Missouri Admitted to the Union
On August 10, 1821, Missouri was officially admitted to the United States as the 24th state, an event marked by significant historical implications regarding the contentious issue of slavery. The path to statehood began in 1818 but was fraught with conflict, primarily characterized by the debates surrounding the Missouri Compromise. This compromise allowed Missouri to enter the Union with a constitution that permitted slavery, while simultaneously admitting Maine as a free state and establishing a boundary that prohibited slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase territory north of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes.
The admission of Missouri highlighted the growing national divide over slavery, a subject of intense debate among congressional representatives and the public during that era. Influential figures like Henry Clay played a crucial role in negotiating compromises aimed at balancing the interests of both pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. Ultimately, despite the complex legislative maneuvers, Missouri's state constitution maintained provisions that restricted the rights of free blacks and reinforced the institution of slavery.
The Missouri controversy reflected broader tensions in American society that would eventually contribute to the onset of the Civil War. The state's admission underscored the challenges of maintaining a balance between free and slave states in a rapidly expanding nation, a struggle that persisted long after Missouri joined the Union.
Missouri Admitted to the Union
Missouri Admitted to the Union
On August 10, 1821, President James Monroe proclaimed the admission of Missouri to the Union. Monroe's action brought an end to the controversy that erupted shortly after Congress first considered Missouri's application for statehood in 1818. By the so -called Missouri Compromise, Missouri gained statehood with a constitution containing no restrictions against slavery. Maine entered the Union as a free state, and slavery was prohibited in the area of the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36 degrees and 30 minutes. However, the compromise was only a temporary solution to the serious problems that stemmed from the existence of slavery in the United States. Former presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams respectively referred to the Missouri controversy as “a fire bell in the night” and “a title-page to a great tragic volume.” Their fears were justified, for the same issues that divided the United States in 1820 plunged the nation into the Civil War in 1860.
Missouri, the second state to be created from the vast area of the Louisiana Purchase , had passed from French to Spanish control and back again to the French before coming under the jurisdiction of the United States in 1803. During their periods of rule both the French and Spanish had permitted slavery throughout the Louisiana Purchase region, and thus well before 1803 the practice was firmly implanted in Missouri. When the United States purchased Louisiana, it promised by the treaty of cession to protect the liberty, property, and religion of the inhabitants of the Trans -Mississippi Louisiana Purchase area. Most observers assumed that slaves were included in this guarantee of property, but Congress's failure to specifically provide for slavery in its first act pertaining to Louisiana displeased Missourians. Some feared that such silence might “create the presumption of a disposition in Congress to abolish at a future day slavery altogether in the district.”
When lower Louisiana, which had been known as the Territory of Orleans, was admitted to the Union in 1812 as a slave state named Louisiana, the huge upper Louisiana region was renamed the Missouri Territory. At that time, Representative Abner Lacock of Pennsylvania moved to prohibit the admission of slaves into the Missouri Territory. The United States, however, was on the brink of war with Great Britain in 1812, and congressional fears that a restriction on slavery in Missouri might create great dissension throughout the South at a time of crisis caused Lacock's motion to be overwhelmingly defeated. However, an elective legislature for the Missouri Territory was authorized in 1812 and again in 1816 after the population in the area began to swell with new settlers.
In 1817 residents of Missouri began to petition Congress for permission to frame a constitution as a preliminary move to statehood. Congress considered the request in 1818 but failed to act upon the enabling legislation reported by a House committee. The inhabitants of Missouri continued to press the issue. In November 1818 they again petitioned Congress for permission to form a state government, and in December 1818 Speaker of the House Henry Clay presented their request to the House of Representatives.
A large number of slaveholding settlers from Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee had migrated to the Missouri region after 1803, and there was no doubt that the majority of its residents favored the continuation of slavery. However, Missouri's admission as a slave state was not to be easily accomplished. When the House took up the question of Missouri statehood on February 13, 1819, Representative James Tallmadge Jr. of New York proposed the following amendment to the admission bill:
That the further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall be duly convicted; and that all children of slaves, born within the said state, after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be free, but may be held to service until the age of twenty-five years.
