what do you know about the Missouri Compromise?

Answer 1

You have to understand that at the time, as new states were being admitted into the Union, they were admitted as either 'slave' states or 'free' states.

As many of these new states were formed, it threatened the balance of power because many more were 'slave' than 'free'. Northern states were worried that their ability to remain free would be watered down by all the incoming states, and they therefore threatened to just stop admitting new ones. Which was no solution either, really.

This is what the Missouri Compromise was supposed to resolve. It drew a hypothetical line on the map and said that no new state north of the line could be a slave state, with the exception of the new state of Missouri. While many congressmen thought this an excellent resolution to their problems, Jefferson was definitely not one of them. He wrote:

"...this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. ... A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper."

In other words, he felt that by codifying this dispute into law instead of actually resolving it, it would only make arguments between the north and south worse and worse until it finally tore the Union asunder. And he was proven absolutely correct 41 years later when the American Civil War began!

Answer 2

The Missouri Compromise, also called the Compromise of 1820, was an agreement passed in 1820 between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States Congress, involving primarily the regulation of slavery in the western territories. It prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30' north except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri. Prior to the agreement, the House of Representatives had refused to accept this compromise and a conference committee was appointed. The United States Senate refused to concur in the amendment, and the whole measure was lost. During the following session (1819-1820), the House passed a similar bill with an amendment introduced on January 26, 1820 by John W. Taylor of New York allowing Missouri into the union as a slave state. In the meantime, the question had been complicated by the admission in December of Alabama, a slave state (the number of slave and free states now becoming equal), and by the passage through the House (January 3, 1820) of a bill to admit Maine as a free state. The Senate decided to connect the two measures, and passed a bill for the admission of Maine with an amendment enabling the people of Missouri to form a state constitution. Before the bill was returned to the House, a second amendment was adopted on the motion of Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois, excluding slavery from the Missouri Territory north of the parallel 36°30' north (the southern boundary of Missouri), except within the limits of the proposed state of Missouri.

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Answer 3

(1820), in U.S. history, measure worked out between the North and the South and passed by the U.S. Congress that allowed for admission of Missouri as the 24th state (1821). It marked the beginning of the prolonged sectional conflict over the extension of slavery that led to the American Civil War.

The territory of Missouri first applied for statehood in 1817, and by early 1819 Congresswas considering enabling legislation that would authorize Missouri to frame a state constitution. When Representative James Tallmadge of New York attempted to add an antislavery amendment to that legislation, however, there ensued an ugly and rancorous debate over slavery and the government's right to restrict slavery. The Tallmadge amendment prohibited the further introduction of slaves into Missouri and provided for emancipation of those already there when they reached age 25. The amendment passed the House of Representatives, controlled by the more populous North, but failed in the Senate, which was equally divided between free and slave states. Congress adjourned without resolving the Missouri question.

When it reconvened in December 1819, Congress was faced with a request for statehood from Maine. The Senate passed a bill allowing Maine to enter the Union as afree state and Missouri to be admitted without restrictions on slavery. Senator Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois then added an amendment that allowed Missouri to become a slave state but banned slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36°30´. Henry Clay then skillfully led the forces of compromise, and on March 3, 1820, the decisive vote in the House admitted Maine as a free state, Missouri as a slave state, and made free soil all western territories north of Missouri's southern border.

When the Missouri constitutional convention empowered the state legislature to exclude free blacks and mulattoes, however, a new crisis was brought on. Enough northern congressmen objected to the racial provision that Henry Clay was called uponto formulate the Second Missouri Compromise. On March 2, 1821, Congress stipulated that Missouri could not gain admission to the Union until it agreed that the exclusionary clause would never be interpreted in such a way as to abridge the privileges and immunities of U.S. citizens. Missouri so agreed and became the 24th state on Aug. 10, 1821; Maine had been admitted the previous March 15.

Although slavery had been a divisive issue in the United States for decades, never before had sectional antagonism been so overt and threatening as it was in the Missouri crisis. Thomas Jefferson described the fear it evoked as “like a firebell in the night.” The compromise measures appeared to settle the slavery-extension issue, however, and the sectional conflict did not grow to the point of civil war until after the Missouri Compromise was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) and was declared unconstitutional in the Dred Scott decision (q.v.) of 1857.

Answer 4

It was in 1820. It allowed Missouri to become a state but because of all the issues over slavery, they only allowed it if Maine (which then was part of Massachusettes) would also become a state in the north, so that the slavery states would be equal to the non-slavery states.

Just off the top of my head....I could have it al messed up.