ss to admit them to the Union as the state
of Maine.

[Sidenote: Objections to the admission of Missouri.]

278. Opposition to the Admission of Missouri.--Many people in the
North opposed the admission of Missouri because the settlers of the
proposed state were slaveholders. Missouri would be a slave state, and
these Northerners did not want any more slave states. Originally slavery
had existed in all the old thirteen states. But every state north of
Maryland had before 1819 either put an end to slavery or had
adopted some plan by which slavery would gradually come to an end.
Slavery had been excluded from the Northwest by the famous Ordinance of
1787 (p. 135). In these ways slavery had ceased to be a vital
institution north of Maryland and Kentucky. Why should slavery be
allowed west of the Mississippi River? Louisiana had been admitted as a
slave state (1812). But the admission of Louisiana had been provided for
in the treaty for the purchase of Louisiana from France. The Southerners
felt as strongly on the other side. They said that their slaves were
their property, and that they had a perfect right to take their
property and settle on the land belonging to the nation. Having founded
a slave state, it was only right that the state should be admitted to
the Union.

[Illustration: (Map) Missouri Compromise of 1820]

[Sidenote: This Missouri Compromise, 1820. _Higginson_, 254-256;
_Eggleston_, 258-261.]

[Sidenote: Both states admitted, 1820. _McMaster_,274-276.]

279. The Missouri Compromise, 1820.--When the question of the
admission of Maine and Missouri came before Congress, the Senate was
equally divided between the slave states and the free states. But the
majority of the House of Representatives was from the free states. The
free states were growing faster than were the slave states and would
probably keep on growing faster. The majority from the free states in
the House, therefore, would probably keep on increasing. If the free
states obtained a majority in the Senate also, the Southerners would
lose all control of the government. For these reasons the Southerners
would not consent to the admission of Maine as a free state unless at
the same time Missouri was admitted as a slave state. After a long
struggle Maine and Missouri were both admitted--the one as a free state,
the other as a slave state. But it was also agreed that all of the
Louisiana purchase north of the southern boundary of Missouri, with the