not already been on the side of admitting
Louisiana, the necessities of war would have enforced it.

Six years after Louisiana entered the Union, Missouri applied for
admission as a slave State. A violent agitation at once arose,
continued for two years, and was finally allayed by the famous
compromise of 1820. The outbreak was so sudden, its course so
turbulent, and its subsidence so complete, that for many years it
was regarded as phenomenal in our politics, and its repetition in
the highest degree improbable if not impossible. The "Missouri
question," as it was popularly termed, formally appeared in Congress
in the month of December, 1818; though during the preceding session
petitions for a State government had been received from the
inhabitants of that territory. When the bill proposing to admit
the State came before the House, Mr. James Tallmadege, jun., of
New York, moved to amend it by providing that "the further introduction
of slavery be prohibited in said State of Missouri, and that all
children born in that State after its admission to the Union shall
be free at the age of twenty-five years." The discussion which
followed was able, excited, and even acrimonious. Mr. Clay took
an active part against the amendment, but his great influence was
unavailing in the face of the strong anti-slavery sentiment which
was so suddenly developed in the North. Both branches of Mr.
Tallmadge's amendment were adopted and the bill was passed. In
the Senate the anti-slavery amendment encountered a furious opposition
and was rejected by a large majority. The House refused to recede;
and, amid great excitement in the country and no little temper in
Congress, each branch voted to adhere to its position. Thus for
the time Missouri was kept out of the Union.

On the second day after the opening of the next Congress, December,
1819, Mr. John Holmes presented a memorial in the House of
Representatives from a convention which had been lately held in
the District of Maine, praying for the admission of said district
into the Union "as a separate and independent State, on an equal
footing with the original States." On the same day, and immediately
after Mr. Holmes had taken his seat, Mr. John Scott, territorial
delegate, brought before the House the memorial presented in the
previous Congress for the admission of Missouri on the same terms
of independence and equality with the old States as prayed for by
Maine. From that ho