For several days, the representatives debated the Tallmadge amendment. The antislavery forces argued that any decision made on Missouri would affect not only that state but the entire region west of the Mississippi. Denouncing slavery, they claimed that Congress had the power to require an amendment against slavery in the constitution of any new state admitted to the Union. On the other side, the proponents of slavery, including Henry Clay, countered that “the cause of humanity” necessitated allowing slavery in the frontier. They argued that such expansion would provide more adequate food supplies and better living conditions for slaves than were to be had in the South. They also denied that Congress had the right to require prohibitions against slavery in the constitutions of any new states, and they argued that the 1803 cession treaty between the United States and France specifically prevented congressional interference with slavery in any state created from the Louisiana Purchase.
Voting on the Tallmadge amendment, the House approved the measure by February 17, 1819, and then sent it to the Senate, where it faced stronger opposition. In the spring of 1819, ten slave states and eleven free states were represented in the Senate. However, many residents of Illinois, which was counted on the side of the predominantly antislavery North, strongly sympathized with the South and both Illinois senators were slaveholders. They opposed the Tallmadge amendment, and their votes helped the South defeat the antislavery measure in the Senate. On March 2, 1819, the Senate passed the Missouri statehood bill without the defeated Tallmadge amendment. The following day, the House refused to admit Missouri as a slave state, and the 15th Congress adjourned on March 3, 1819, leaving the future status of Missouri unresolved.
By the fall of 1819 the admission of Missouri had become a national issue. The debate, no longer confined to Congress or the disputed area, stirred popular interest and mass protest meetings were held in many northern communities. The question was further complicated because Massachusetts had agreed, in June 1819, to allow its northern section to become the independent state of Maine. Maine applied for statehood shortly after Congress convened in December 1819, and since Maine was to be an additional free state the North greeted its request with enthusiasm. Moreover, the North, with its larger population, controlled the House of Representatives so that the Maine statehood bill passed by a substantial margin on January 3, 1820.
However, Maine's application for admission to the Union faced strong opposition in the Senate. On December 14, 1819, Alabama had gained statehood, thereby making the number of slave states in the Union equal to the number of free states. Since each state sent two representatives to the Senate, and the Illinois senators consistently voted with the South, southerners could count on a clear Senate majority in 1820. Further, the South had no intention of giving up its control of the Senate by allowing the admission of another free state to disrupt the sectional balance. As early as December 30, 1819, Henry Clay presented an ultimatum to the free states: “If you refuse to admit Missouri also free of condition, we see no reason why you shall take to yourselves privileges which you deny to her, and until you grant them also to her, we will not admit [Maine].”
Maine's application for admission to the Union was thus inextricably tied to the fate of Missouri. On January 3, 1820, the House approved the aforementioned bill admitting only Maine to statehood. The following month, when the Senate considered the Maine statehood bill, it added an amendment also allowing Missouri to prepare for statehood by forming a state constitution that would have no restrictions against slavery. In addition the Senate also attached to the bill an amendment suggested by Senator Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois:
That, in all that territory ceded by France to the United States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, excepting only such part thereof as is included within the limits of the State contemplated by this act, slavery and involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall be and is hereby forever prohibited: Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any State or Territory of the United States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.
In short, the Senate version of the Maine bill was a plan to resolve the 1820 controversy by permitting Missouri to form a constitution with no restriction against slavery, admitting Maine as a free state, allowing slavery to exist in the unsettled regions that today are part of Arkansas and Oklahoma, and outlawing slavery in the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes. That latitude constituted the southern boundary of Missouri.
The southern majority in the Senate passed the bill joining Missouri and Maine statehood and including the Thomas amendment. However, the North was not satisfied with the compromise and used its majority in the House to defeat the Senate compromise plan late in February 1820. The House rejection of the Senate compromise bill and its subsequent passage on March 1, 1820, of a Missouri statehood bill with an amendment restricting slavery created a stalemate. The Senate would not consider any alternative to its compromise plan, and the House refused to approve the admission of Missouri as a slave state. In an attempt to break this deadlock, the Senate requested that a conference committee be set up with the House. The report of the joint committee was made public on March 2, 1820. It recommended: (1) withdrawal of the Senate's amendments to the Maine statehood bill that allowed Missouri to form a state government with slavery and that restricted slavery in the Louisiana Purchase; (2) removal of the clause restricting slavery in the Missouri statehood bill passed by the House on March 1, 1820; and (3) the addition to the Missouri admission bill of a provision prohibiting slavery in all areas of the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes except in the new state of Missouri.
