
on the subject of slavery, offered an amendment in the nature of a
compromise. He would admit Missouri as a slave State, but prohibit
slavery forever in the rest of the old Province of Louisiana north of
36 deg. 30'. The Senate accepted this amendment and sent the bill to the
House. Here the original Maine Bill was stripped of the rider and the
Thomas amendment by large majorities. Shortly after this vigorous
assertion of independence, the House passed a bill for the admission of
Missouri with the prohibition of slavery. The deadlock seemed complete.

The constitutional aspects of the problem called forth some exceedingly
able argumentation. Those who favored imposing a restriction upon
Missouri argued, plausibly enough, that as Congress was given the power
to admit new States, so it was fully warranted in exercising discretion
and refusing to admit. Precedents existed for imposing restrictions.
Three States carved out of the Northwest Territor