Since northern representatives opposed the admission of Missouri as a slave state and many southern representatives were against a restriction on the expansion of slavery, the House would have defeated the compromise resolutions of the joint congressional committee if they had been voted on as a single bill. For this reason, Henry Clay used his influence to see that each of the committee proposals was voted on separately. Thus, Clay was able to gain slim majority votes in the House for each of the recommendations. The Senate also went along with the committee proposals, and on March 3, 1820, a bill was passed admitting Maine to the Union as a free state. On March 6 Missouri gained the right to form a constitution and form a state government with no restrictions on slavery, and on the same day a bill was passed banning slavery from the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes.
The Missouri Compromise of 1820, as the measures are collectively known, ended the crisis that erupted over the expansion of slavery into new states to be created from the Louisiana Purchase territory. It did not, however, immediately bring Missouri into the Union as a state. Its constitution had to first gain the approval of both the House and Senate. Missourians framed a constitution not only permitting slavery but also forbidding free blacks and mulattoes from entering the state and making it illegal for the legislature to free slaves without their owners' consent. These two latter portions of the Missouri constitution served as the basis for the dispute over Missouri that continued into 1821.
On December 12, 1820, the Senate approved a Missouri statehood bill saying nothing specific against the two controversial clauses of its constitution but including the ambiguous proviso that “nothing herein contained shall be so construed as to give the assent of Congress to any provision in the constitution of Missouri, if any such there be, which contravenes that clause in the Constitution of the United States which declares that ‘the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.’”
This so-called Pontius Pilate proviso did not satisfy those who opposed Missouri's gaining statehood with no restrictions against slavery and who were particularly determined to fight against the clauses in the Missouri constitution barring free blacks from the state and impeding the liberation of slaves. Their strength, of course, lay in the House of Representatives where the North enjoyed a clear majority. On December 13, 1820, the question of Missouri statehood came to a House vote and on that day it was defeated by 93 to 79.
Throughout January and February 1821 the Missouri controversy, or the “misery debate” as it was also known, dragged on. During this time a number of compromise plans were put forth, but both sides adamantly refused to yield any ground. The situation was potentially explosive. Southerners felt the North had betrayed the spirit of compromise of 1820 by refusing to admit Missouri to statehood, and in the early months of 1821, some threatened to secede from the Union. On February 22, 1821 Henry Clay proposed that a joint congressional committee meet to attempt to resolve the Missouri dispute before the 16th Congress adjourned. When the joint committee, composed of 23 representatives of the House and seven members of the Senate, convened Clay proposed:
that Missouri shall be admitted into this union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever, upon the fundamental condition, that the fourth clause of the twenty-sixth section of the third article of the constitution submitted on the part of said State to Congress shall never be construed to authorize the passage of any law…by which any citizen of…the States in this Union shall be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and immunities to which such citizen is entitled under the Constitution of the United States: Provided, That the Legislature of the said State, by a solemn public act, shall declare the assent of the said State to the said fundamental condition and shall transmit to the President of the United States, on or before the fourth Monday in November next, an authentic copy of the said act; upon the receipt whereof the President, by proclamation, shall announce the fact: whereupon, and without any further proceeding on the part of Congress the admission of the said State into this Union shall be considered as complete.
As he had anticipated, Clay was able to influence most of the committee members and he successfully gained approval of his resolution. On February 26, 1821, he reported his compromise plan to the House, which passed the resolution on that same day. The Senate rapidly followed suit, and the agreement became official on March 2, 1821.
Clay's so-called Second Missouri Compromise did not automatically guarantee Missouri statehood. His resolution made the admission of Missouri conditional upon its legislature's promising never to pass laws that would discriminate against citizens (technically including free blacks and mulattoes) of another state. Even after Clay's bill gained the approval of Congress, some northerners hoped that the Missouri legislature would not make such a pledge. They were disappointed in their hopes, however. In June 1821 the Missouri lawmakers made the necessary promise, albeit phrased in defiant and sarcastic language, and on August 10, 1821, President Monroe proclaimed the admission of Missouri as the 24th state of the Union.